Books
LAW AND GENDER INEQUALITY: The Politics of Women’s Rights in India by Flavia Agnes. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1999.
IN the ’70s and ’80s, the demand for a uniform civil code (UCC) was situated in the context of gender equality. The subsequent incorporation of the issue into right wing agendas has, however, compelled a rethinking on how the issue could be represented. Flavia Agnes’ work is a well-researched rendition of the development of personal law from pre-colonial to the post-Babri Masjid times.
The initial chapters trace the position of women in Hindu and Islamic law in pre-colonial times, and from the narrative it appears that women were better situated earlier than after colonial intervention. Flavia finds that property ownership by women was an integral and significant part of the prevailing norms in Hindu society. Among lower castes, there was both an absence of a strict sexual code and wider scope for negotiating women’s rights of divorce, remarriage and property ownership. However, as communities progressed economically, they took on brahminical practices and exercised stricter control upon women.
Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism which emerged as a revolt against dominance of rituals, the supremacy of brahmins and the Sanskrit language, advocated simple forms of marriage and divorce and an elevated status for women and the lower castes. However, as Flavia observes, conversion to these religions did not distance the people from local customs and usages regarding property devolution. For instance, on the Malabar coast it is not only the Nairs but also the predominantly Muslim population of the Lakshadweep islands that follow the matrilineal system of marumakathayam. The system of dividing communities according to their religion and applying to them their own ‘divine law’ disregarding caste, tribe and race differences was introduced by the British.
The system of contractual marriage under Islamic law facilitated the scope for defining women’s rights. It recognised the enforceability of pre-nuptial agreements (kabein nama), the right to a stipulated mehr at the time of marriage and a defined share for a woman under the scheme of succession. Agnes sees women’s rights under Muslim law as being superior to both the Hindu as well as the Christian laws at the time of Independence.
During colonial rule, administrators in the empire’s ‘civilising mission’ used the legal structure. The English principles of justice, equity and good conscience were introduced into areas reserved for personal laws. Indian courts under colonial rule applied the English principle of a widow’s limited estate under which the property that devolved upon her would ‘revert’ to her husband’s male relatives upon her death. Further, the courts limited the concept of stridhana to exclude from it property inherited by a woman through her male or female relatives – an interpretation contrary to what was recognised by Mitakshara law. The period between 1850 and 1930 saw the elimination of a wide range of customs favourable to women, which departed from the Anglo-Hindu law, as the standard of proof of the existence of such custom was very high.
The subordinate legal status of the woman in England explained the ease with which judges applied Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence to the Indian legal system to systematically subvert women’s rights. Until the 20th century, women in Britain could not vote; married women had no right of disposal over their separate property; a husband had a right to whip his wife provided he used a switch no thicker than his thumb for correctional purposes under a legally accepted notion called ‘thumb rule’. Flavia makes the telling comment: ‘The concerns of the reformers for changing the status of women became trapped within the binaries of a superior Hindu culture projected by the revivalists and the civilising project of the British administrator. But rigid Victorian morality was the parameter set by all factions for determining the status of women’ (p. 65).
The chapter on politicisation of women’s rights, which constitutes the book’s central thematic, provides a fascinating analysis of the laws enacted during the period 1860-1950. Moving from the administrator’s earlier position of equating personal laws with religious laws and therefore leaving them untouched, this period witnessed the enactment of matrimonial laws for Christians and Parsis and ‘secular’ legislations like the Indian Succession Act 1865, the Special Marriage Act 1872 and the Guardians and Wards Act 1890. Although on sustained pressure from its women members, the Congress was compelled to ratify a demand for the enactment of a uniform civil code, it disappointed them when presented with an opportunity to make laws soon after being elected to the provincial governments under the Government of India Act 1935.
The Hindu Women’s Right to Property Act 1937, granted only a limited estate to a widow negating the right of married women to separate property under the scriptural notion of stridhana which the original Bill sought to restore. For their part, Muslim leaders got the Application of Shariat Act 1937 and the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act 1939 enacted. In the debates around the bill preceding the Shariat Act, Jinnah conceded the demands of feudal landowners and agreed to keep agrarian landholdings out of its purview. Thus, despite claims of empowering women, women’s rights were unashamedly subverted to the political agenda. ‘Beneath the profound objective of women’s welfare, lay a deeper political motive of strengthening Islam’ (p. 71). Again, in the Constituent Assembly, it was around the nation and ‘national integration’ that the debate on a UCC centred – a theme that has since recurred with regularity.
