It’s bad enough when your parents hound you for being single and ask why you were out so late last night, but the Christian Science Monitor points to the double standard that single women renters face in India at the hands of their prospective (and over-protective) landlords:
It took Chiya Singh three months and seven real estate agents working in tandem to find an apartment to rent in New Delhi.
The problem wasn’t her credit history or salary. It was her status as a single Indian woman. The questions blocking Ms. Singh from a room of her own were a bit personal, she says. Prospective landlords wanted to know why, at age 29, she wasn’t married and why, as a single person, she didn’t want to live with her parents.
“It was an exhausting process,” Singh says, of trying to find her own place after she divorced. “I became a broken record. They asked ‘Why do you want to live alone?’ I said, ‘Um, because I think I’m old enough.’ “
That response usually netted Singh a cold expression and a vague “We’ll let you know” from the landlord. [Link]
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p>Because, I mean…why would a single woman want to live by herself?
In India, “If you want freedom, it can only be for one thing – sex,” Singh says. “You want to tell them [landlords], ‘That’s the last thing on my mind. I think I’m old enough to take care of myself.’ But for the landlord, it becomes an issue of respectability.” [Link]
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p>Right. Here is the even more messed up part. It is okay to rent to single white girls because…well, they are already slutty (or at least that is what the landlord quoted below seems to imply when she says “they are used to living on their own”).
“It’s an Indian mentality,” says Sonia Kakkar, a landlord in South Delhi. “We just feel more protective. You just feel that you are responsible.”
Ms. Kakkar currently rents the second floor of her building to two French women and prefers foreigners because she does not feel as protective of them.
“They are used to living on their own,” she says. “If they have a problem with the flat, they come to us. Otherwise, there is no interaction…” [Link]
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p>Well, to all the parents reading SM let me tell you just exactly what it is that your live-alone daughters in America are doing:
Jennifer Chowdhury just invented the hottest new game in town. Screw the Wii. Ladies, get one of these. Then invite me over (so I can blog about it for the good of the readers I mean)
If you want to take the bias out – bring/enfore the law.
Well, duh. But isn’t that symptomatic of pretty much everything in India? There is a law for X, Y, and Z, but it’s rarely enforced.
im talking about thigs like this:
“Staying in Calcutta would curtail my freedom,” Ms. Chatterjee says. “Staying here is also a headache because the landlords think every time you bring a male friend home you are starting a brothel. It’s insulting.”
i read that as “fre@kin sl*t, bringing guys to her apartment”
Also, M. Nam, can you please explain how your logic works in the case of hiring/firing as I asked in #282?
This is one person giving an opinion about her (lunatic) landlord…no need to generalize it. There were parts of article which also talked about landlords being protective of their tenants etc.
So don’t make “she’s a slut, I won’t rent her” as central theme of this article.
yeah..but they dont mean protective like protect them from crimes. i mean. they are not protective of foereign girls. what they mean by protective is like “protect them from sin”
brown (#289),
The landlord faces information asymmetry in this case (of course I am assuming background property rights). It is often very difficult for the individual landlord to determine ex ante whether s/he is going to have problems with the renters (and merely credit check etc. does not suffice. note here that strong property rights can only help so much, and I have already assumed them). Its not worth to the landlord to be embroiled in a legal dispute (however for rental companies its different; they almost always have lawyers etc, and therefore can take more risks). Now lets talk about discrimination and this specific discussion. Here the landlord must not be considered in isolation; discrimination takes place in the context of social expectations (even irrational once; i.e. the discrimination itself is “rational” but in a very irrational framework). To cut to the chase, it can be shown that given certain views –for instance in this case the use of single women as a proxy for undesirable characteristics– and certain expectations, systematic discrimination is an equilibrium. Landlords may fear that in a social context where (s/he believes) that people believe (the game theoretic term for this mutual belief is common knowledge) that single women living alone is a bad sign, it might attract the “wrong” kind of people (given this common knowledge).
PindaUSA, where does it say “protect from sin“. Care to elaborate.
Every third comment is yours, fine and dandy, bring it on, however, may I please ask do you have any experience in India – renting, and all – for that matter, any real experience in India. It is not that simple, MoorNam alluded to some of them regarding renting
Typo. I meant even irrational ones; i.e. the discrimination itself is “rational” but in a very irrational framework)
That’s true in some cases.
