2.1: South Asia - Introducing the Region
South Asia is a region with unity in diversity, having at least twenty different dominant languages and over two hundred basic dialects. And yet, most of South Asia continues to remain economically poor and “developing” with gender disparity remaining a real concern at the heart of South Asian unity. The 2019 Global Hunger Index ranks all the major South Asian countries in the “serious” category with Sri Lanka coming in 66th, Nepal 73rd, Bangladesh 88th, Pakistan 94th, and India 102nd out of 117 countries. Women suffer the most, as they have to bear the direct burden of gender inequality and, as a consequence, children experience malnutrition. The 2018 Global Nutrition Report states that on average 49 percent of reproductive-age women in South Asia have anemia, and the prevalence of stunting in the population of children under-five is 32.7 percent, which is significantly greater than the global average of 21.9 percent. There is no data available for those who identify as nonbinary, and there is a long way to go before the data gap can be filled despite the official recognition of “third” gender people in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. Ironically, in spite of the official recognition of a nonheteronormative gender identity, homosexuality has yet to be decriminalized in most of South Asia with the exception of Nepal and India, having decriminalized homosexuality in 2007 and 2018, respectively.
When the British arrived in India, they foisted Victorian sexual mores on Indian culture, criminalized homosexuality, and saw the “third” gender as a threat to morality and political authority (Bhatt, 2018). The precolonial practice of dowry , which was then a self-help institution managed by women, became a colonial tool for covering up the economically devastating British agrarian policies leading to a systematic diminishing of women’s entitlements and worsening gender discrimination in India (Oldenburg, 2002). Scholars argue that in the late nineteenth century, Indians were “humiliated by their colonial status” and became “obsessed with the issues of strength and power” (Datta 2006, 2230). Therefore, to explain their defeat and acceptance of the European notion that the “status of women was integral to the strength of the civilisation,” Indian customs were concluded to be “degrading to a woman’s status” (Datta 2006, 2230). As a result, women became subjects of reformist movements that took up the challenge of modernity, and thereby, problematic notions of middle-class femininity were adopted: these were, in turn, based on oppressive cultural practices impacting the future course of gender relations in South Asia.
payments made to the groom’s family by the bride’s family before marriage.
Although patriarchy and the caste system (explained later) have undergone continuous changes, they retain their salience through a “social silence” around the “inherited [and colonial] legacies of practicing inequality” in South Asia (Chakravarti 2018). On the one hand, data from India shows that there are approximately 10.6 million missing females, as a preference for boys and male births (son preference) leaves India with a skewed sex ratio plunging further from 903 in 2007 to 898 in 2018 (Chao et al. 2019). On the other hand, lessons from Bangladesh on how gender equity can help overcome socioeconomic constraints and significantly improve health outcomes (see Chowdhury et al. 2013) show how South Asia can be a region full of contradictions. This chapter will provide a regional introduction to South Asia, highlighting unique gender issues specific to this region. In doing so, this introduction section will also equip the readers with a sense of the diverse contexts within which ideologies toward gender stem, both locally and globally.
INDEPENDENCE AND PARTITION
The Indian independence movement spanned almost 90 years from 1857 until August 15, 1947, when India got its independence from the British Raj.  Millions were uprooted overnight, and it is estimated that about 75,000 women were abducted and raped during this process of redrawing borders (see Butalia 2017). Additionally, Bangladesh’s borders were redrawn first as East Bengal in 1905 when it was attached to Assam as a part of India, then as East Pakistan (after the India-Pakistan partition), and finally as the nation-state of Bangladesh in 1971 (see “Resources for Further Exploration” for link to maps showing the partition process).
During the political partitions, when about twelve million people moved between India and Pakistan in 1947, there was widespread sexual violence. In many instances, women ended up marrying the men who had abducted them, and “because they were now in relationships with men of the ‘other’ religion, they became ‘absences’ in their families, absences that also led, in many ways, to an absence of memory” (Butalia 2018, 267). Moreover,
the idea of women as property—of families, communities, men—underlay the ways in which women’s rights were so routinely violated during Partition, under the guise of protection, honour, purity. The violence on women by their own communities … was disguised as martyrdom or honour killings and its memories today are almost singularly guarded and recounted by men. (Butalia 2018, 267)
Additionally, practices reinforcing gender inequality in marriage inherited from prepartition times continued for many in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. These practices include Hindu men converting to Islam to take a second wife (without the conversion of the first wife to Islam), nonconsensual polygamy, and divorce customs like triple talaq (instant divorce) and nikah halala . Other contested practices include mandatory head coverings and seclusion such as ghoonghat and purdah .
a form of Islamist divorce used by some Muslims in India that permits a man to legally divorce his wife by simply uttering the word talaq (the Arabic word for “divorce”) three times orally, in written form or, more recently, in electronic form.
a patriarchal practice whereby women divorced through triple talaq must consummate a second marriage and get divorced again in order to remarry their first husbands.
a headcovering or headscarf worn by some married Hindu, Jain and Sikh women to cover their heads, and often their faces.
a practice in certain Muslim and Hindu societies of physical segregation of men and women and the requirement that women cover their bodies in enveloping clothing to conceal their form from men and strangers.
CASTE SYSTEM
The caste system is an obligatory system of graded social stratification based on a person’s birth or ancestry morally codified in Manusmriti, “The Laws of Manu,” a controversial Hindu scripture. (See “Resources for Further Exploration” for a link to the Laws of Manu.) It was one of the first Sanskrit texts to be translated in 1794 by the British and since then has been used by the colonial government to formulate Hindu law in India. Dividing Hindu society into five groups, called castes, this system laid down the “normative” framework governing and grading all “cultural, economic, religious, spiritual, and political” aspects of social interaction within and between these groups (Simon and Thorat 2020, ii). Furthermore,
many believe that the groups originated from Brahma, the Hindu God of creation. At the top of the hierarchy were the Brahmins who were mainly teachers and intellectuals and are believed to have come from Brahma’s head. Then came the Kshatriyas, or the warriors and rulers, supposedly from his arms. The third slot went to the Vaishyas, or the traders, who were created from his thighs. At the bottom of the heap were the Shudras, who came from Brahma’s feet and did all the menial jobs. … Outside of this Hindu caste system were the achhoots—the Dalits or the untouchables. (BBC News, 2019)
Since the second century BCE, through the caste system, hierarchies of “quasi-biological groupings” get naturalized by “inherited privilege or stigma,” using religion (including Islam and Sikhism) as justification and continue to this day (Simon and Thorat, 2020). Caste discrimination is a chronic human rights violation of Dalits (formerly untouchables) and other persons affected by discrimination, based on their work and descent, found in varying degrees in India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and also in diasporic South Asian communities all over the world. According to a compilation report published by the International Dalit Solidarity Network (2019, 6–7):
The caste system is a strict hierarchical social system based on underlying notions of purity and pollution. Those at the bottom of the system suffer discrimination influencing all spheres of life and violating a cross-section of basic human rights including civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights. Caste discrimination entails social and economic exclusion, segregation in housing, denial and restrictions of access to public and private services, and lack of equal access to education and employment, to mention some effects.
Since its very formation, each caste category aimed to be isolated and socially separated from each other through practicing endogamy (i.e., marrying only within one’s caste) (Chakravarti 2018). Despite reformist movements, there is still a stigma associated with intercaste marriages, and love relationships between them are strongly discouraged by families. Even today, many cases of honor killings associated with breaching these social rules continue to arise, particularly targeting women (ANI 2018).
In India, Dalit women often experience violence when attempting to assert their rights to access housing, drinking water, the public distribution system (PDS), education, and basic sanitation services (Irudayam et al. 2015). In Nepal, Dalit rural women are among the most disadvantaged people, scoring at the very bottom for most social indicators, such as literacy (12%), longevity (forty-two years), health, and political participation (Navsarjan Trust et al. 2013). Moreover, there is a rampant problem of caste-based discrimination estimated to affect more than 260 million people, particularly in Asia and Africa (Yokota and Chung 2009).
