The gift of the veil- education and the experience of double consciousness among women

Abstract

This paper examines the experiences of women in the Indian education system, as teachers, students and mothers, to argue that women adjust to the male world by either wearing the veil of ignorance- by believing all that is propagated by the male eye or, by waging constant struggles between the truth as experienced through their own eyes and the feigned truth of the veil. The paper uses the concept of Double Consciousness as described by W.E.B DuBois, one of the 19^th century Black Civil Rights activist, to show that women often tend to supress their true feelings and use male standards to judge themselves. In doing so they remain stagnated behind the veil of ignorance which separates them from men and becomes the means of creating self-righteous hierarchies between men and women. The experience of double consciousness puts female teachers in stressful terrains as they seek to balance their contrasting roles of being the instruments of change and the moral keepers of tradition. Double Consciousness thus carries the potential for both- further oppression through compromises with the falsehood of the veil and an emancipation through self-realization. 

KEYWORDS: Double Consciousness, Women, Education, Culture, Gender