Showing papers in "Indian Journal of Gender Studies in 2007"

Between ‘Empowerment’ and ‘Liberation’ The Kudumbashree Initiative in Kerala

Abstract: Micro-finance and its (purported) capacity to empower women is by now a well-explored field all over the world. We now have several tools by which micro-finance programmes may be assessed. However, here we attempt to critically assess the claims of the Kerala government's poverty eradication programme, the Kudumbashree, which combines a micro-finance model with other elements through critical feminist lenses. Further, we attempt to place this programme within Kerala's own historical experience of empowering the poor. Given the fact that this major effort to popularise micro-finance in Kerala has the twin aims of poverty alleviation and women's empowerment, this seems justified. We try to place the ‘micro-finance revolution’ in Kerala within the larger historical trajectory of successive ‘regimes of empowerment’ in order to understand the different political stakes in each, and their implications for gender politics. While using some of the available tools that employ indicators of gender effectiveness to ...

Rethinking Citizenship A Queer Journey

Abstract: Citizenship, as conventionally understood, draws its definitional strength from a framework of national law increasingly supplemented by international law. There is a radical potential to the idea ...

Safe Motherhood Initiatives: Contributions from small-scale studies.

Abstract: In India in 2000 between 115000 and 170000 women died in childbirth-about one-quarter of all maternal deaths worldwide. Far from declining over the 1990s maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality rates in India have at best plateaued at worst increased. Regional class and caste inequalities remain far too high. The Millennium Development Goal for the reduction of maternal mortality means that by 2015 the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) should be reduced to about 100 maternal deaths per 100000 live births. Yet governmental action to deal with this scandalous state of affairs seems to be stymied by a lack of political will no new ideas a preoccupation with population control and an apparent lack of awareness of some of the key issues. A workshop in New Delhi in February 2006 considered whether small-scale studies could contribute new insights that might lead to policy proposals. Small-scale meant studies smaller than the nationally representative surveys that generate estimates of rates and relationships at all-India levels. Small-scale studies have different purposes: to elucidate contexts and processes to investigate peoples own understandings and to help explain patterns picked up by large-scale studies. The workshop papers included studies of a single district (Dharmapuri) survey and interview data from sub-district levels (blocks or talukas within Vadodara Diamond Harbour and Koppal) as well as ethnographic studies of villages slums and hospitals in Delhi Rajasthan Uttar Pradesh Jharkhand and West Bengal. (excerpt)

Local Knowledge and Natural Resource Management: A Gender Perspective

Abstract: Understanding local knowledge systems is fundamentally important to discern the complexities of natural resource management in any locality, and scientists are increasingly becoming interested in these. However, this interest stems from a narrow technology-centred focus. To broaden this focus, it is important to develop a robust conceptual framework that captures the dynamics of these systems. This article attempts to review various ways of conceptualising local knowledges and the intermeshing of gender and local knowledge in a variety of ways. A feminist gender perspective not only unravels the intricacies of the gendering of knowledge, but problematises the unequal distribution of power, control and skills as these are integral elements of the construction, valuation and marginalisation of local knowledge.

Women and Watershed Development in India: Issues and Strategies

Abstract: A paradigm shift in soil and water conservation measures from an isolated approach to integrated watershed development programmes (WDPs) in the early 1970s em-phasised the active involvement or sen...

Female Education and Nigeria's Development Strategies: Lots of Talk, Little Action?

Abstract: This article analyses the various strategies and policies implemented by successive Nigerian governments since the 1985 Nairobi Declaration and the World Declaration on Education for All and ascertains whether policy initiatives were effective in ensuring access to and improving the quality of education for girls and women. This article analyses prima y secondary and university enrolment figures by gender for the period 1986-2004. Findings indicate that gender stereotypes in the educational system and wide male-female gaps in education continue despite education being a high priority area. The reasons include a weak institutional framework lack of coordination of policy initiatives and inadequate funding. Engendering education is vital to Nigerias development programmes.

Neo-liberal Development and Reproductive Health in India: The Making of the Personal and the Political

Abstract: This article seeks to explore the implications of neo-liberalism on women-centered reproductive health programmes particularly in advancing their goals of political empowerment. The article develops a critique of reproduction and women as citizens of the public space in neo-liberal economies. It argues that the rhetoric of consumer freedom and high-quality services belie womens position as subjects of an economic growth-led society where reproduction is another resource to be harnessed for capitalism. Contrary to feminist intent the public awareness of the personal or the reproductive does not necessarily lead to a concomitant enhancement of political aims. (authors)

Women Making Choices: Masked but Aware?

Abstract: Amartya Sen's capability approach is very useful to analyse how choices affect the potential of women, once the position that women lack self-awareness when they make their choices is dropped. Wome...