According to National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data, Dalit women in India die younger than those in the upper-caste category, with the average life expectancy for Dalit women being 14.6 years less than for higher-caste women (Masoodi 2018). Furthermore, disadvantaged groups of women and girls in Bangladesh, including Dalit women, women with disabilities, elderly women, Rohingya refugee women, and women of ethnic minorities face multiple intersecting forms of discrimination due to their gender, health, Indigenous identity, caste, and socioeconomic status (CEDAW 2015).
CURRENT NATIONALIST STRUGGLES
The relationship between culture and politics often centers on the idea of democracy based on identity and conflict. For instance, ethnic tensions based on the construction of the separate racial identity of ethnic Mongols in Nepal, emerging from differences in cultural practices instead of biological inheritance, shows uses of “race” invoked by those subaltern groups who are economically and politically disadvantaged in South Asia (Hangen, 2005). Another example is the denationalization of the people of Nepali origin who claimed to be wrongfully evicted citizens of Bhutan who have been refused the right to return to Bhutan (see Hutt, 2003).
a person from a colonized population who is of low socioeconomic status, displaced to the margins of a society and with little social agency.
In the politics of belonging in South Asia, there is an overlap between the national, cultural, and ethnic identities of people. For instance, ethno-national conflicts remain, particularly with the history of redrawing Bangladeshi borders. Women are also severely affected in conflict areas, especially in northeast India, with reported cases of mass rapes and sexual violence filed in court by 21 Hmar tribal women in Manipur in 2006; 14 tribal women in the neighboring state of Tripura in 1988; and 37 women of Assam in 1991 with no action taken so far against the perpetrators of violence (WILF 2014).
Efforts for peace and cooperative development are still obstructed by the struggle between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, situating modern South Asia at a decisive crisis in its history (see Bose and Jalal, 2017). On August 5, 2019, the “special status” of the state of Jammu and Kashmir was controversially taken away by the Indian government by dividing it into two union territories and imposing an unprecedented five-month Internet blackout—the longest ever to be imposed in a democracy (Cooper 2020). Scholars predict a possible nuclear war between India and Pakistan fueling further anxieties between the two countries (Toon et al. 2019). Women’s voices in the peace processes have largely been absent from the male-dominated Kashmiri nationalist and conflict narratives despite being governed by a female state head for two years (Parashar 2011). Kashmir’s marginalized transgender community, mostly working as matchmakers for couples, also struggle with survival for existence and identity under the shadow of curfews and internet blackouts (Bhat 2019).
In August 2019, the Indian government introduced another controversial citizenship policy that required people to prove that they came to the northeast state of Assam by March 24, 1971, the day before Bangladesh declared independence from Pakistan, to obtain citizenship. As a result, 1.9 million people have become “stateless” and stripped of their Indian citizenship because they failed to furnish adequate substantiating documents (BBC 2019). A fact-finding team’s research trip to Assam by Women against Sexual Violence and State Repression found that women are the “worst victims” of this process as they are unable to produce “legacy documents” because holding entitlements to land and lineage have historically been guided by patriarchal norms that exclude women from property ownership (Singh 2019). Furthermore, rural women from lower castes and ethnic minority groups face multiple barriers like legal illiteracy and limited knowledge of birth registration procedures, which prevent them from registering births and obtaining birth certificates for their children (CEDAW 2014).
Despite India being created as a secular state during the 1947 partition, the Indian government introduced yet another controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Act in December 2019. This amendment aimed to redefine the category of “illegal immigrant” to include Hindu, Sikh, Parsi, Buddhist, and Christian immigrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh who have been living in India for decades without the necessary documentation required to prove their citizenship. Protestors challenging the 2019 Citizenship Amendment in court say that it violates the Indian constitution by discriminating against Muslims, treating them as “second-class citizens” and giving “preferential treatment” to other religious groups ( Economic Times , 2019). India’s increasingly right-wing political climate, which often promotes Hindu nationalism at the expense of other cultures and religions, is also exacerbating fault lines between Hindu and Muslim hijras, a third gender community (Goel, 2019).
To curb the quickly escalating mass protests against the citizenship law all over India, another internet ban was imposed in Assam. It was only when India’s first transgender judge, Swati Bidhan Baruah, along with others, filed a petition in court challenging the law that the ban was lifted after nine days of internet blackout in Assam (Agarwala 2019). In other places in India, women led the protests, particularly Muslim women, with a weeks-long sit-in against the citizenship law where some participants have become icons, like eighty-two-year-old toothless Bilkis, endearingly called “Gangster Granny” (Masih 2020). Thousands of people from the LGBT community who were adversely affected by the citizenship law also marched in protest as many of them were “thrown out of their homes in childhood,” and there is an unnecessary burden put on those with name changes and “spelling mistakes” in identity documents (Kuchay 2020). Moreover, gender and sexual minority groups from all across India have been raising their voices in protest, including the All India Network of Sex Workers, Telangana Hijra Intersex Trans Samiti, the Queer Muslim Project, Pink List, TransNow Collective, Birsa Ambedkar Phule Students’ Association (BAPSA), National Federation of Indian Women, and many others (Chandra, 2020). Such acts of resistance join forces with global trends in women’s movements, like the Aurat March in Pakistan, thereby becoming an intrinsic part of fourth-wave feminism (Kurian 2020).
began around 2012 to address sexual harassment, body shaming, and rape culture, among other issues. It is characterized by a focus on the global empowerment of women, the greater inclusion of diverse perspectives and voices, and the use of social media in activism.
Although isolated, the above examples challenge normative gendered duties toward the process of nation building despite the pressure on women to do the reproductive work of nations—biologically, culturally, and symbolically (see Yuval-Davis 1993). LGBT populations and other gender minority groups who are often forgotten in the process of nation building are also stepping forward to make their voices heard through protests and marches in resistance to a patriarchal and heteronormative process of nation building in South Asia (Saigol 2019). Therefore, the relationship between nationalism, gender, and sexuality is culturally and historically contingent upon each other and is continually evolving and redefining itself in South Asia.
GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE
Gender inequality is not “one homogeneous phenomenon, but a collection of disparate and inter-linked problems” (Sen 2001, 35). Consequently, gender-based violence is one of the most challenging problems in South Asia. Statistics show that between 2007 and 2016, there were four cases of rape reported every hour in India, making India the most dangerous country for women in the world (Goldsmith and Beresford 2018). After the rape of a twenty-three-year-old student in New Delhi triggered a national uproar, the issue of women’s safety in India attracted international media headlines, and social media buzz also declared that India is no place for women (Lakshmi 2012). Since then, many international governments have issued warnings and advised women against solo travel in most countries in South Asia. Feminist observers point out, however, that it is always the women who are issued warnings and who ironically have to be controlled for their own safety and protection instead of the perpetrators of violence.
In the South Asian context, gender-based violence starts at birth or even before. Prenatal sex determination leads to an increasing number of sex-selective abortions and infanticide of girls because of male preference. Therefore, unlike the growing trend in the United States of celebrating parenthood through “gender reveal” parties (King-Miller 2018), after finding out the sex of a child, in India prenatal sex determination has been banned since 1994. Stories of disappointment on the birth of a female child and distribution of sweets on the birth of a male child are so common they have become folklore. There is also a practice of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) among girls who are between six to eight years old in the Bohra communities of India (Lawyers Collective 2017) and Pakistan (Baig 2015), and it is estimated that up to 80 percent of Bohra women have been through this procedure.
surgeries to alter the external female genitalia. It may include cliterotectomy, removing and/or suturing the labia.
In Nepal, intersex children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds suffer from intersex genital mutilation (IGM) practices that are irreversible and harmful (CEDAW 2018). Furthermore, there are known cases of gender-reassignment surgeries being performed on children born with intersex variations in India (Goel 2014; also see Fausto-Sterling 1993). The medical interventions and genetic deselection are based on the presupposition that intersex traits are treated as disorders in South Asia (see Srishti Madurai 2019).  Parents get away with insisting that the intersex child be surgically rendered a boy even though it is easier to create functional female organs in cases of sex-selective surgeries in India (Sharma, 2014). However, as an exception, in April 2019, the Indian state of Tamil Nadu became the first in Asia and second globally to ban sex-selective surgeries for intersex children (Daksnamurthy 2019).
