Gender bias can’t get worse. Period

Bellary: Karnataka's Chitradurga district had much to celebrate when a little known sitting member of the Chitradurga Zilla Panchayat was nominated to the upper house of the state legislature. Topping the list of things to do for Jayamma Balaraj, 58 — who has only cleared her Class VII exams — is to restore the dignity and living conditions of the women from her microscopic Kada Golla community where women are still victims of practices that belong in another century.

Jayamma, the first woman to enter state's Council from her community hails from Jambaiahnahatti Gollarahatti, a tiny village in Nayakanahatti hobli of Challakere taluk in Chitradurga. If one drives through the Gollara hattis (hamlets) of Chitradurga and Tumkur district, you see dozens of dishevelled women on the outskirts of villages, camped in derelict buildings, unused bus stops, cattle sheds, out in the open air under the trees, and in tiny thatched hovels on the side of the road.

These women have been banished from their homes every month, when they menstruate - or have just given birth -  as their community, the Kada Gollas adhere to shockingly outdated and clearly illegal customs that are still practiced across Chitradurga and Tumkur, where women are forced out of their homes and forced to live out in the open because they are considered “unclean.”

For hundreds of young school and college going girls, it means that not only do they miss school and college when they menstruate, as they cannot step foot in the village where their schools are located, but it also means that they miss their examinations.

Worse still, while a Kadu Golla woman who is menstruating lives outside the village for three to five days every month, a woman who has given birth cannot even enter her home for two or three months. They are forced to stay in "Devara Gudlu" (menstruation hut) that measures 10x15 ft, set up on the outskirts of the hamlet. This notion is so ingrained in Kadu Gollas that even educated professionals from the community accept it, fearing the 'curse' of the family deity.