The Hindu Goddess and Women's Political Representation in South Asia: Symbolic Resource or Feminine Mystique?

TLDR: Freedman as mentioned in this paper pointed out that the fundamental reason for women's political under-representation is a political culture which does not offer women any positive model of female power and concluded that the non-coincidence between the signs of power and those of femininity is the main obstacle to an important presence of women in the political institutions of these countries.

Abstract: The under-representation of women in political institutions is a quasi-universal phenomenon, notwithstanding the glaring exception of Scandinavian countries. Comparative studies seem to be, for this reason, particularly required, to distinguish actually universal factors for women’s political under-representation, from more culturally speciŽ c ones.1 The universal factors identiŽ ed so far include the dominant sexual division of labour, in which women are in charge of the domestic work ( including the care of children) ; the domination of political parties by men; and electoral systems with single-member constituencies. A recent comparative study of women representatives in France and the UK offers a more cultural explanation. The author of the study, J. Freedman, makes the hypothesis that the ‘fundamental factor for the exclusion of women from the political Ž eld [ is] a political culture which does not offer women any positive model of female power’;2 and indeed she concludes from her survey that the ‘non-coincidence between the signs of power and those of femininity’3 is the main obstacle to an important presence of women in the political institutions of these countries. As a French observer of women’s political representation in South Asia, I was particularly interested in J. Freedman’s work. Her observations drew me to question the impact, if any, of the Hindu Goddess—a uniquely popular, positive Ž gure of feminine power—on the political representation of women in two countries where Hinduism is the religion of the majority: India and Nepal. To speak of ‘the Goddess’ is actually misleading: the Hindu pantheon includes a number of female deities, who are conventionally divided into two main categories: benign goddesses and Ž erce goddesses, respectively characterized by a set of features such as their character, appearance, mobility, kinship, residence, worshippers, priest, etc.4 But the deity referred to as ‘The Goddess’ is most often either Kali or Durga, who both are without consorts and embody absolute Shakti,5 i.e. the cosmic, feminine principle of power. In the last 20 years the Hindu Goddess has been the object of much interest in various circles, both in India and in the West. Ecofeminism and New Age spirituality have invoked her as a source of inspiration. But ‘is the Hindu Goddess a feminist?’ asked R. Sunder Rajan.6 Such a question points to the relationship between a cultural artefact, deŽ ned as essentially feminine, and real women. My intention here is to examine, more speciŽ cally, the relationship between the Goddess and those women who engage with politics. Does In tern a tion al Rev iew of Sociology—Rev u e In tern a tion ale de Sociologie, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2001