Deepa Narayan > Quotes

“Stay unfit for leadership While we may not have a science of leadership, we have developed a finely honed science of non-leadership. It is embodied in the training of women we have seen so far. Train girls to feel unsafe, live in fear, stay at home, shrink, judge themselves and their bodies, make girls feel wrong, inferior, immoral and dirty; don’t let girls speak, reason, question, have an opinion, argue, debate; teach them modesty, to wait and follow; make girls suppress their emotions, seek only approval, always please others perfectly, especially men, never say no, avoid conflict, never negotiate, and never initiate action, and then bundle all this behaviour and spray it with morality. This training would make anyone unfit for leadership. No wonder only 5 per cent of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are women. Studies show that confidence matters more than competence in influencing and selling ideas to others. And women are less likely to ask for a big job or assignment; it is risky and immodest to shine or want to shine.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“If girls do not objectify their own breasts, others do it for them.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“The Nobel laureate Amartya Sen makes an eloquent case for India’s long history of reasoned argumentation and debate in his 2005 book, The Argumentative Indian . But today’s parents prefer moulding their girls for survival and acceptance in society, where speaking up and arguing are still definitely not considered desirable female virtues.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“For Rohini, 24, with a degree in business management, emotional containment is tough. ‘I can’t hide emotions, I can’t control myself when I say things . . . And if I try to do so, I become depressed. I say a few words, and then cry . . . I have the urge to talk to anybody about anything.’ Noni, 33, lives in fear of her own emotions. ‘A lot of times I ignore myself, I keep my words inside, I do not express myself properly. One reason is that I am emotionally sensitive. Weak  –  I don’t like saying emotionally weak. Physically, I am strong, but when I have to emotionally contain myself, I get afraid too much, I cry.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“The culture of ‘protect women by locking them up’ runs so deep that it is reflected in the rules of places of higher learning, including in Delhi University. When women at St Stephen’s protested the locks on their hostels, a male faculty member said, ‘If the girls’ blocks are open, we’ll have to open a maternity ward.’ Unlike boys, girls cannot leave hostels in the evenings to even go to the library that stays open till midnight. Pinjra Tod , a student-led ‘Break the Cage’ protest movement at Delhi University, finally filed a complaint with the Delhi Commission of Women, which has in turn issued notice to all 23 registered universities in Delhi asking for explanations on the treatment of women in their hostels”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“I call the way girls are raised ‘fear training’, literally, training girls to become fearful. It is training based on no and don’t. No, you can’t do this. No, you can’t do that. Don’t do this, don’t do that. Don’t go there. Girls get little practice in testing themselves in life; they start to live an unpractised life. The very thing girls long for, life, slowly becomes fear of life. The paradox is that, as adults, women find it hard to say no to other adults. But they have no difficulty in raining no down on their young, powerless daughters. The problem is not the occasional boundary-setting no, but the constant, unrelenting no. A regime of noes cracks the confidence of girls.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“including Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella, who grew up in Hyderabad but has lived for decades in the Seattle area of the USA. Satya Nadella is a brilliant man, but his early cultural training carves deeply his thinking about how women should behave at work. At a conference to celebrate over 8000 female engineers in Arizona, USA, Nadella was asked what advice he would give a woman on how to ask for a salary raise. He said, ‘It’s not really about asking for a raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will give you the right raise . . . that might be one of the “initial superpowers” that, quite frankly, women who don’t ask for a raise have. It’s good karma. It will come back.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“My basic approach to life is that I go along with every situation.’ She adjusts to everything so as not to upset anyone. The deeper reason of course is to avoid conflict. Shefali, 30, says, ‘I just can’t say no, yaar . I can’t. I don’t like friction and a no might lead to it.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“Fault finding, with everyday ordinary things like how a girl combs her hair or how a girl stands or talks, is a strategy intended to dampen confidence”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“The most common Hindi word for argue is bahas . A girl who argues is considered bahaensi ; it is not a compliment. Arguing is also associated with being ziddi , stubborn, to want something your way. To be ziddi is the opposite of the cultural ideal of a woman who is malleable, docile and who does not have an independent mind. Ifra, 24, says quietly, ‘I have a clear understanding of what is expected of me – don’t shout back, don’t argue, talk politely, balance your emotions, don’t be too ziddi”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“Boys and girls have to be trained to respect and honour their own bodies and each other’s bodies. India’s unbalanced sex ratio, increasing inequality and habit of keeping girls at home, while young men travel in bands will make women even more vulnerable in the future, not less.