CEDAW: Mandate for Substantive Equality

Abstract: International concern with the elimination of discrimination against women is not a new phenomenon, but despite the existence of numerous declarations and conventions, such discrimination is endemic. Violations of women’s rights has not received the required attention in the human rights movement. Human rights law tended to exclude much of women’s experiences. International human rights standards are perceived to be gender neutral; however, this neutrality often amounted in practice to a disregard of women’s rights. The marginalisation of women’s rights in the human rights movement is seen in the fact that few nations are committed in practice to the notion of women’s equality as a basic human right. The principle of non-discrimination on the basis of sex and assurance of equal protection has been emphasised in both national and international law. The United Nations Charter contains the equal protection norm. The Charter’s preamble states the determination of the peoples of the United Nations to reaffirm faith in the ‘equal rights of men and women’. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) also underline the

‘Docile Oriental Women’ and Organised Labour: A Case Study of the Indian Garment Manufacturing Industry

Abstract: This article attempts to understand women's labour market behaviour in the context of export-oriented garment manufacturing in India, particularly women's decision to work and their alleged aversion to unionism. Asian women's submissiveness in the labour market can hardly be the result of ‘Oriental docility’ in every case. We question this assumption by looking at a small sample of 25 women in garment manufacturing firms in Hyderabad, India, and seek other explanations for women's lack of interest in unions, and note the pressures that affect them.

Internet Equaliser? Gender Stratification and Normative Circumvention in Science

Abstract: Gender and connectivity initiatives intended to promote development assume that the Internet can have a significant impact on the careers and lives of women. It is important to test this assumption, given the prior research that establishes the educational and organisational limitations on women in professional careers, which increase the likelihood of restricted networks. The initial quantitative research available on the impact of the Internet is based on data from 2000. It shows improved access to the Internet for both men and women, but no evidence for Internet effects on productivity or professional networking. This study employs recent qualitative data from scientists in Kerala, which modify these conclusions and provide some grounds for optimism. The domestic context, so important for women in a patrifocal society, has created conditions for change, as the interest in children's education and the presence of home computers has begun a process of ‘circumvention’ of gender roles that demands further ...

Rethinking Citizenship, Community and Rights: The Case of Nurses from Kerala in Delhi

Abstract: This article examines the relationship between state, citizenship, communities and rights by exploring the ways in which nurses from Kerala experience their professional lives and migration. Far from being a straightforward relationship between relocation and homogeneous citizenship as an Indian, cultural and linguistic attachments are sought by these women. Common, unmarked citizenship embodied in legal membership in the Indian state as Indian citizens with legal and fundamental rights enables these migrant women from Kerala to exercise individual choice regarding work; their choice of profession and their movement seeking work are in major ways determined by their linguistic and ethnic identities. Their status as workers opens up new spaces—physical and social—and leads them to ways and means of living with more freedom in the social realm. The migrant women, therefore, feel that they have left behind the attachments and associations of dependence and feel ‘autonomous’ in the anonymity that the public s...

Feminist Perspectives and the Struggle to Transform the Disciplines: Report of the IAWS Southern Regional Workshop

Abstract: Since the 1980s’ feminist research, whether in women’s studies (WS), the conventional disciplines, or new areas of inquiry, has used concepts of patriarchy, gender division of labour, gender equality and justice in insightful ways. The resistance to change is, however, deep-seated among sections of academics, practitioners and the public. Attempting to open up a dialogue of disciplines, the Indian Association for Women’s Studies (IAWS) planned its Southern Regional Workshop as a step towards taking stock of attempts to change the approach and methodology of a range of disciplines in India. The workshop on ‘Feminist Perspectives and the Struggle to Transform the Disciplines’ was organised jointly with the Women’s Studies Department, United Theological College, at UTC, Bangalore, on 2 and 3 February 2007, with about 70 participants from Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, academics (senior professors to doctoral students), practitioners and activists. While recognising the significance of

Forced Evictions and Factory Closures Rethinking Citizenship and Rights of Working Class Women in Delhi

Abstract: The direct and systematic assault on people's lives and livelihood in the context of slum demolitions and forcible evictions form part of a continuing drive to restructure the economy as well as th...

Perceiving and Producing Merit: Gender and Doing Science in India

Abstract: This article documents the experiences of women scientists in research institutions in India, and attempts to demonstrate that contrary to the claims made by the institutions in deciding who gets to do science, gender figures at various levels in shaping the career of a scientist. Using the narratives of women scientists, structured interviews and the data collected from research institutions, this article attempts to problematise the notion prevalent among scientists that talent for doing science is inherent in a person, and if it is there it will reveal itself irrespective of the external conditions. The article tries to argue that such a notion and the resultant practice leads to selecting a few as meritorious and deserving, who are further nurtured, while others are expected to prove themselves many times before opportunities are made available for them. Women rarely figure among the meritorious few. In order that women get equal opportunity to participate in the scientific endeavour, the structure an...

