My Daughter Deserves More Than A Culture of Gendered Rituals

It is one of the quietest ironies of our time: women who have grown up with education, agency, and a commitment to equality find themselves performing roles in rituals that reaffirm the very patriarchal values they intellectually and emotionally oppose. Nowhere is this more painful than in the gendered theatre of marriage and family ceremonies—rituals that demand silent compliance in the name of tradition.

As a woman trained in the rigours of science—a PhD IITian now working as a scientist—I am conditioned to question assumptions, probe systems, and seek evidence before accepting claims. Yet, no amount of education or institutional affiliation fully insulates one from the enduring power of cultural rituals, especially those masked in the language of tradition. And most dangerously, from their gendered undercurrents.

The Performance of Tradition: Rituals That Reinforce Gender Inequality

I write this not only as a scientist, but as a mother to a five-year-old daughter. A daughter whose arrival into this world, though deeply cherished by my husband and me, was met with a conspicuous silence from my in-laws’ side. This silence wasn't overt hostility, but something arguably more dangerous: absence.

There was no Chhochak—a customary North Indian celebration (borrowed and manipulated) marking the arrival of a child (The First Child, irrespective of its gender), traditionally observed when a male heir is born. There were no sweets distributed, no naming ceremony initiated by them, no gold bangles or symbolic gestures of joy. Not because they are unaware or culturally detached. On the contrary, they live in a metropolitan city, are highly educated, well-travelled, and consider themselves liberal and forward-thinking. Yet, when it comes to ceremonies rooted in gendered legacy, progressiveness evaporates into cultural performativity.

Years later, this same family is eager to observe rituals—borrowed or reinvented—associated with other familial events, often rooted in the same patriarchal logic. They may no longer call it dowry, but the implicit expectation that the bride’s family must “present,” “contribute,” or “honour traditions” is very much intact.

Ceremonies like Godh Bharai (baby showers) are enthusiastically organised—but only when a male child is on the horizon. Even the act of naming rituals and symbolic first ceremonies (Annaprashan, Mundan, Janeu) seem to centre around boys, their lineages, and their visibility.

This is not merely about tradition—it is about structural social conditioning. The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu spoke of habitus—a system of embodied dispositions shaped by social structures. We live within cultural matrices that normalise inequality through repetition and symbolic reinforcement. Ceremonies, in this context, are not benign rituals. They are performative acts that reproduce gender hierarchies, even when the participants insist, they are "just following culture."

What is most dissonant is the gap between institutional values and domestic expectations. At my workplace, I am an equal—judged by my scientific contribution, not my gender. At home, during these cultural moments, I am subtly repositioned into a role defined by compliance and performance. The disjuncture between personal conviction and communal expectation is not just emotionally exhausting—it is intellectually violent. It undermines the very ideals we claim to uphold in public spaces: equity, neutrality, justice.

Even policies, progressive as they may be, often lack teeth in private spheres. The Dowry Prohibition Act (1961), the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act (1994), and constitutional provisions for gender equality provide the legal scaffolding. But law alone cannot dismantle what ritual continues to endorse. The state can criminalise dowry, but it cannot legislate affection, silence, or exclusion. It cannot yet regulate the semiotics of a gift, the absence of a celebration, or the subtle social ostracisation that occurs when norms are quietly violated.

This is why rituals matter. Because they are how societies communicate values across generations. And when a girl child is not celebrated, when a mother is not acknowledged for birthing her, when ceremonies are reserved only for sons, we are reinforcing—in deeply encoded ways—that women remain supplementary in the larger narrative of legacy and belonging.

For my daughter, I want a different cultural inheritance—one in which rituals are not tools of hierarchy, but expressions of shared joy.

One in which modernity is not confined to city addresses or academic degrees, but is reflected in how we include, acknowledge, and celebrate all children equally.

And so, I write not merely as protest, but as documentation. Because if change is to happen, it must begin with those who see the contradiction—and refuse to perform it any longer.“I choose to raise my voice, not just because I have the means, but because I am the proud mother of a daughter who deserves better.

Views expressed by the author are their own.