My sister rented several places in Delhi for a period of 3-4 years. She always had good things to say about her landlords (save one)… how they often invited her to have dinner with them, how they loaned her money (i.e. didn’t take rent for a couple of months) when she needed it desperately and didn’t want to ask dad etc. I have a few friends in Delhi and their experience hasn’t been so rosy.
ah. i see which part you are reffering to. i thought brown was talking about this:
in this section, if the landlord is behaving in a way that implies that he is afraid of the grl getting a crime committed against them because he perceives women as more suseptible, he would also worry about the foreign grls. But, it seems more like the landlors she is reffering to think that they need to protect indian grls more. that leads me to think, what are the landlords protecting indian grls from that foreign grls dont need to be protected from? is it physical attack? no. more like moral decay. i mean, if foreign grls are already “pre-decayed” why protect them. indian grls on the other hand, you should keep an eye on.
but i do see your point that this is a logical leap on my part.
as for me having experience in india, i am just commenting on what i read in this article, and hopefully getting some help making some sense out of this from people who have more experience in these matters than me.
a slow day @ the office…
stuff like this is what i read as “protect from sin” like if she has a boyfriend, she is a “bad girl”. i mean. they are not trying to protect her from crimes. just from being a “bad girl”
PindaUS: (like that name,..thanks Kush)
For every such landlord, there might be ten others who believe otherwise. Having a “boy-friend” or a “girl friend” is not very uncommon in Delhi (or in any other Indian city for that matter), and most of these landlords are themselves parents…so they usually understand this. They sometimes become too over-protective when it comes to girls ..but this doesn’t mean that the majority views it a “sin” to have a boy or girl friend.
fair enough. not sure what word i could use that is more light handed than sin though. like sin-light. diet-sin. sin-free. low calorie sin.
It’s not just about protecting her, in fact if they don’t know her – that is probably a lesser concern. It’s more about the ‘bad influence’ on their family, neighborhood, etc. And like it or not, there are a lot of people who look down upon pre marital sex in India.
Didn’t want to participate in this discussion because this issue is somewhat personal
We have one flat in Air Force Housing Board. My dad rents it out. He’s very very liberal, I mean he once got two of his office colleagues married and one of them was a Christian & other a Hindu and there was severe resistance from both families and other employees told him to stay away from that mess, but still he went ahead.
So about the flat. My dad rented it out to this single working girl. She had a job, paid the rent.
They have housing board meeting every 3 months, all flat owners usually attend.
First housing board meeting, one tenant said she plays music too loud. So my dad told her to keep it down. No hassles.
Second housing board meeting, some tenants said she parties all night long on the weekend. So my dad said, she is young, what do you expect her to do, go to katha kalakshebam ? Again he told her to keep it down. No hassles.
Third housing board meeting, it became bit serious. There was some specific complaint. One tenant claimed to have proof and photograph. It was all huddled and hush-hush. I asked my dad what was the issue and I remember he told me I was too young to understand. They called the girl in for questioning. But the end result is that the girl was evicted.
All this was roughly four years ago. Recently I accompanied him to that flat. Now it is rented by a single guy, IT chap, pays the rent regularly. So I asked my dad what was the issue with that girl we used to rent it out to. He told me I thought you must have forgotten that. Then he tried to change topic. So I said why are you dodging, what was the problem ? So he said ok, you are old enough to understand, I will tell you. She was going out with another person. So I said what is wrong with that ? So he said, no, no, you are not understanding, another girl.
Back in ’98 I was renting an apartment in NYC and the apartment broker I was working told me to stay away from private landlords, she only deals with management companies. She was an American girl (non-desi) who had a few years before, rented an apartment in a private house owned by a desi family. She said that she had friends over, boyfriends stay over, a lot of guy friends who would come visit, and she said the desi landlord told her to leave because they didnt’ want her running a brothel in their house, too many guys coming and going and it made THEM look bad. I think the main point is the mindset of desi’s when it comes to single women. That’s what this whole thread has been about.
So he said, no, no, you are not understanding, another girl.
Heh! Now that’s a story.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
Tambram, I believe that you are just a cryogenically revived Ted Williams. nobody does left field better than you 🙂
Damn, how do people figure out someone is lesbian especially if the women want to hide it. More so in India where we don’t have as much of a butch culture. I had a roommate here who was lesbian but she was not the butch kind, and it was only 4 months later when she told me that I realized she was lesbian.
Tambram, That was an anecdote that was excellently told! Characters, setting, build-up, climax!