On December 5, 2019, a controversial Transgender Person’s Bill became Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act in India (see links in “Resources for Further Exploration”). Under this act, intersex births are inaccurately assigned as transgender births. Such confusion exists because often gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics are conflated terms. Furthermore, the vague language of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act implies that surgery—plus approval from a medical authority and district magistrate—is required for a person to legally change their gender identity. The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act also defines family as only those related by blood or law despite the National Human Rights Commission survey conveying that only 2 percent of transgender persons in India live with their biological families, failing to accommodate the alternative kinship structures of the remaining 98 percent trans population (Goel, 2018b).
As India is a strongly patriarchal and patrilocal society, there is a significant preference for having sons over daughters. In a majority of cases, after marriage, the daughter moves into a joint household with the husband’s family with a dowry. Though illegal since 1961, dowries in India are widespread and are given by the bride’s family to the groom’s: this practice forces women to be seen as a liability by their families. Such a mindset is so ingrained in the cultural fabric that girls as young as seven years old from poverty-stricken families are forced to marry illegally, resulting in underage brides (Strochlic and Khandelwal, 2019). At present, India has the highest number of child brides in the world (Wangchuk, 2018). To tackle this problem, the Indian government came out with innovative “Dear Daughter Schemes” aiming to encourage the birth of female children by gifting one hundred thousand Indian rupees (approx. 1400 USD) to the first and second daughters of a family for their wedding after their eighteenth birthday ( Times of India , 2019). Similar sentiments have also been echoed by full-page newspaper advertisements on ways a father can save ten million Indian rupees (approx. US$140,000), which can then be invested in his daughter’s wedding—in which dowry has been camouflaged as a “gift” for the daughter (Roy 2016).
a dynamic system of power and inequality that privileges men and boys over women and girls in social interactions and institutions.
married individuals live with or near the husband’s father’s family.
Subverting the gaze on the daughter as being a “costly” property, other attempts in the form of public information films from India with antidowry themes have centered themselves around the idea that dowry is the amount of money paid by the bride to “buy” the groom and thereby insinuate that it is, in fact, the boy who should be treated as property by turning them into “objects” (Dhillon 2016). Reengineering new ideas with such role reversals is equally problematic as this becomes a harbinger of the same patriarchal notions of ownership and control that lead to gender inequality. But desperate attempts like these satirical public service advertisements by the Indian government aim to attack the notions of family prestige—the weight of which is placed on women—by turning the tables on men.
According to the 2019 Global Report published by OECD Development Centre’s Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI), the lifetime prevalence of domestic violence against women is 25 percent in Nepal, 29 percent in India, 53 percent in Bangladesh, and 85 percent in Pakistan (see link to SIGI in “Resources for Further Exploration”). Within the same report, it has also been found that the proportion of the female population justifying domestic violence is 43 percent in Nepal, 22 percent in India, 28 percent in Bangladesh, and 42 percent in Pakistan. Examples highlighting the rural-urban divide bring to light the ongoing practices of violence against women through “feudal laws” of disinheritance and forced marriages that lead to “blade-cutting,” “acid-throwing, stove-burning homicide and nose-cutting” to take revenge from women (Times News Network, 2010; Niaz, 2004, 60). In a majority of South Asian countries, marital rape is not recognized (e.g., Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan) or the penalties are not severe (e.g., Nepal). Given the rampant practices of gender-based violence in South Asia, it is an underrecognized cause of injury and deaths among women, LGBT communities, and gender-diverse populations.
CONCLUSION
According to the 2019 Global Report published by OECD Development Centre’s Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) that measures discrimination against women in social institutions including 180 country notes and ranking 120 countries, there is “very high” gender inequality in Pakistan and Bangladesh and “medium” levels of the same in Nepal and India. Such disparity in terms of gender equality appears paradoxical, when on the one hand there are several countries with examples of female heads of government: Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. This is a feat yet to be achieved even by the United States. And yet, despite allocating for political participation of women, women’s agency in the political process is debatable and often seen as a kind of tokenism that does not lead to gender equality (Ban and Rao 2008).
The gender disparity in South Asia demands more local explanations compared to other parts of the world to understand the dichotomous contradiction in attitudes and practices toward gender and sexuality. Inclusion of gender-diverse people, particularly intersex births and the “third” gender population in indices measuring sex ratios and other aspects of gender inequality in South Asia needs to be developed globally. Insufficient data further marginalize the most vulnerable population and widen the gender disparity data gap between different gender and sexual minorities in South Asia.
On the one hand, menstruating Goddess Kamakhya is worshipped in the Indian state of Assam (Das 2008), on the other, in Maharashtra, poor women sugarcane harvesters, some of whom are still in their twenties, are forced to have hysterectomies to stop menstruating (Pandey 2019). Similarly, transphobia and rampant acts of violence against people from the “third” gender contradict the revered attitude toward those who are simultaneously worshipped as cultural demigoddesses in India (Goel 2019). Such ironic regional inequity stretching over the same geographic region becomes a barrier to finding a universal solution to the problem of gender disparity in South Asia. As a consequence, there is a need to strengthen local innovations that aim to bridge the gaps between the rural-urban, class-caste demographic divide of women, nonbinary, and LGBT populations in South Asia.
The chapters in “Part II: South Asia” present anthropological research that showcases some of the ethnic and gender diversity and struggles presented in this introduction to the region. Chapter 4 explores how patriarchy and ethnic and caste hierarchies combine to limit women’s access to legal citizenship in Nepal, depriving them of the attendant benefits of such a status. This chapter presents an example of how the ethnic diversity of the region and legacies of the caste system complicate the politics of belonging and disadvantage women’s and third-gendered people’s access to the rights and privileges of being a legal citizen. Chapter 6 focuses on the Sherpas, an ethnic group in Nepal, and the push to incorporate Sherpa women into wage labor as a way to advance this impoverished country’s economic development. However, incorporation into wage labor may not actually benefit the women tasked with implementing this national development strategy. Chapter 5 explores gender diversity, presenting an analysis of the kinship and family structures that operate among the third-gender Hijras in India. Finally, the two profiles at the end of this introduction to the region introduce us to two nonprofit groups addressing the issue of violence against women: one in India and one in the Southeast Asian nation of Vietnam.
KEY TERMS
dowry : payments made to the groom’s family by the bride’s family before marriage.
female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) : surgeries to alter the external female genitalia. It may include cliterotectomy, removing and/or suturing the labia.
fourth-wave feminism: began around 2012 to address sexual harassment, body shaming, and rape culture, among other issues. It is characterized by a focus on the global empowerment of women, the greater inclusion of diverse perspectives and voices, and the use of social media in activism.
ghoonghat : a headcovering or headscarf worn by some married Hindu, Jain and Sikh women to cover their heads, and often their faces.
nikah halala : a patriarchal practice whereby women divorced through triple talaq must consummate a second marriage and get divorced again in order to remarry their first husbands.
patriarchal (patriarchy) : a dynamic system of power and inequality that privileges men and boys over women and girls in social interactions and institutions.
patrilocal : married individuals live with or near the husband’s father’s family.
purdah: a practice in certain Muslim and Hindu societies of physical segregation of men and women and the requirement that women cover their bodies in enveloping clothing to conceal their form from men and strangers.
subaltern: a person from a colonized population who is of low socioeconomic status, displaced to the margins of a society and with little social agency.
triple talaq : a form of Islamist divorce used by some Muslims in India that permits a man to legally divorce his wife by simply uttering the word talaq (the Arabic word for “divorce”) three times orally, in written form or, more recently, in electronic form.
RESOURCES FOR FURTHER EXPLORATION
- Global Hunger Index (2019) https://www.globalhungerindex.org/results.html .
- Global Nutrition Report (2018) https://globalnutritionreport.org/resources/nutrition-profiles/asia/southern-asia/#profile .
