Jainism Parity And Patriarchy

Author(s): Anand Shah
Publisher: Anand Shah

Page 14

Anand Shah | Prof. Ulrike Stark 6.8.18
However, Jains in particular are also disproportionately concentrated in merchant classes,
likely as a result of merchant patronage and the prohibition of other occupations which may be
more violent (i.e., occupations dealing excessively with fire or water, occupations dealing with
the destruction of small beings and plant lives, etc.).23,24 And, as scholars have already shown,
high class standing may not always be directly correlated with high gender parity for the
merchant classes -- whether it comes as a result of stricter societal expectations or other
pressures entirely, middle-high merchant class attitudes towards women have historically been
more conservative.25,26 So, this merchant conservatism becomes a confounding variable in
parsing apart this economic argument.
Karnataka, the state with the 5th largest Jain population, has only about 50% of its Jain
population in business/trader industries. However, its male-female literacy gap (9%) is larger
than states with higher merchant populations (i.e. Gujarat has 96% of population in merchant
industries, MF literacy gap of 2%; Maharashtra has a 82% of population in merchant industries,
MF literacy gap of 3%).?? If concentration in merchant classes were exerting a significant
downward pressure on female literacy rates, we would expect opposite results to hold true. As a
result, we can conject that merchant class standings play a less relevant role in determining
female literacy rates than general class standing does.
23 "Jainism." New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, The Gale Group, 2005. 24 "The Lay Person." The Jains, by Paul Dundas, Psychology Press, 2002, pp. 189–190. 25 lyer, Gopalkrishnan R. "The Impact of Religion and Reputation in the Organization of Indian Merchant Communities." Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, vol. 14, no. 2, 1999, pp. 102-121. 26 "Different Types of History." Different Types of History, by Bharati Ray, Pearson Education India, 2009, p. 373. 27 Ibid., 3.