Pathivratha Precarity: The Inevitability of Sex Work Within Brahmanical Patriarchy in India

East Tower 

This paper situates Telugu women's entrance into sex work as an effect of Brahmanical patriarchy. Across much of South Asia, dominant ideologies understand females as hierarchically subordinate to male kin-first to fathers and brothers and ultimately to husbands. As a principle of caste distinction, male relatives are expected wrap "their" women in a cocoon of protection and material support while women's value is located in their loyalty to husbands (pathivratha). Drawing from Hindu mythology, I refer to the imaginary line demarcating women's spatial and moral boundaries as the Lakshmana rekha. In Telugu, the conscientious circumscription of pathivratha women within the private realm is broadly deemed to be subham (auspicious) across many castes and classes. All too often, however, this idealized system of female encompassment miscarries. Fathers and husbands die or fail to financially provide in India's increasingly competitive economy. As a result, mothers and daughters of various castes find themselves thrust into the public realm needing to survive. The present urban market for feminine labor means that women can make as much as three times or more from the sale of sex than from wages as teachers, nurses, or shop clerks. This economic calculus is also bolstered by cultural expectations that women who have lost their protective Lakshmana rekha-by being widowed or abandoned or by actively choosing to pursue romantic love-are fitting targets of male sexual aggression. Women are thus compelled into sex work by the failures of the same gendered system that idealizes their circumscription.