The change is setting in

Pratibha Patil took the salute on Republic Day as the first woman President of India.

Pratibha Patil took the salute on Republic Day as the first woman President of India. Did this in some ways mark a more profound change in the status of the Indian woman, a woman who wears a new attitude, a new confidence and a new dress? The Indian Express-CNN-IBN-CSDS-State of the Nation Survey interviewed about 4,000 women to get an insight into this.

The answer is somewhat ambivalent, going by women8217;s reaction to Patil. Only two out of every five women had heard her name. The figure would have gone further down if we had not over-sampled urban women in this survey. More women recognise Lata Mangeshkar or Mayawati than Patil. When told that a woman was now the President, women did feel good, but not quite ecstatic. Educated women, more in villages than in the metros, reacted more warmly to a woman president. But clearly the first woman president is not, at least not yet, quite a women8217;s president.

A focus on the present serves to remind us of the challenges that still lie ahead for the Indian woman. We quizzed them in detail about several aspects of their life to find out if they could take decisions on their own or if these were taken by the men in their family with or without consulting them. Generally no more than one-third women could take independent decisions about matters that affected them and their family:

Women in cities had greater say than their rural counterparts in purchase of household durables, but being working women helped in both settings.

When it came to their own education, a majority of women could not take independent decisions; even in the metros the figure barely touched the half-way mark.

The situation was no better regarding the decision to work: a majority of the highly educated young women said that they could not take this decision on their own.

If they do get to work and earn, their say goes up in how their earning is to be used; the higher the earning, the greater the say that woman has in how to spend it.

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The decision regarding marriage was where the voice of the woman was the weakest. Only one-fifth of unmarried women felt confident that they could take this decision on their own. In this respect the women in the Northeast were much better off and those in the North were placed worst.

Interestingly, the one decision in which women report a greater autonomy is in voting, perhaps because this decision is 8220;external8221; and a secret.

That women could not take decisions on their own did not mean that men were taking the decisions on their behalf without even consulting them. Usually only less than one-tenth of women reported being completely excluded from decision-making. The most frequent response in all these spheres was that while they were not free to take decisions, they were consulted in these vital decisions.

That appears to be an improvement upon what used to happen earlier. In order to check this, we asked all the respondents to compare the decision-making capacity of women in their own family during their childhood to their position now. The responses are more positive and definite here. Whether they live in a nuclear family or in a joint family, our respondents agreed that women had much greater role in decision-making now than in their childhood.

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The proportion was higher among the better-off, but even among the poorest the verdict was not different. Looking at the future, the verdict was even more positive. Nearly three-fourths of our respondents said that in the next generation women were likely to have greater say in decision-making in their family. As expected, educated women were more optimistic, but even the non-literate were clearly positive.

This change has its flip side too, as there are new anxieties that affect Indian women. Some of these anxieties have to do with their looks. Although very few women place themselves very low on the beauty scale, a significant proportion of young women feel a deficit: from a quarter to a half of young women said they wish they were fairer, taller or slimmer than they were. This anxiety was stronger among the unmarried young women.

Then there was anxiety about being less educated: interestingly, the more educated women felt this lack more acutely. Finally, there was the anxiety about having to choose between career and having children. Generally, younger and more educated women experienced these pressures more than others.

Yet the overall sense that we gather from the responses of these 4,000 women in 160 locations across 20 states of India is that of a new confidence and optimism. Perhaps this is what leads a majority of them to want to be born again as women, should they have a choice in the next birth. This confidence also gives them a new source of support in times of crisis and emotional need.

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Urban and working women were less dependent on their husbands or other male relatives for emotional support. They turned more to friends, colleagues and women relatives instead. This new capacity to rediscover or reinvent a women8217;s community is perhaps the strongest sign of the new confidence of the Indian woman, even if her community does not include Pratibha Devi Singh Patil.

The authors are based at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. The CSDS team would be happy to respond to any query about this survey at sanjaycsds.in