In the ’50s, the Hindu Code introduced, in splinters, legal equality for women while dispensing with several of their customary rights in the interests of uniformity. The demand for a UCC was then partly premised on the myth that Hindus were governed by a secular egalitarian and gender-just code which should therefore be extended to liberate Muslim women. While explaining this, Flavia Agnes argues that the legislations that comprised the Hindu Code ‘were neither Hindu in character nor based on modern principles of equality but reflected the worst tendencies of both’ (p. 81). Further, through a detailed analysis of judicial decisions, she demonstrates how the rights of women, particularly those concerning succession and marriage, were systematically whittled down.
The controversy surrounding the judgment of the Supreme Court in the Shah Bano case in 1985 brought into sharp focus the politics of identity and led to the enactment of the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act in 1986, negating the effect of the judgment. The Act, seen as a move to appease Muslims, was simultaneous with the decision of the then government to unlock the disputed Babri Masjid in February 1986. Flavia sees the judgment and the Act as a watershed for the women’s movement. ‘From this point onwards,’ she argues, ‘the gender discourse became far more complex. Identity politics and gender equality could no longer be placed as two mutually exclusive and hostile terrains. While gender equality continued to be the desired goal, the demand had to be reformulated within the context of cultural diversity and rights of marginalised sections’ (p. 106).
The dangers of the fundamentalist right wing Hindu ideologues hijacking the gender discourse by advocating a UCC is explored in a chapter that critically analyses the impact of the decisions of Justice Tilhari of the Allahabad High Court invalidating triple talaq, as well as that of the Supreme Court in Sarla Mudgal declaring second marriages by Hindu males upon conversion to Islam as illegal and constituting the offence of bigamy under the Penal Code. In exposing the communal undertones of the judgments, Flavia reiterates the falsity of the premise that Muslims are more polygamous than Hindus – studies show that they are comparable.
The judgments have compelled women’s rights advocates to take a more cautious approach in order to clearly distinguish their demand from that of the right wing communal forces. She rightly points out: ‘One cannot help but strike parallels between the contemporary judicial zeal to modernize and civilise the Muslim community by abolishing polygamy and triple talaq with the colonial zeal to reform Hindu society through regulations on sati and child marriage in the last century’ (p. 111).
Flavia argues that any reform in family laws which sets out to redefine gender relations within marriage and the family would have to account for the political, legal and economic complexities. After a detailed analysis of the drafts for enactment of the UCC, she concludes that they have not contextualised women’s rights within these diverse complexities. She emphasises the need to delink concerns of gender reforms from the context of identity politics within which the demand for a UCC is currently located. Finally, she suggests that focused and sustained campaigns around specific issues might prove more effective than following the mirage of an all-encompassing, ideal UCC.
At a time when many voices have been stilled by fundamentalist rhetoric, this book provides a sober and rational basis on which to resurrect the debate.
S. Muralidhar
ANTHROPOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS IN GENDER – Intersecting Fields by Leela Dube. Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2001.
Leela Dube’s work offers absorbing insights of the kind that drew many of us to the discipline of anthropology. To the specialist community of anthropologists in India, this collection reveals the true value of the field worker’s craft, born and shaped out of the direct encounter between community and self in the diverse locales of study. And to the scholar-activists who study ‘gender’, she offers a unity of academic thought and experiences, something to build on and feed into a better understanding of the Indian woman’s milieu.
What makes the book particularly special is her meticulous and deep scholarship, which re-excavates much of the body of social anthropology dealing with relations of kinship and social structures as they occur in communities across the subcontinent. But doubly so as she concentrates on the aspect of gender, an erstwhile silent protagonist in the kinship puzzles well unravelled in the classical anthropological tomes of Dumont and Srinivas. Few would quibble with the extent of attention given to the role of women if not gender in those pages. Yet for many, works such as this one, that tackle head-on the gendered dimensions of the role of kinship, provide a welcome analytical progression to further our thinking on how traditional institutions articulate and shape the lives of the quiet majority.