Ardy,
My “gaydar” is absolutely on the fritz.I can never tell and once had a mini-crush for a month ( I ‘m married – not dead!) on a male office-mate who turned out to be gay .Everyone knew except me !
As MoorNam alluded to, renting out property in India is VERY risky, and will often end up biting you in the butt. And, as he said, it is totally unorganised, so market forces as well as the personal whims and biases of the landlord will always be the deciding factors. One can gripe and complain, but until the culture changes (happening but it will take another 20 years for that to percolate into the landlord mentality) and until the stucture of renting changes, nothing will change. My family owns some property in India, we did consider renting it out at one time, but finally decided against it…we’d rather it sit empty and still be there for us when we want to use it or sell it, rather than have some jerk tenant who we can never get rid of. The horror story that Samir (#290) described is all too common.
Well, she was pretty cute but thankfully in this case I was seeing someone at that time and did not try to extract any cohabitation benefits there.
Runa, first wrestling apsaras, now this?! Are you coming to any meet-ups in the near future? Just kidding (no I’m not).
Amitabh, Yes I am a bad,bad girl! As for meetups – I am waiting for the San Francisco one to materialize !
As for meetups – I am waiting for the San Francisco one to materialize !
Living in San Francisco, and your gaydar is on the fritz? That’s just not on, Runa!
We need a friggin south east meetup!
there are bars in calcutta where women unaccompanied by men are not allowed. my cousin once got into an argument with one establishment and decided to write a letter to the management (while the waiters snickered and watched her) and was evetually told that it was a security issue. they did not for a moment doubt that she was a moral, upright whiskey drinker but that the male patrons could get the wrong idea and bother her. who would protect her then, they asked. thus to minimize ‘trouble’ they did not allow unaccompanied women. i am just guessing that that may approximatley be why single women are not welcome to rent.
” thus to minimize ‘trouble’ they did not allow unaccompanied women. “
Yes, it’s the typical ‘look, we don’t want any trouble here’ syndrome … even the remotely liberal landlords might often have the ‘i’m ok with this, but other ppl might be uncomfortable with it, therefore its best not to allow you here’ reasoning… the same way a daughter would be told not to do something because ‘what will others think’ ?
What are the origins for the ‘What will others think?’ mentality in India, I often wonder. Does everything revolve around suitability for arranged marriage ?
320 Ardy Its actually very simple. See atleast in South India we don’t have much AC culture because in winters temperature is quite moderate. In Delhi I have seen many flats with AC, but not once in south, though office buildings some will have AC. So because people don’t have AC, it gets very crummy and humid so we have colorful cloth curtains in all houses, and free airflow. Many times you can see inside people’s houses even if you are not intentionally peeking. In my schooldays (1980s) my neighbor had gotten newly married. While playing near his house, I have seen him through the window trying to make love to his wife. They had bought one nice indoor wooden swing. I don’t know what you people call swing here in USA. In India swing means you have wooden plank and iron cables holding it up in air. So his wife was sitting on plank and he was slowly pushing it and sometimes he would hug her from behind and say some lovey-dovey things. I remember I actually went and told my mother that the neighbor and his wife are playing on the swing and doing love and she said, they are newly married, you should not see all that.
So I think that girl must have been spotted doing something with another girl through the window. I don’t know exactly what she must have done, I don’t have any lesbian friends so far. In Air Force flats all windows are at exactly same level, so under ideal circumstances ie. if all windows are open, or if it is unusually windy and all curtains are fluttering high, you can see through dozens of flats on both sides. But cityside is still better than TN villages. In my village, all roofs are abutting each other, so if you are a robber, you can actually get on my roof and from there go to neighbor’s roof & next neighbor, next neighbor, until you are actually out of the whole village just by jumping from roof to roof. Absolutely no privacy.
randomizer #329 — there is a difference however between ‘What will others think‘ syndrome and ‘What might others do‘ fact of urban living. Is it actually less safe for a woman to be rent an apartment by herslef in a large Indian metropolis — compared to say, well America?
not necessarily. it’s not just about the individual’s prospects of marriage – i think it’s the mentality that anything an individual does always reflects on their family – their image, their background, the values the family has taught the individual. in that sense, families wouldn’t want their children – or anyody else in the family – to do something that might infer some shortcoming in the family’s respectability itself.
@ak 332 –
You are right, I forgot about the ‘reflection on family’ part of it. So I think basically all this must have arisen from the ‘joint family’ culture in India … It is sad that ‘strong family values’, which is such a good thing, can have such an ugly side effect to it.