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“It takes a strong woman, and usually a male sponsor, for a woman to emerge as a powerful leader in a man’s world.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“Amy Cuddy, a professor at Harvard University and researcher on power positions of the body, shows that even two minutes of power posing, standing in the V-position with arms held high and legs apart, changes testosterone and cortisone levels in the blood and hence boosts confidence, presence, sense of power and chances of success in life.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“work I don’t like to come in the limelight, I like to work in the background. I don’t like head-on controversy, I don’t want to attract upheaval, I don’t want to create a problem, I want shanti , I don’t know why. You learn it from your childhood, women’s likes and dislikes don’t get so sharp, so it’s not really a sacrifice – it’s an attitude to get along from childhood on.’ She says she rose to the top because of supportive male bosses.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“Unexpressed, women ruminate, loop over the same thing multiple times, and further lose their confidence by keeping themselves stuck in the past instead of moving forward and taking action. Divya, 37, says, ‘At work I am on guard, I think too much. I go crazy speculating about things. If someone says something, I think, what did they say, what do they mean? It may be a casual comment, but I keep going deeper and deeper, stuck in my head and discussing the same thing over and over again. Maybe I said something wrong. What did I say? Both my mother and husband tell me, you are sitting here, but you are not with us, you are thinking.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“One of the core themes to emerge is that even while women are aware of their sexual rights their sexuality is still dominantly about  making themselves desirable to men. Women assess their body and their sexuality through a man’s eye. They want to please. Navtara, 19, says, ‘I sought appreciation in physical appearances . . . so if a guy was not making a move on me, I felt there is something wrong with me.’ Just”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“asked my mother if her mother, my Nani, had given her any advice when she got married. She said, ‘ Ek hee cheez boli, kabhi jawab nahin dena, kisi ko bhi . She said only one thing, never answer back, to anyone. Jawab nahin dena”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“Nadella quickly recanted his comments and, unlike most public figures facing public backlash, who say they were misunderstood, said he was wrong and that women should ask for a raise when they feel they deserve it. In their book Women Don’t Ask , researchers Linda Babock and Sara Leschever report that in the USA men initiate salary negotiations four times as often as women do and women systematically ask for less. That women don’t ask for raises, together with the bias against women, contributes to the great disparity between women’s and men’s salaries.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“The word respect has been hijacked in many homes. It has come to mean fear. It means control and obedience through threats, scolding, demeaning, punishing, followed by yelling or withering silence by loved authority figures in the guise of love. Fear and respect fuse.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“When I asked Dimple what hurts her the most about her father, she said unhesitatingly, ‘He doesn’t trust me. Always restrictions.’ Now Dimple goes out when she wants, but she no longer trusts herself to make any decisions about work or boyfriends. She stays frozen in fear. Restrictions prepare girls to be fearful even when the restrictions are removed and when they are technically free. Bahar nahin jao , don’t go out, is perhaps the most universal restriction. Aarushi, 19, a student at Lady Shri Ram College who fought with her parents for the freedom to go out, says, ‘Now it is very difficult for me to go out. There is always fear. You know people are watching. You have to protect yourself and there is no one with you. You don’t feel relaxed outside; you feel relaxed only when you are at home. I can’t just go freely anywhere, even when my parents don’t say come home early.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“Although women commonly claim to be more emotional and more emotionally sensitive, they also block their emotions, including anger. This reflects the early training of conflict as something bad to be avoided. Such women become afraid of raised voices. They not only hush themselves, they hush others. The pressure to be perfect, polite peacemakers robs women of the ability to express their emotions in appropriate ways. Women can become walking oversensitive stereotypes. They have meltdowns, they dismiss the problem as not important, they withdraw and they shut down as they try not to be ‘too emotional’. These are learned behaviours, a consequence of societal training, of unexpressed words and feelings, and not genetic endowments of women.