- Maps illustrating the partition process by Pritchett, W. Frances, Columbia University. http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00maplinks/modern/maps1947/maps1947.html .
- The Laws of Manu. www.sacred-texts.com/hin/manu/ (Translator: George Buhler).
- Global Report published by OECD Development Centre’s Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) (2019). https://www.oecd.org/development/sigi-2019-global-report-bc56d212-en.htm .
- Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill (2019) http://prsindia.org/billtrack/transgender-persons-protection-rights-bill-2019 .
- Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act India (2019) socialjustice.nic.in/writereaddata/UploadFile/TG%20bill%20gazette.pdf.
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PROFILE: BLANK NOISE: STREET ACTIONS AND DIGITAL INTERVENTIONS AGAINST STREET SEXUAL HARASSMENT IN INDIA
Hemangini Gupta
When Jasmeen Patheja was an undergraduate student in the southern Indian city of Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore) in 2002, she began taking public transport frequently. As she rode buses, took auto-rickshaws, and walked along city streets, she found herself subjected to the range of acts that constitute street sexual harassment and assault: groping, winking, pinching, lewd comments, and men pushing up against her in public. In South Asia, street sexual harassment is often dismissed with the use of the colloquial term “eve teasing” to describe it. As “teasing,” it becomes seen as a form of harmless banter, even play, something that can be brushed aside and not taken seriously.
Patheja began asking her friends and classmates if they also experienced such harassment—and they did. The challenge was in bringing people to recognize that what they considered to be routine behavior was in fact harassment; it was so normalized as an aspect of everyday life that women came to expect it every time they stepped out of their homes. She created Blank Noise in 2003 as a community arts project to respond to such harassment through street interventions and public actions. “Blank” references the feeling of numbness and disbelief felt after being harassed; “Noise” indexes the simultaneous eruption of confusion, anger, hurt, and pain—a cacophony of mixed signals.
Since 2003, Blank Noise has invited volunteers to join a range of innovative and hard-hitting public actions and digital interventions. Initially these were oriented toward raising public awareness about street sexual harassment as a criminal offense (punishable by Indian law) and thus a serious infraction. For example, in one street action, volunteers—mostly young women—appeared at a busy intersection when the streetlights turned red. They walked across the zebra crossing to face the sea of commuters waiting for their light to turn; on their T-shirts were pasted one letter of the phrase “Y R U LOOKING AT ME?” In another, volunteers fanned out on the railings of a bustling thoroughfare where many of them had been groped and harassed in the past. During the intervention, however, they occupied the space not as anxious women but as confident members of a joint action. Women leaned back on the railings, looking passersby right in the eye, lounging in public, and enjoying the feeling of occupying public space as watchers rather than as the watched. When small crowds began to gather, other volunteers handed out pamphlets describing street sexual harassment as a serious offense and engaging in conversations around the experience of it.
Volunteers are called “action heroes,” “sheroes,” or “theyroes”—those who actively subvert the dominant experience of being harassed to question, engage, and subvert expected ways in which gendered bodies occupy public spaces. More recent interventions engender conversations around public space. In one intervention, “Talk to Me,” volunteers ventured into a dark stretch of road that was locally termed “Rapist’s Lane.” Here they set up tables and invited passersby to stop and chat with them. Participants across socioeconomic class, caste, and gender affiliations were able to move beyond stereotypes of each other to actually converse; each interaction ended with the Blank Noise volunteer offering their guest a rose. The aim was to reshape “Rapist Lane” into “Safest Lane” through respectful conversation and interaction.
Currently Blank Noise is working on “I Never Ask for It,” a project ongoing since 2004 in which they invite people to share clothes that they wore while being harassed along with a brief note. All kinds of clothes have been collected over the years toward a final exhibit, intended as a massive material testimony to the widespread prevalence of harassment and evidence that it is not attire that invites unwanted attention. People are invited to bring the clothes they wore when harassed or abused, and these “garment testimonials” represent violations across spaces of home, street, and work. Through “I Never Ask for It” Blank Noise intends to put an end to the consistent use of victim blaming in sexual assault.
Blank Noise is volunteer driven and supported online at blanknoise.org .
PROFILE: VIETNAM WOMEN’S SHELTER: CONTRADICTIONS AND COMPLEXITIES
Lynn Kwiatkowski
Domestic violence occurs all over the world. Violence perpetrated by husbands against their wives is a widespread problem in Vietnamese society, despite the approval in 2007 of the first law to overtly make domestic violence illegal. The only survey conducted on a national level in Vietnam, from 2009 to 2010, found that 58 percent of the women interviewed who had ever been married reported experiencing at least one form of domestic violence perpetrated by their husband in their lifetime (including physical, sexual, or emotional violence), and 27 percent had experienced domestic violence during the previous twelve months (GSO, UN-JPGE, and WHO 2010, 21). Anthropologists have been contributing to our understanding of domestic violence cross-culturally through their ethnographic research and their work to develop measures to end violence toward women. This profile explores the contradictions and complexities that can emerge as global values and structures addressing gender violence are translated at the local level into specific societies by examining a Hanoi shelter for women experiencing domestic violence that was originally based on a European model of shelters. (I will refer to this shelter using a pseudonym, “Vietnam Women’s Shelter,” to protect the identities of the participants in my research study.) As part of contemporary globalization processes involving the circulation of gender ideologies, funding, and professional expertise among diverse societies, Western governments and Western-supported international organizations have introduced to Vietnamese society gender discourses and institutional frameworks that provide a new value regime. These Western ideas include condemning gender violence, novel modes of assistance for women experiencing domestic violence, and innovative approaches to preventing domestic and other forms of gender violence. Some Vietnamese government personnel have reinterpreted elements of Western orientations to gender violence to more closely support cultural and political values of the Vietnamese state and the local sociocultural systems within which abused women’s lives are embedded.
In the mid-1980s, the ruling Communist Party implemented a set of economic policy reforms, referred to as “renovation,” or doi moi policies, which instituted a socialist-oriented market economy. Social reforms also emerged, including the expansion of international and local nongovernmental organizations. These reforms included Vietnam’s greater engagement with international organizations, such as the UN, and global social movements to end violence toward women. While the Vietnamese government has promoted gender equality since the 1940s, domestic violence has persisted. Some of the sources of husbands’ abuse of their wives are patriarchal ideologies and patrilineal kinship that have been, in part, influenced by Confucianism, which penetrated Vietnamese culture as early as the period of Chinese colonization, beginning in 111 BCE. With recent renovation policies, and an associated renewal of the household economy, traditional family and gender ideologies have been reemphasized by the Vietnamese government and society, while gender equality is simultaneously reinforced through new laws and practices. Western discourses introduced by international organizations, particularly since the 1990s, asserting women’s right to be free of gender discrimination and violence (including within the home), conflict with recently revitalized traditional Confucian values that promote, in part through government-sponsored programs, women’s responsibilities to ensure their families’ happiness, including their duty to meet their husbands’ needs. Vietnamese women who are abused by their husbands negotiate these two value systems as they seek assistance in ending their husbands’ violence.
Vietnam Women’s Shelter is one of only approximately four shelters in the country that have characteristics similar to Western shelters. It began as a project sponsored by the Spanish government’s Spanish Agency for International Development Co-operation (AECID) and was implemented in 2007 in conjunction with the Vietnam Women’s Union’s Center for Women and Development (CWD). The Vietnam Women’s Union is a national mass organization largely financially supported by the ruling Communist Party, making the shelter a government-funded institution. This type of shelter constituted a new approach to domestic violence in Vietnam, involving housing abused women and their children for up to three months, or longer if needed. It provides services at no cost to the women, including safe accommodation, employment orientation, vocational training, legal assistance, psychological counseling, health care, education, and other services (Kwiatkowski 2011). Shelter residents can also continue to receive follow-up support for up to two years. The counselors of the Women’s Union CWD also work with abusive husbands. Most current and former Vietnam Women’s Shelter residents I interviewed found the assistance they received at the shelter to be integral to their emotional, social, and economic survival and their ability to address the domestic violence.
