Upper-class Indians have mostly done away with many of the obvious forms of sexism. In an earlier generation, just going out to work was mostly taboo but now if you come from a family with, say, college degrees, that (mostly) shouldn’t be an issue.
But that hardly means sexism doesn’t exist in these circles. In Britain, the Everyday Sexism Project, a website founded in 2012 aimed to show up the more subtle forms of sexism that Western society ignores as “harmless”. Of course, what society at large considers harmless is quite tricky. As early as a hundred years ago, Western society considered the lack of voting rights for women “harmless”.
As is quite clear, anything short of full equality of gender is certainly not harmless. In India, a Facebook page, calling itself the Spoilt Modern Indian Woman aims to call out exactly this sort of everyday sexism.
Founded by Bruce Vain (pseudonym) and Sonam Mittal, the page started when Mittal was called a “spoilt modern Indian woman“ who takes the “liberty given by the Indian (male) society for granted” in a public post on social media. In the best traditions of reappropriating bigoted language, Vain and Mittal decided to use the phrase as the name for their anti-sexism page.
The page aimed to take a stereotype and smash it by adding a plot twist. Here are the ten best memes about the “Spoilt Modern Indian Woman” (three cheers to her!).
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