What has Happened in Africa since Cairo

Abstract: This article presents data on what has happened in Africa since Cairo. On too many fronts, especially in the areas of ICPD promises, the countries and people of sub-Saharan Africa have moved backwards, or have stagnated and made no progress. The poorest African countries grew poorer, while the richest nations of the North got (much) richer; life expectancy fell; maternal mortality rates rose; skilled personnel attended fewer births; the rates of preventable and treatable communicable diseases rose; public expenditure on health stagnated; and ratios of physicians to population fell or remained the same in one-fourth of the countries. This reflected a serious brain drain. Family planning is the one service that grew in the decade since Cairo.

Retrieving Voices from the Margins: The Courtesan and the Nation's Narrative

Abstract: This article examines how contemporary feminist theatre ‘disrupts’ and ‘disturbs’ the nationalist project's hegemonic claim to respectability by reclaiming the voices of ‘loose’ women. It examines in particular a play, San Sattavan ka Qissa: Azizun Nisa, by Tripurari Sharma, to show how the foregrounding of the courtesan in the public-political space creates uneasy tensions in the way in which social, political and national life is organised by emerging middle-class nationalists. Moreover, by unravelling the various aspects of Azizun Nisa's publicness—as a courtesan and as a participant in the revolt of 1857—the play shows the distinctive ways in which resistance to norms is fashioned by Azizun Nisa in each case. By exploring the ways in which Azizun Nisa claims political subjectivity, the article engages with the issues that continue to animate the women's movement today. Citizenship for women, then, the article argues, traverses precarious grounds between exclusion and inclusion on terms of conformity.

Women's Education and the Nationalist Response in Western India: Part I—Basic Education

Abstract: The question of women’s education received an uneven response in the nationalist discourse. The Brahmanical patriarchy had always denied women access to education. In Bengal long years of Muslim rule, which did not interfere in the internal affairs of the Hindu society, provided space for debates and social revolts, which in turn led to independent initiatives in women’s education and social reform. As a result, 19th-century Bengal witnessed a strong Brahmo movement and the efforts of Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar in educating women, which created a considerably favourable situation for women’s education. By 1881–82 there were 1,051 secondary schools for girls and Bethune had a college department with six girl students (Southard 1984: 57), while there was no secondary school for native girls in Maharashtra. In Maharashtra the pre-colonial Hindu society was administered by a strong Hindu state under the Peshwas whose aim was to enforce Brahmanical patriarchy and varnaashrama dharma or asymmetric caste–gender privileges. The state controlled social space even in remote villages through its efficient bureaucracy. The Peshwas passed orders to the local officials (mamlatdars) to take

Gendering Resource Rights and Democratic Citizenship

Abstract: Recognition of political rights by state and civil society is an essential element of citizenship. However, this limited idea of citizens as rights bearing individuals is insufficient to constitute a democratic citizenship. In a democratic notion of citizenship, individuals are constituted not only as social subjects who receive certain rights from the state, but also as social agents who actively engage with the state. They are not merely holders of political rights conferred by a patriarchal state, but are active constituents of it. While the traditional notion of citizenship has focused on political rights, in subsistence-level societies political rights make little sense in the absence of a right to livelihood. In many rural subsistence-level societies forests are a primary arena for interaction, negotiation, struggle and conciliation between state and society. Policies and practices that shape control over forests have a direct impact on the autonomy of citizens, and a struggle for such rights consti...

Towards a Practice of Democratic Citizenship

Abstract: The articles in this special volume were presented in the sub-theme panel on ‘Rethinking Citizenship, Communities and Rights’ at the Eleventh Conference of the Indian Association for Women's Studies on ‘Citizenship, Gender and Sovereignty’ held in Goa from 3 to 6 May 2005. They explore the contests and debates that inform the theory and practice of citizenship in contemporary contexts. While delineating the contours of the debate, the articles identify the historically emergent strands that constitute the debate, the manner in which contending practices of citizenship—hegemonic state practices of rule and countervailing struggles—continually articulate and evolve ‘people's practices of citizenship’, rupturing hegemonies and rearticulating citizenship. In the process, they move beyond legal-formal frameworks to see how citizenship unfolds in specific contexts, and explore the possibilities of continually opening up spaces for the articulation of substantive citizenship embedded in democratic politics.

Violence employment and citizenship: A case study of self-employed women in the unorganised sector in Goa.

Abstract: Political and socio-economic life in Goa manifests several paradoxes which raise significant questions pertaining to the nature of patriarchy in a post-colonial society. The existence of a Uniform Civil Code in Goa its small size which makes for relative proximity between the people and their representatives and progressive social legislation especially in the fields of education and health have generally contributed towards relatively equal conditions of citizenship for women in the state. A puzzling paradox emerges however when one explores the forms of violence that the development patterns and the attendant structural asymmetries bring in their wake giving rise to newer forms of gender injustice. This article explores one aspect of that asymmetry-the violence experienced by women in the unorganised sector in the course of their work. It argues that while violence is integral to their work it goes unnoticed. These women are therefore doubly disadvantaged as women and as workers since they lack the organisational support and the grievance redress mechanisms that are available to women workers in the organised sector. (authors)