While the services of Vietnam Women’s Shelter were highly beneficial to many shelter residents, the shelter personnel and abused women also faced difficulties. Although abused women accessing the shelter’s services praised the help they received, many also found contradictory orientations to their situation of violence from state personnel in their local communities, including local leaders of the Women’s Union. The center personnel strongly prioritized the safety of the abused women and their children, advocating ideas such as women’s potential autonomy from their abusive husbands. Conforming to the strong cultural value placed on women’s integration within their families and communities, ensuring protection and support for an abused woman who would like to return to their communities, and carrying out formal government procedures for addressing domestic violence (such as reporting domestic violence to the nearest police station in the women’s community, the government commune People’s Committee, or the community’s leaders), the shelter also contacts local government authorities from an abused woman’s community and her family, with the woman’s permission, and, in some cases, develops a plan with the woman to reintegrate into her community. This is mandated, according to a counselor working with Vietnam Women’s Shelter and the CWD because this shelter “belongs to the [government supported] Central Committee of the Vietnam Women’s Union. … We have to work with the local authorities.” The counselor further stated that “our solution is very different from those of shelters in foreign countries. [This is a shelter that] has to work with the community authorities, other relevant [government] agencies, the [abused woman’s] family, and the abuser. Then, this is a good opportunity to communicate with them. In order to solve a case [of domestic violence], we need to change the knowledge and understanding of the whole community, the people around [the abused woman]. It is a circle, starting with the individual [abused woman], then interacting with the family, and then the community. As a result, their awareness of domestic violence will be changed. Communication about domestic violence prevention and the domestic violence law is then based on this case.”
Abused women found that the local state personnel’s views and practices were, however, often antithetical to Vietnam Women’s Shelter’s priorities. For example, drawing on traditional gender and family ideologies and state laws, some police officers protected abusive husbands from punishment rather than ensuring the safety of the abused women; some abused women encountered corruption in the judicial system; some Women’s Union leaders encouraged its members, during local level meetings of the Women’s Union, to meet their husbands’ needs; and some government officials, who are only minimally educated about gender violence, blamed women for the violence from their husbands and pressured them to return to their families through government required reconciliation processes. A counselor working with the shelter said, “The commune [level] Women’s Union prioritizes reconciliation. … It is very common that when the victim returns to her commune [with shelter personnel] to work with relevant [state] agencies, they will judge her behavior rather than focus on handling the husband’s violent behavior. … And the abuser once again thinks that he has done nothing wrong, that it is her fault. Therefore, they don’t change their behavior because they haven’t done anything wrong.” She continued, “[In one case of a woman who had experienced domestic violence], we had a meeting at the [commune level government] People’s Committee. All the related people sat together. There were many people from her husband’s family, and they blamed her for having many faults, such as not being clever, being dirty, and having other faults. Then they asked us, ‘Why do you support a case like this?  Participants [of the meeting] were the [shelter personnel], a woman from the [government] Family Department, the Women’s Union, the police. They criticized us for helping her.” If abused women were not already situated at Vietnam Women’s Shelter, which has limited capacity, there was no (or very little) long-term protection provided by local state personnel to abused women.
The multiple, contradictory Women’s Union and other Vietnamese government discourses about domestic violence depict social and cultural change that is occurring as global ideologies of gender violence are introduced into Vietnamese society and as the government shifts its economic orientation. Having been initially introduced and financially supported by the Spanish government’s international development agency, AECID, the Vietnam Women’s Shelter provides an example of how globalization processes circulate Western professional expertise, new values (including gender, marital, and family values), and innovative social approaches and infrastructures to assist marginalized women. While often helpful to abused women, as Western approaches to gender violence are implemented in Vietnamese society, Vietnamese people interpret them in culturally meaningful ways that sometimes conflict with Western cultural views of gender relations, marriage, and family. Women’s Union and other Vietnamese government discourses about domestic violence also demonstrate the multilayered state approaches to domestic violence that are being negotiated by state actors. Demonstrations of the value of shelters of this type through anthropological research and advocacy, specifically the shelter personnel’s approach to domestic violence that prioritizes the safety and needs of the women (and of the complexities Vietnam Women’s Shelter personnel face) can contribute to making access to support and protection a reality for abused women in need.
RESOURCES FOR FURTHER EXPLORATION
- Kwiatkowski, Lynn. 2016. “Feminist Anthropology: Approaching Domestic Violence in Northern Việt Nam.” In Mapping Feminist Anthropology in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Ellen Lewin and Leni M. Silverstein, 234–255. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
- Kwiatkowski, Lynn. 2011. “Domestic Violence and the ‘Happy Family’ in Northern Vietnam.” Anthropology Now 3, no. 3: 20–28.
- Merry, Sally Engle. 2009. Gender Violence: A Cultural Perspective . Malden, MA; Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.
- Merry, Sally Engle. 2006. Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Plesset, Sonja. 2006. Sheltering Women: Negotiating Gender and Violence in Northern Italy . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the brave women who have experienced domestic violence and the strong individuals I interviewed in Vietnam who provide aid and protection to them. I owe special thanks to Dr. Nguyen Thi Hoai Duc, Dr. Nguyen Van Suu, and Dr. Nguyen Huong for providing me affiliation with their institutions and tremendous help to me in my research. I would also like to thank Le An Ni for her tireless efforts and dedication to assisting me in my research. Members of the Vietnam Women’s Union generously offered significant time, information, and insights into shelter and other approaches to assisting abused women for which I am grateful. Without the assistance of all of these individuals, this research would not have been possible. A special thanks to Nadine Fernandez and Katie Nelson for their guidance on this profile and for all their efforts in making this open-access book on gender a reality.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
GSO, UN-JPGE, and WHO (General Statistics Office of Viet Nam, United Nations-Government of Viet Nam Joint Programme on Gender Equality, and World Health Organization). 2010. ‘Keeping Silent Is Dying.’ Results from the National Study on Domestic Violence Against Women in Viet Nam. Hanoi: General Statistics Office of Viet Nam, United Nations-Government of Viet Nam Joint Programme on Gender Equality, and World Health Organization.
Kwiatkowski, Lynn. 2011. “Engaging the Challenges of Alleviating Wife Abuse in Northern Vietnam.” Practicing Anthropology 33, no. 3: 32–37.


2.15: Homework- Examples of the Definition of the Derivative
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Simplify each expression involving fractions or rational expressions.
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\((x+1) \cdot \left( \frac{1}{3} + \frac{x}{x+1} \right)\)
\(=\frac{x+1}{3} + x = \frac{4x+1}{3}\)ans
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\(\cfrac{\cfrac{1}{3} + 1}{1-\cfrac{1}{3}}\)
\(2\)ans
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\(\cfrac{x + 1}{\cfrac{1}{x}}\)
\(x^2 + x\)ans
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\(\cfrac{\cfrac{1}{x} - \cfrac{1}{x+1}}{\cfrac{1}{x} + \cfrac{1}{x+1}}\)
\(\frac{1}{2x+1}\)ans
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\(\cfrac{\cfrac{2}{x} - \cfrac{1}{x}}{\cfrac{1 - y}{y}}\)
\(\frac{y}{x - xy}\)ans
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\((x+1) \cdot \left( \frac{1}{3} + \frac{x}{x+1} \right)\)
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In each case, use the definition of the derivative to find \(f'(x)\) (in other words, take the derivative!)
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\(f(x) = 3x - 5 \)
\(3\)ans
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\(f(x) = \frac{1}{2} x + 1 \)
ans
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\(f(x) = 2 x^2\)
\(4x\)ans
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\(f(x) = (x^2 + x)\)
\(2x + 1\)ans
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\(\frac{d}{dx} (e^x)\) (hint: from yesterday’s homework, we have \(\lim_{h \to 0} \frac{e^h - 1}{h} = 1\))
\(e^x\)ans
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\(f(x) = x^3\)
\(x^3\)ans
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\(f(x) = 3x - 5 \)
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In each case, use the definition of the derivative to find \(f'(x)\) (in other words, take the derivative!). Each of these is like one of the “hard problems” (click here)
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\(f(x) = 2x^4\)
\(8x^3\)ans
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\(f(x) = \sqrt{2x}\)
\(\frac{1}{\sqrt{2x}}\)ans
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\(f(x) = \frac{2}{x} \)
\(-\frac{2}{x^2}\)ans
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\(f(x) = \sqrt{x+1}\)
\(\frac{1}{2 \sqrt{x+1}}\)ans
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\(f(x) = \frac{1}{x+1} \)
\(-\frac{1}{(x+1)^2}\)ans
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\(f(x) = \frac{1}{\sqrt{x}}\)
\(\frac{-1}{2 x \sqrt{x}}\)ans
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\(f(x) = 2x^4\)
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Recall the derivative of \(f(x) = x^2\) is given by \(2x\).
