Embodied shame and gendered demeanours in young women in Sri Lanka

Abstract

In South Asia, shame is valued as a virtue and a means of social control, particularly for women. For Sri Lankan women, shame ( læjja-baya) denotes modesty, purity, innocence, and self-effacement. For unmarried girls, sexual improprieties—rumoured or real—threaten loss of respectability and jeopardise a girl’s marriageability and her family’s honour. We investigated the dynamics of shame and norms of propriety in adolescent girls’ lives by re-analysing a subset of interviews of daughters and mothers (N = 24 pairs) collected in a prior study of nonfatal suicidal acts. Many such acts took place after girls were accused of violating norms of propriety. Other such acts served to ‘blame and shame’ wrongdoers. Girls and their mothers reported further that public knowledge of a suicide-like act sullied a girl’s reputation because onlookers ascribed sexualised meanings to it. We point out the incommensurability between parents’ goals and aspirations for their daughters’ educational and occupation attainments and the rigid demands for respectable comportment to which they must conform.

Language, culture, gender, and intersectionalities in suicide theory, research, and prevention: Challenges and changes

“…Most of these studies have documented the suicide scripts of a particular culture or sociodemographic group within a culture/country (e.g., Abeyasekera & Marecek, 2019;Abrutyn et al, 2020;Billaud, 2012;Brown, 1986;Cai et al, 2021;Canetto, 2003Canetto, ,2015bCanetto, ,2017Canetto, ,2019Canetto et al, 2017;Canetto et al, 2021;Canetto & Lester, 2002;Canetto, 2017;Cato & Canetto, 2003a,2003bCounts, 1980;Dahlen & Canetto, 2002;Eisenwort et al, 2014;Jorgensen, 1983Jorgensen, -1984Kral, 2012;Lee, 2014;Linehan, 1973;Meng, 2002;Pearson, 1995;Pearson & Liu, 2002;Pepper, 2017;Rasool & Payton, 2014;Rubinstein, 1987;Sefa-Dedeh & Canetto, 1992;Stice & Canetto, 2008;Tighe et al, 2015;Widger, 2012;Winterrowd et al, 2017).…”

Is being a 'left-behind' child associated with an increased risk of self-poisoning in adulthood? Findings from a case–control study in Sri Lanka

“…Previous work has highlighted the important role of violence in the home, family disputes, alcohol misuse and issues related to gender norms (particularly in relation to the sexual property of young women-the group most likely to self-poison in this study) in contributing to self-poisoning risk in Sri Lanka. [38][39][40][41][42] The nature of the care of migrant workers' offspring by extended family may also be an important mediating factor, 43 especially as these children in Asia are often taken care of by their kin network, which may contribute to better well-being outcomes for children.…”

A feminist politics of shame: Shame and its contested possibilities

“…Research on heterosexualities, and young women’s sexualities in particular, illuminates the complex ways in which binaries like whore/madonna operate to shame women and police their sexuality within patriarchal and heteronormative boundaries, across differing geopolitical contexts (for example, Crawford & Popp, 2003; Farvid, Braun, & Rowney, 2017; Gavey, 1993; Shefer, 2016). Notions of ‘respectability’, hinging around sexual restraint and containment, have been documented in this larger body of work across diverse cultural contexts (see, for example, Abeyasekera & Marecek, 2019, this issue; Van Wyk, 2015). Gendered shame has been researched as key to the surveillance of sexuality and gender at school, for example through sexuality education and in responses to teenage pregnancy and parenting (for example, Bay-Cheng, 2010; Bhana, 2014; Morrell, Bhana, & Shefer, 2012).…”