“A very powerful evidence for gender discrimination in a given society comes from the language of that society. Each language abounds in expressions which are indicative of society’s differential treatment of women,” says one of India’s foremost linguists Basanti Devi, PhD, in ‘Women in the Mirror of Indian Languages’266. She provides several examples of expressions from across the country that describe women disparagingly: a Kannada proverb that says a woman’s intellect lies below the knee; a Malayalam one that says that one who heeds the advice of a woman lands in the street. Literature
...more