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“Respect your elders , jawab nahin dena Silence, however, is a female virtue. Girls are taught silence by appealing to one of the strongest values in Indian families – respect, especially for elders, particularly men.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“Don’t be Chup. Speak up. Again and again.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“Fearful women want protection. The protection offered by society comes at a very high price for women, their freedom. The current assumption is that society cannot be made safe for over 600 million girls and women, but women should be made safe for society by keeping them locked up at home as much as possible, by restricting their movement, by regulating their clothes and by isolating them from the world of men as much as possible. Disguised as women’s safety, all approaches that restrict women contribute to their non-existence and are actually about men and men’s control over society, so that men don’t have to bother to learn self-control or respect for women.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“A seemingly confident woman with advanced degrees, Richa, 25, talks openly about her constant fear of displeasing. ‘I am afraid all the time of being the real me, all the time the fear of having to explain myself as to why I am the way I am. It is not easy for me. I think a hundred times before I talk about what I want or need or even before I crack a joke unless that joke has been laughed at before. I have that uncontrollable desire to be liked. I do and say things just because I know that the other person who I am with will like what I said. I am still afraid to be who I really want to be at all times.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“There are more restrictive rules for girls than for dogs, cats or cows. Everyone knows these common boundaries, ‘boundations’. These restrictions often continue through college and even till the day girls get married. Curfew hours range from 6 p.m. to 10.30 p.m. For Abhisha, 20, studying commerce, the curfew hour is still 6 p.m. or 6.30 p.m. She says wistfully, ‘I have a lot of dreams, like sometimes to hang out with my friends, but my mother and father allow nahin karte , they don’t allow it. Because they think it is not safe for women. I feel they won’t allow me sleepovers, so I never ask, I feel anxious that they might refuse. Hesitation hoti hai , there is hesitation.’ Once she hesitatingly asked her father permission to go somewhere and he did not allow her. She did not talk to her father for a year, but she did not defy him or fight back. She says, ‘Now I have let it go. It was something small. But it affected me a lot.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“Our voice is so central to our being alive that not speaking up sometimes feels like a slow death. Smriti, 19, from the upper middle class, sums this up saying, ‘We try so hard to actually be quiet all the time, not ruffle things, we end up rejecting ourselves – it starts out small but snowballs into something ugly . . . I’ll self-destruct.’ Locked lips are not sexy. They kill the self.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“Poonam, 54, is a senior United Nations official. She joined the elite Indian Administrative Service as a 23-year-old. ‘ No, no, I am not afraid. I think I wanted to be thought of  as a nice person . . . not someone with a bichhoo [ scorpion ] in her mouth that comes out suddenly, so I didn’t speak up. Like you know that aggressive Punjabi woman, I didn’t want that to happen. I think it was all these  things  –  what will so-and-so think, how they won’t see it from my point of view and thinking that the  whole  relationship  will fail. So many fears, imagined or real, who knows . . .    I just want to please, please, please. I have never been able  to communicate or talk openly and clearly with people who matter to me, who I love, my family and friends, about what I want. I would get small small ideas from outside like keep your own account – but I was so scared to say it. Even today. Slowly I am changing with little little things. What TV show to watch, what food to eat.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“I heard the phrase ‘ ladkiyan bahas nahin kartin ’, girls don’t argue, ad nauseum. When having an opinion is bad, having an argument is just awful. It can lead to a mahabharat and the destruction of families. The capacity to argue, particularly among girls, is severely discouraged, as it can lead to possible disagreement, conflict, loss of control and independence. Non-existing selves do not argue.”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women

“When the forbidden zone is so buried in shame that it is called ‘shame-shame’, it is impossible to be rational and logical. When even grown women confuse the place of urination with the place where a baby comes from,    it displays a dangerous ignorance about basic anatomy. Most women are not sure about this, really. Grown women continue to use the words that children use for vagina. Men, on the other hand, have a lot of words for vaginas, none of which are used in polite company or denote respect. Most are used as swear words. This is true all over the world. No”
― Deepa Narayan, Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women