Ritual and rhetoric of gender policies at the Indian Institutes of Technology

Abstract

ABSTRACT This ethnographic study analyzes the barriers women encounter in achieving their goals at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. Employing a discursive approach, the study seeks to identify symbols promulgated by various policy actions that legitimize or delegitimize specific gender relations. It draws from feminist theories and Lisa Rosen’s symbolic policy framework to examine the chasms between policy actions and their implicit meanings, situated within the larger sociocultural context. The findings of this study suggest that the campus culture empowers female students by providing opportunities for them to shape their beliefs and also to question internalized ‘common knowledge’ mediated by their families and culture. However, women’s occupations remain centered on the domestic reality. As women aspire to occupy greater positions of power, they are constrained by normative gender roles. Rituals of policy create mystifications about these constraints which, in turn, allow men to wield power and attribute their success to individual merit rather than systemic processes that reinforce structural gender inequities. This study advocates a shift away from the instrumentalization of policies and integrating caste, gender, and class diversity into institutional policies. This shift is essential to reenvision policies shaped by sociohistorical masculine attributes, and characterized by themes of rationalization, detachment, and impartiality.