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Show that the derivative of \(g(x) = x^2+1\) is \(2x\) using the definition of the derivative. Can you find an intuitive reason why \(f(x)\) and \(g(x)\) would have the same derivative?
Adding a constant moves the curve up or down, but that shift does not affect the slope of the tangent lineans
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Find another function whose derivative is \(2x\), other than \(f(x)\) and \(g(x)\).
\(x^2 + c\) for any value \(c\)ans
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Show that the derivative of \(g(x) = x^2+1\) is \(2x\) using the definition of the derivative. Can you find an intuitive reason why \(f(x)\) and \(g(x)\) would have the same derivative?


1.12: Thinking Globally
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Increasingly, sociologists are turning their attention to the world at large and developing theories of global processes.
Learning Objectives
- Discuss different sociological approaches to the study of global processes
Key Points
- World systems theory refers to the international division of labor among core countries, semi-periphery countries, and periphery countries and argues that inequality among countries comes not from inherent differences but from relationships of domination.
- Sociologists also study the globalization of norms and culture through dynamics such as world society.
- Sociologists may also study globalization from below, or grassroots mobilization, including glocalization and hybridization.
- Sociologists may also study globalization from below, or grassroots mobilization, including glocalization and hybridization.
Key Terms
- international division of labor : The international division of labor is an outcome of globalization. It is the spatial division of labor which occurs when the process of production is no longer confined to national economies.
- glocalization : The global distribution of a product or service that is tailored to local markets.
- globalization : A common term for processes of international integration arising from increasing human connectivity and interchange of worldviews, products, ideas, and other cultural phenomena. In particular, advances in transportation and telecommunications infrastructure, including the rise of the Internet, represent major driving factors in globalization and precipitate the further interdependence of economic and cultural activities.
Thinking Globally
Historically, sociologists have tended to focus their work on individual countries, studying the social processes and structures within a single country. Some current scholars criticize that approach as “methodological nationalism” because it fails to consider the global connections and patterns that shape local and national situations. In addition, sociology has traditionally focused on Western societies, but has recently expanded its focus to non-Western societies. These shifts illustrate the fact that it is no longer possible to study social life without thinking globally. Contemporary societies have become so porous and interconnected (a process that scholars have termed globalization) that to ignore the global patterns would be to present an incomplete picture of any social situation.
World Systems Theory
Thinking globally in sociology could entail a variety of different approaches. Some scholars use world systems theory. World systems theory stresses that the world system (not nation states ) should be the basic unit of social analysis. The world-system refers to the international division of labor, which divides the world into core countries, semi-periphery countries, and the periphery countries. Core countries focus on higher-skill, capital-intensive production, and the rest of the world focuses on low-skill, labor-intensive production, and the extraction of raw materials. This constantly reinforces the dominance of the core countries. Nonetheless, the system is dynamic, and individual states can gain or lose their core (semi-periphery, periphery) status over time. For a time, some countries become the world hegemon; throughout the last few centuries, this status has passed from the Netherlands to the United Kingdom and, most recently, to the United States.
The most well-known version of the world system approach has been developed by Immanuel Wallerstein in 1970s and 1980s. Wallerstein traces the rise of the world system from the 15 th century, when the European feudal economy suffered a crisis and was transformed into a capitalist one. Europe (the West) utilized its advantages and gained control over most of the world economy, presiding over the development and spread of industrialization and the capitalist economy, indirectly resulting in unequal development.
Other approaches that fall under world systems theory include dependency theory and neocolonialism. Dependency theory takes the idea of the international division of labor and states that peripheral countries are not poor because they have not adequately developed, but rather are poor because of the very nature of their relationship with core countries. This relationship is exploitative, as the resources needed by peripheral countries to develop are funneled to core countries. Poor countries are thus in a continual state of dependency to rich countries.
Neocolonialism (also known as neoimperialism) also argues that poor countries are poor not because of any inherent inadequacy. Neocolonialism emphasizes the unequal relationships between former colonizing countries and colonized regions. Domination (not just economic, but also cultural and linguistic) still continues to occur even though poor countries are no longer colonies.
Global Institutions
The top-down approach is not only used to study the global economy, but also social norms. Sociologists who are interested in global social norms focus their attention on global institutions, such as the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the International Monetary Fund, or various other international organizations, such as human rights groups.
John Meyer, a Stanford sociologist, is one of these. Meyer coined the term “world society” (or “world polity”) to describe scripts, models, and norms for behavior that originate from global institutions and that transcend the nation state. These norms form a global civil society that operates independently of individual nations and to which individual nations often strive to conform in order to be recognized by the international community.
Globalization from Below
Another approach to studying globalization sociologically is to examine on-the-ground processes. Some sociologists study grassroots social movements, such as non-governmental organizations which mobilize on behalf of equality, justice, and human rights. Others study global patterns of consumption, migration, and travel. Still others study local responses to globalization.
Two ideas that have emerged from these studies are glocalization and hybridization. Glocalization was a term coined by a Japanese businessman in the 1980s and is a popular phrase in the transnational business world. It refers to the ability to make a global product fit a local market. Hybridization is a similar idea, emerging from the field of biology, which refers to the way that various sociocultural forms can mix and create a third form which draws from its sources, but is something entirely new.
The possibilities for thinking globally in sociology are as varied as the world we live in: global finance, global technology, global cities, global medicine, global food. The list is endless. If we examine any social situation closely, the global patterns and linkages behind it will undoubtedly emerge.
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1.1: The Structure of DNA
Learning Objectives
- Identify the sugar, phosphate, nitrogenous base, 5' and 3' carbons in a nucleotide and the key difference between DNA and RNA.
- Explain the structure of the double helix, including the role of hydrogen bonds and covalent (phosphodiester) bonds.
- Explain why the abundance of A is roughly equal to T and G is roughly equal to C in DNA.
- Using the rules of base pairing, predict the complementary (or anti-parallel) strand of DNA for a given sequence.
Nucleic acids are the most important macromolecules for the continuity of life. They carry the genetic blueprint of a cell and carry instructions for the functioning of the cell.
DNA and RNA
The two main types of nucleic acids are deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA) . DNA is the genetic material found in all living organisms, ranging from single-celled bacteria to multicellular mammals. DNA is found in the nucleus of eukaryotes and in the organelles, chloroplasts, and mitochondria. In prokaryotes, the DNA is not enclosed in a membranous envelope.
The entire genetic content of a cell is known as its genome, and the study of genomes is genomics. In eukaryotic cells but not in prokaryotes, DNA forms a complex with histone proteins to form chromatin, the substance of eukaryotic chromosomes. A chromosome may contain tens of thousands of genes. Many genes contain the information to make protein products; other genes code for RNA products. DNA controls all of the cellular activities by turning the genes “on” or “off.”
The other type of nucleic acid, RNA, is mostly involved in protein synthesis. The DNA molecules never leave the nucleus but instead use an intermediary to communicate with the rest of the cell. This intermediary is the messenger RNA (mRNA) . Other types of RNA—like rRNA, tRNA, and microRNA—are involved in protein synthesis and its regulation.
DNA and RNA are made up of monomers known as nucleotides . The nucleotides combine with each other to form a polynucleotide , DNA or RNA. Each nucleotide is made up of three components: a nitrogenous base, a pentose (five-carbon) sugar, and a phosphate group (Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\)). Each nitrogenous base in a nucleotide is attached to a sugar molecule, which is attached to one or more phosphate groups.