‘Anthropological Explorations...’ is interesting for what it tells us and for what it tentatively hints at different moments. One of its strengths is its comfortable familiarity with the elastic quality of the distance between the observed and the observer. The ease with she handles the challenges of detachment and empathy enables the author to provide conclusions with a degree of confidence, at variance with contemporary anthropological anxiety over the problematic of methodology employed with the ‘subjects’ of study.
Perhaps this is an important clue to keep in mind while exploring Dube’s analyses. In the ‘thick’ descriptions of her explorations there is a tacit acceptance of the feeling of being scrutinised and accepted in turn by the womenfolk of the communities, reflecting the deeply personal quality of the nature of her fieldwork. The encounter between the anthropologist-woman and the community appears to be a relationship clearly determined by the reality of gender, with the understanding that flows from a feeling of empathy that is experienced by both parties. As she observes, her experiences with Gond women (a tribe from Southern Chattisgarh), through most of her interactions and access into the inner world of women were dialogical. Many areas of communication were opened up by the fact that she was a woman having experienced the same biological and cultural imperatives of marriage and childbirth that women universally face.
Though a great deal of Dube’s fieldwork, it may be argued, is dated and her work less self-consciously feminist (her fieldwork among the Gond took place in the fifties) the perspective is in line with the softer feminism of the nineties. A typical statement she makes illustrates this well– ‘She (the Indian woman) has infinitely greater patience for the minutiae of daily life – call them trivialities if you will – and she has greater situational adjustability. Her life experiences impart these attributes to her and she can use them to full advantage while doing fieldwork.’
The meat of the book lies in the analyses that spring from the assumptions that kinship provides – the principles that govern the distribution and control of resources, the formation of groups and the placement of individuals (including women), and the nature of group membership. While studying the interplay of biology and society and examining whether the one determines the other, Dube draws from a variety of vocabularies – from the scriptures, strictures employed, metaphors and the group members of the community. She differentiates the notion of femininity from the concept of femeninety – an aspect of women’s self-identification at a structural level – seeing it as a continuous process in the life cycle of women. These processes, she seems to argue, take place in the liminal space between biological reality and kinship relations. The liminality of the space contains the unsaid rules and scriptural notions of women as upholders of kinship which determine the relations between genders.
The kinship structure of the tribe that determines the rule of descent and the sharing of property and resources, she suggests hinges on the patrilineal, patrilocal descent pattern of the community. And to bear out the argument, women in matrilineal tribes enjoy a larger control of resources with a strong emphasis on the filial ties between brother and sister. Her fieldwork among the Muslim matrilineal tribe of Kalpeni in Lakshwadeep appears to substantiate this view. Yet we are reminded of Levi-Strauss’ analysis of women in kinship structures as bearers of signs as they move from their natal home to their marital homes. The author herself quotes a sizeable body of anthropological literature, which takes the stance that in both systems it is essentially the men who control the productive resources, be they husbands or brothers. In defense of the argument there is greater gender equality in matrilineal structures, Dube attributes the exception to the comparative sexual freedom and liberty enjoyed by the women in Kalpeni.
Though powerful the argument is not entirely convincing, given that it more or less exclusively hinges on the superior liberty enjoyed by the women of the Kalpeni community.
She further explains that freedom of women in matrilineal communities stems from the control that they have over productive resources, unlike the injunctions and limitations that women face in patrilineal communities, allowing women (especially in the higher castes) control only over the domestic sphere and child rearing. As she points out, women in the lower castes are active participants in the occupations associated with their caste and support the men and often the family through their labour in the relations of production. Simultaneously when the significant element of caste is juxtaposed onto the kinship structure, the concepts of purity and pollution become important in exploring the articulation of dominant practices surrounding women. Interestingly she connects this to the practice of early child marriage, where girls are married before puberty to avoid the dangers of pollution, a potential hazard when working in the public sphere to assist the family.