I think it’s going to continue to be like this until our generation comes to power. We are the ones who can truly change India. I think now the thinking is that they want their society to be “clean” and to avoid “dirtiness” and relationships with the opposite sex are considered “dirty”. In tamil they use the word “asingyum”.
Do they have a large number of CDs of Sarah McLachlan and Melissa Etheridge? Case closed.
Our generation sits outside India and snarks on blogs 🙂
Obviously, that previous statement wasn’t fair to everybody, and I didn’t mean to touch a raw nerve (in case I upset somebody).
“It is sad that ‘strong family values’, which is such a good thing, can have such an ugly side effect to it.”
Culture is like an ecosystem. It is a rich matrix of equal and opposite forces that keep the whole in balance. While some aspects of the Indian culture can be clearly lobotomized without affecting the whole, some values will not change without causing a ripple effect throughout the system and essentially changing the culture forever. But cultures are evolutionary by nature, and controlling their destiny is like putting the finger in the dyke. Enjoy the new India, and leave the reminiscing to us old fogeys.
I cannot believe 200 comments have popped up over the course of the day.
I think the conversation around renting has two different underlying issues that may or may not interact with each other:
And the two operate together. I honestly feel it would be naive to think that a more functional system of property rights would mitigate risk vis-a-vis renting to single women or whatnot. I also think it is ridiculous to think that the primary risk factor landlords are assessing when renting to single women is whether they’ll be murdered or raped. The issue is that landlords are making judgments on what they believe is appropriate or inappropriate behavior and are projecting their stereotypes, etc., onto the single woman. Whether that is by assuming she is “sluttier” or a higher risk, it doesn’t matter. I can’t see how this would be resolved without housing discrimination laws comparable to what we see in other countries. I know that the U.S. operates culturally and legally in a different way than India, but you can’t overcome someone’s personal prejudices by fixing the underlying regulations in property law. You also aren’t going to help single women find housing that offers them a degree of freedom in their lifestyles unless you start challenging ideas of what kinds of behavior are considered acceptable for women, in general. I hear MoorNam’s point, but I think we do ourselves a disservice to think that is the end all be all in the analysis.
Was this hema, or Runa? At any rate, if by some you mean “in at least one case,” then maybe. Altogether, though, I really think misogyny (or at least inaccurate assumptions and attitudes towards women and women’s rights) underlies the renting problem for single women. Like I said before, I think the “protecting your property interests against rape and murder” is ridiculous.
Completely unrelated:
Me too, although I strongly prefer northie deserts.
Come on Rahul, they have to have Ani DiFranco in there as well, and ideally kd lang. I’m kidding, this is hardly sufficient for the causal link. 🙂
Well said, Floridian! People always yearn for the days of yore, and are often aggressive about restoring some notion of purity or correctness to society, whereas these struggles and changes are an inherent part of human social growth.
Are you for or against lesbianism?
What, they all have to watch Xena too?
My favorite tome on culture – T.S. Eliot’s “Notes Towards The Definition of Culture.” And he was no sociologist or anthropologist, just a Renaissance Man who understood the world better than most experts.
Eliot is GOD. Period.
340 ” controlling their destiny is like putting the finger in the dyke.
Are you for or against lesbianism?”
Just a Freudian slip thanks to your comment #335. Hey Rahul, I enjoy your witty comments. You make SM worth it.
very true. what’s interesting is that each era/generation tries, to some extent, to prevent this change, oftentimes forgetting that the values they hold as traditional are not necessarily so traditional. on that note, i also liked benedict anderson’s ‘imagined communities’ for some insight into how (nationalistically) constructed certain cultural aspects are.
Geez. I go to work and come home and there are 300+ comments. I need another monkey assistant.
Floridian, that was actually quite poetic. Thanks 🙂
Oh come on, Rahul. Really!?
Abhi, I know. My eyes went X_X trying to get through this thread.
Try to beat “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”. GOD, I tell you.
X_X: is the middle a blank (insert smiley for wickedly cocked eyebrow)?
Thanks, Floridian. I guess I should make like a young ‘un and now say, “You’re cool too!” 😛
I’m not dogging Eliot’s work, but not sure I would put him on the level of GOD. Maybe I am kind of a crappy person on this since he’s also not my favorite poet (blasphemy!).
X_X is read vertically instead of horizontally. So the X’s are eyes (kind of looks like being dead, yes?) and the _ is a straight mouth. x_x