The nitrogenous bases, important components of nucleotides, are organic molecules and are so named because they contain carbon and nitrogen. They are bases because they contain an amino group that has the potential of binding an extra hydrogen, and thus, decreasing the hydrogen ion concentration in the environment, making it more basic. Each nucleotide in DNA contains one of four possible nitrogenous bases: adenine (A), guanine (G) cytosine (C), and thymine (T).
Adenine and guanine are classified as purines . The primary structure of a purine is two carbon-nitrogen rings. Cytosine, thymine, and uracil are classified as pyrimidines which have a single carbon-nitrogen ring as their primary structure (Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\)). Each of these basic carbon-nitrogen rings has different functional groups attached to it. In molecular biology shorthand, the nitrogenous bases are simply known by their symbols A, T, G, C, and U. DNA contains A, T, G, and C whereas RNA contains A, U, G, and C.
The pentose sugar in DNA is deoxyribose, and in RNA, the sugar is ribose (Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\)). The difference between the sugars is the presence of the hydroxyl group on the second carbon of the ribose and hydrogen on the second carbon of the deoxyribose (so deoxyribose is "missing" an -OH group). The carbon atoms of the sugar molecule are numbered as 1′, 2′, 3′, 4′, and 5′ (1′ is read as “one prime”).
The phosphate residue is attached to the hydroxyl group of the 5′ carbon of one sugar and the hydroxyl group of the 3′ carbon of the sugar of the next nucleotide, which forms a 5′–3′ phosphodiester linkage. The phosphodiester linkage is not formed by simple dehydration reaction like the other linkages connecting monomers in macromolecules: its formation involves the removal of two phosphate groups. A polynucleotide may have thousands of such phosphodiester linkages.
Chargaff’s Rules
When Watson and Crick set out in the 1940’s to determine the structure of DNA, it was already known that DNA is made up of a series four different types of molecules, called bases or nucleotides: adenine (A), cytosine (C), thymine (T), guanine (G). Watson and Crick also knew of Chargaff’s Rules , which were a set of observations about the relative amount of each nucleotide that was present in almost any extract of DNA. Chargaff had observed that for any given species, the abundance of A was the same as T, and G was the same as C. This was essential to Watson & Crick’s model.
Example \(\PageIndex{1}\)
Chargaff determined the composition of nucleic acids in samples from a variety of species, including prokaryotes and eukaryotes. In one bacterial sample, the proportion of adenine was 15.5% (data adapted from Vischer et al, 1949). What proportion of guanine would have been present in this sample and why?
Solution
Because A pairs with T, the amount of T should be roughly equal to A, or approximately 15.5% percent. Thus, A + T = 15.5 + 15.5 = 31%.
The percent of G + C = 100% - 31% = 69%. Because G pairs with C, the amount of each of these should be roughly equal, so approximately 34.5% each.
Query \(\PageIndex{1}\)
DNA Double-Helix Structure
Using proportional metal models of the individual nucleotides, Watson and Crick deduced a structure for DNA that was consistent with Chargaff’s Rules and with x-ray crystallography data that was obtained (with some controversy) from another researcher named Rosalind Franklin. In Watson and Crick’s famous double helix , each of the two strands contains DNA bases connected through covalent (phosphodiester) bonds to a sugar-phosphate backbone. Because one side of each sugar molecule is always connected to the opposite side of the next sugar molecule, each strand of DNA has polarity: these are called the 5’ (5-prime) end and the 3’ (3-prime) end, in accordance with the nomenclature of the carbons in the sugars. The two strands of the double helix run in anti-parallel (i.e. opposite) directions, with the 5’ end of one strand adjacent to the 3’ end of the other strand. The double helix has a right-handed twist, (rather than the left-handed twist that is often represented incorrectly in popular media). The DNA bases extend from the backbone towards the center of the helix, with a pair of bases from each strand forming hydrogen bonds that help to hold the two strands together. Under most conditions, the two strands are slightly offset, which creates a major groove on one face of the double helix, and a minor groove on the other.
Rules of base pairing
- A pairs with T (or U if RNA)
- G pairs with C
Because of the structure of the bases, A can only form hydrogen bonds with T, and G can only form hydrogen bonds with C (remember Chargaff’s Rules). Each strand is therefore said to be complementary to the other, and so each strand also contains enough information to act as a template for the synthesis of the other. This complementary redundancy is important in DNA replication and repair. If the sequence of one strand is AATTGGCC, the complementary strand would have the sequence TTAACCGG. During DNA replication, each strand is copied, resulting in a daughter DNA double helix containing one parental DNA strand and a newly synthesized strand.
3D structure of a DNA double helix
Spin the double helix to see the orientation of the sugars and phosphates in the backbone (ribbon in the model), the base pairs, major and minor grooves! (PDB ID = 1bna https://www.rcsb.org/3d-view/1BNA )
Implications of DNA structure
As for most biological molecules, the structure is important to the function, and the function of DNA is to contain information. Important properties that are derived from the DNA structure are:
- A complementary strand can always be synthesized from a single strand, due to the arrangement of hydrogen bonds between GC and AT bases.
- Hydrogen bonds stabilize the double helix, but can be broken when DNA needs to be accessed.
- The order of bases contains the information needed to code for amino acids in proteins during translation.
- Even sequences of DNA that do not encode amino acids can still provide information by interacting with proteins that function in DNA packaging and regulation. The major and minor grooves of DNA may determine which sequences are visible to DNA interacting proteins.
Thinking ahead exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)
A mutation occurs, and cytosine is replaced with adenine. What impact do you think this will have on the DNA structure?
- Answer
-
Adenine is larger than cytosine and will not be able to base pair properly with the guanine on the opposing strand, causing the double helix to bulge at that position. DNA repair enzymes may recognize the bulge and replace the incorrect nucleotide.
Thinking ahead exercise \(\PageIndex{2}\)
If the two DNA strands were connected by covalent bonds rather than hydrogen bonds, what problems might occur, if any?
- Answer
-
Covalent bonds are much stronger than hydrogen bonds and not as easily broken. If the DNA strands were connected by covalent bonds, then it would be much more difficult to unwind the double helix. This would be problematic for processes that require unwinding of the DNA molecule, such as replication and transcription.
Contributors and Attributions
-
Connie Rye (East Mississippi Community College), Robert Wise (University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh), Vladimir Jurukovski (Suffolk County Community College), Jean DeSaix (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Jung Choi (Georgia Institute of Technology), Yael Avissar (Rhode Island College) among other contributing authors. Original content by OpenStax (CC BY 4.0; Download for free at<EMAIL_ADDRESS>).
Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/biology/pages/1-introduction -
Dr. Todd Nickle and Isabelle Barrette-Ng (Mount Royal University) The content on this page is licensed under CC SA 3.0 licensing guidelines.
References
VISCHER E, ZAMENHOF S, CHARGAFF E. Microbial nucleic acids; the desoxypentose nucleic acids of avian tubercle bacilli and yeast. J Biol Chem . 1949;177(1):429-438.


16.13: Summary of Homeostatic Mechanisms
1. Temperature control
The biochemical and physiological processes in the cell are sensitive to temperature. The optimum body temperature is about 37 C [99 F] for mammals, and about 40 C [104 F] for birds. Biochemical processes in the cells, particularly in muscles and the liver, produce heat. The heat is distributed through the body by the blood and is lost mainly through the skin surface. The production of this heat and its loss through the skin is controlled by the hypothalamus in the brain which acts rather like a thermostat on an electric heater. .
(a) When the body temperature rises above the optimum, a decrease in temperature is achieved by:
- Sweating and panting to increase heat loss by evaporation.
- Expansion of the blood vessels near the skin surface so heat is lost to the air.
- Reducing muscle exertion to the minimum.
(b) When the body temperature falls below the optimum, an increase in temperature can be achieved by:
- Moving to a heat source e.g. in the sun, out of the wind.
