Gender Discrimination In Dattani's Dance Like A Man

. . . The issue of cultural discrimination with women has been elaborately and comprehensively dealt by Dattani in the play wherein female is subjugated and underestimated by patriarchal society and she remains only as care taker for household utensils, children, husband, other domestic requirements and tasks of fatigue. Thus Dattani’s drama showcases the stark reality of the life and warrants the attention of the world towards the pressing needs of the time. (Jha 7)
The shocking revelation of the mother deciding to favour the son before the operation comes as a jolt to the audience, showing how deep the gender discrimination has seeped into the minds of the people in the society. The play Tara “looks at the battles, the victories and the defeats of an Indian family coping

This highlights the richness of Indian culture.This concurs with the views of Deb who states “Dance Like a Man is a powerful drama of post-independence society, involving the aspirations of a middle class South Indian couple, who by their choice of profession as a Bharatnatyam dancer reflect the past and the present Indian culture, problems of identity and gender roles” (1).
The play Dance Like a Man starts with “a socio cultural spectrum, passes through psycho-cultural dynamics and culminates in psycho-philosophical suggestiveness and here lies the strength and distinction of Dattani’s art” (Agrawal Beena 104). Judith Butler elaborates that gender is a ‘performative’, a socially pre-established pattern of behaviour, and a cultural process. Performing arts is conventionally associated with femininity and therefore when Jairaj oversteps his jurisdiction by taking to dancing, his position is several stigmatised for choosing a woman’s profession, though dancing is his way of self expression and his only medium of discovering his identity.(Deb