Re: Is "Izzat" going to become antiquated
By Izzat I mean the attitude of men towards women in their household in the subcontinent. The attitude that in its extreme causes stuff like honour killings, but amongst more civilized people obligates men to have a protective attitude towards the women in their homes.
a) Is this in your view a good quality to have in our culture?
b) Is this a cultural attitude belonging to the pre-modern age that will be lost as we progress?
a) it depends on whether a man's protective attitude is caused by a desire to protect the woman's well-being and honor...or to protect his own. the former is healthy and desirable, while the latter indicates the viewing of women as property and is thus undesirable. realistically, "izzat" in the subcontinent includes both the former and the latter reasons, but if taken as a weighted average, there is no doubt that the latter represents a much higher value than the former...and this is problematic.
b) yes....one might argue that modernization does not necessarily have to equate to westernization, but the reality is that liberalized views on women are by no means exclusively applicable to modernization in western countries...they're applicable to modernization in all countries. whether it is in the west, far east, middle east, etc...development proliferates liberal views on these issues.