- Increasing muscular activity
- Shivering
- Making the hair stand on end by contraction of the hair erector muscles or fluffing of the feathers so there is an insulating layer of air around the body
- Constricting the blood vessels near the skin surface so heat loss to the air is decreased
2. Water balance
The concentration of the body fluids remains relatively constant irrespective of the diet or the quantity of water taken into the body by the animal. Water is lost from the body by many routes (see module 1.6) but the kidney is the main organ that influences the quantity that is lost. Again it is the hypothalamus that monitors the concentration of the blood and initiates the release of hormones from the posterior pituitary gland. These act on the kidney tubules to influence the amount of water (and sodium ions) absorbed from the fluid flowing along them.
(a) When the body fluids become too concentrated and the osmotic pressure too high, water retention in the kidney tubules can be achieved by:
- An increased production of antidiuretic hormone (ADH) from the posterior pituitary gland, which causes more water to be reabsorbed from the kidney tubules.
- A decreased blood pressure in the glomerulus of the kidney results in less fluid filtering through into the kidney tubules so less urine is produced.
(b) When the body fluids become too dilute and the osmotic pressure too low, water loss in the urine can be achieved by:
- A decrease in the secretion of ADH, so less water is reabsorbed from the kidney tubules and more diluted urine is produced.
- An increase in the blood pressure in the glomerulus so more fluid filters into the kidney tubule and more urine is produced.
- An increase in sweating or panting that also increases the amount of water lost.
Another hormone, aldosterone, secreted by the cortex of the adrenal gland, also affects water balance indirectly. It does this by increasing the absorption of sodium ions (Na-) from the kidney tubules. This increases water retention since it increases the osmotic pressure of the fluids around the tubules and water therefore flows out of them by osmosis.
3. Maintenance of blood volume after moderate blood loss
Loss of blood or body fluids leads to decreased blood volume and hence decreased blood pressure. The result is that the blood system fails to deliver enough oxygen and nutrients to the cells, which stop functioning properly and may die. Cells of the brain are particularly vulnerable. This condition is known as shock.
If blood loss is not extreme, various mechanisms come into play to compensate and ensure permanent tissue damage does not occur. These mechanisms include:
- Increased thirst and drinking increases blood volume.
- Blood vessels in the skin and kidneys constrict to reduce the total volume of the blood system and hence retain blood pressure.
- Heart rate increases. This also increases blood pressure.
- Antidiuretic hormone (ADH) is released by the posterior pituitary gland. This increases water re-absorption in the collecting ducts of the kidney tubules so concentrated urine is produced and water loss is reduced. This helps maintain blood volume.
- Loss of fluid causes an increase in osmotic pressure of the blood. Proteins, mainly albumin, released into the blood by the liver further increase the osmotic pressure causing fluid from the tissues to be drawn into the blood by osmosis. This increases blood volume.
- Aldosterone, secreted by the adrenal cortex, increases the absorption of sodium ions (Na+) and water from the kidney tubules. This increases urine concentration and helps retain blood volume.
If blood or fluid loss is extreme and the blood volume falls by more than 15-25%, the above mechanisms are unable to compensate and the condition of the animal progressively deteriorates.
4. Acid/ base balance
Biochemical reactions within the body are very sensitive to even small changes in acidity or alkalinity (i.e. pH) and any departure from the narrow limits disrupts the functioning of the cells. It is therefore important that the blood contains balanced quantities of acids and bases.
The normal pH of blood is in the range 7.35 to 7.45 and there are a number of mechanisms that operate to maintain the pH in this range. Breathing is one of these mechanisms.
Much of the carbon dioxide produced by respiration in cells is carried in the blood as carbonic acid. As the amount of carbon dioxide in the blood increases the blood becomes more acidic and the pH decreases. This is called acidosis and when severe can cause coma and death. On the other hand, alkalosis (blood that is too alkaline) causes over stimulation of the nervous system and when severe can lead to convulsions and death.
(a) When vigorous activity generating large quantities of carbon dioxide causes the blood to becomes too acidic it can be counteracted in two ways:
- By the rapid removal of carbon dioxide from the blood by deep, panting breaths
By the secretion of hydrogen ions (H+) into the urine by the kidney tubules.
(b) When over breathing or hyperventilation results in low levels of carbon dioxide in the blood and the blood is too alkaline, various mechanisms come into play to bring the pH back to within the normal range. These include:
- A slower rate of breathing
- A reduction in the amount of hydrogen ions (H+) secreted into the urine.
SUMMARY
Homeostasis is the maintenance of constant conditions within a cell or animal’s body despite changes in the external environment.
The body temperature of mammals and birds is maintained at an optimum level by a variety of heat regulation mechanisms. These include:
- Seeking out warm areas,
- Adjusting activity levels,
blood vessels on the body surface,
- Contraction of the erector muscles so hairs and feathers stand up to form an insulating layer,
- Shivering,
- Sweating and panting in dogs.
Animals maintain water balance by:
- adjusting level of antidiuretic hormone(ADH)
- adjusting level of aldosterone,
- adjusting blood flow to the kidneys
- adjusting the amount of water lost through sweating or panting.
Animals maintain blood volume after moderate blood loss by:
- Drinking,
- Constriction of blood vessels in the skin and kidneys,
- increasing heart rate,
- secretion of antidiuretic hormone
- secretion of aldosterone
- drawing fluid from the tissues into the blood by increasing the osmotic pressure of the blood.
Animals maintain the acid/base balance or pH of the blood by:
- Adjusting the rate of breathing and hence the amount of CO2 removed from the blood.
- Adjusting the secretion of hydrogen ionsinto the urine.


1.1.4: Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin American Age of Reason More than any other eighteenth-century American, Benjamin Franklin exemplified the rags-to-riches, self-made individual of the time. He was a printer, a writer, a scientist, an inventor, a political leader, an ambassador, and a successful businessperson. Franklin started life in humble circumstances as the tenth son of a modest tradesman. He was self-educated because his family could not afford to send him to a university. Franklin's accomplishments as a colonist, and then as an American, gave him worldwide fame. Franklin began publishing Poor Richard's Almanack in 1732 under the fictional pseudonym Richard Saunders, or "Poor Richard." In the almanac, Franklin addressed concerns such as thrift and frugality, hard work and honesty, and other Puritan values that would become part of America's national identity. Perhaps Franklin's most valued work was on the committee that drafted the United States' Declaration of Independence ; in fact, he was the oldest member of the Continental Congress to sign the declaration. Between 1771 and 1790, he wrote his autobiography in four parts, left unfinished by his death. The resulting work, even unfinished, is considered one of the finest and most influential examples of the memoir genre. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin , in Four Parts In Part 1 (1771) of the memoir, Franklin sets out anecdotes from his early years, his failures and successes of a young man making his way in the British colonies. He recalls his childhood and the struggles of an industrious family, which can be summed up in the words he had engraved on the marker he ordered for the graves of his parents:
Josiah Franklin, and Abiah his wife, lie here interred. They lived lovingly together in wedlock fifty-five years. Without an estate, or any gainful employment, By constant labor and industry, with God's blessing, They maintained a large family comfortably, and brought up thirteen children and seven grandchildren reputably. From this instance, reader, Be encouraged to diligence in thy calling, And distrust not Providence. He was a pious and prudent man; She, a discreet and virtuous woman. Their youngest son, In filial regard to their memory, Places this stone. J. F. born 1655, died 1744, Ætat 89. A. F. born 1667, died 1752, —— 85.
In Part 2 (1784), Franklin focuses on various virtues and their importance in the art of living well. Part 3 (1788) contains a broader view of the social and political climate in Pennsylvania, and Part 4 (1788) contains details about Franklin's first trip to France. Franklin's biography is considered the first work describing the "American Dream," and Franklin is often referred to as the "first American." His self-reliance will inspire other writers in the next century, such as Whitman, Thoreau, and Emerson. Consider while reading:
- Why does Franklin consider self-improvement to be paramount to success?
- Discuss Franklin's description of Pride.
- How is his life similar to the modern "American Dream?"
- How does Franklin's experience differ from the modern "American Dream?"
Written by Anita Turlington