Closely connected to her argument are the ethnographic examples that Dube cites to explain the vulnerability of lower caste women to higher caste men, particularly with regard to sexual exploitation and rape. Through institutionalised mechanisms high caste men can easily cast off the ritual pollution incurred through these encounters. Implicit in Dube’s narrative at this point, is the reverse – that defilement of upper caste women by lower caste men does not happen as a matter of course due to moral injunctions and rigid internalisation of ritual hierarchies, though she does not dwell on this aspect.
Obviously the relations of dominance are an important component explaining caste-based atrocities. However, she does not sufficiently stress that the economic dimension of dominance is homologous with the caste dimension. As she notes several times in the book, patriliny and caste form a deadly combination for dominance and control of women in the community. It would be well to make explicit the third component of this deadly cocktail, economic control over resources produced by the family and caste groups that powerfully reinforce ritual hierarchies and control over women of all castes, as well as the men of ritually lower castes.
When a fine example of scholarship in the anthropology of gender is published, we must ask ourselves the question: What next? Because in the true tradition of social anthropology, ‘Explorations...’ neatly delineates the ‘is’ and ‘ought’ approaches. The book is one of the finest examples of the former, yet is chary about moving into the realms of the latter. It shows us what is and leaves us there. At its boldest it reaffirms the role of women as finding their own strategies to deal with the dominance and control exerted by culture and kinship. But these strategies are not mentioned except in passing. Had they been taken up, this would have been a different book. An exploration into the politics of what women really do to regain control over their destinies and the possibilities that we could suggest for any real change in the status of women. Perhaps the activism of gender studies could then better connect with the anthropology of gender for a more purposive culmination.
Rohini Kohli
THE SILKEN SWING edited by Fernando Franco, Jyotsna Macwan and Suguna Ramanathan. Stree, 2000.
On a beautiful branch of a mango tree,
A silken swing tied with a rope, dear sir.
Brother gave the gift of bullock carts,
He sent the sister to the marital home, dear sir.
THIS song sung by dalit women in Gujarat provides the book its title. Based on a research study conducted in the villages of Varasada in Khambat taluka and the villages of Gamph in Dhandhuka taluka by the Behavioural Science Centre (subsequently referred to as the Centre), Ahmedabad, the book analyses the cultural universe of dalit women. Writing it was a collective effort and members of the research team have been duly acknowledged for their contributions.
The subjects of the study were both women of the Vankar and Bhangi communities, who are dalit, and women of the Koli-Patel community. Considering that Koli Patels fall within the caste hierarchy while the dalits are outside it, the editors offer no rationale for including them within the scope of the study other than the fact that the Centre had been working with the Koli Patels because of their extreme poverty and had collected interesting data. Though the inclusion of this community provides a base for asserting that restrictions on women increase as they move up the caste ladder, one wonders whether that is sufficient reason to justify their inclusion within the study.
The authors stress that since all oppressive discourses feed into one another, any understanding of the universe of dalit women must take into account both the patriarchal oppression that women face as well as the oppression that they face as dalits.
The dominant viewpoint in the book refuses to classify dalit women as passive creatures caught in a helpless web of kinship and caste relations. The authors recognise the resistances of negotiation, which though less apparent than the resistances of confrontation, are continuously used by women with skilful ingenuity. While recognising that the construction of women as subalterns raises the peculiar complexity of their own menfolk being the oppressors, the authors are quick to point out that the ties that women share with their oppressors are too personal for a one-sided strategy of emancipation to be practicable. Men are seen as integral and necessary to movements for confronting oppressive gender structures in South Asian communities.
The chapter ‘Culture of Work’ describes different kinds of paid and unpaid work done by men and women and analyses how caste and gender discourses influence the allocation of tasks and payments. Belonging to caste groups where women have to move into public spaces to work, they challenge the upper caste insistence on seclusion of women. Therefore, they are also labeled inferior and low by the upper castes.
Women recognise their paid work as valuable. Koli women have a much lower rate of participation in paid work than Vankar and Bhangi women. Consequently, the Vankar and Bhangi women have a much better sense of household finances and inflow of income than Koli women.
There are interesting paradoxes in the way women view their paid work. Talking to the field researchers the women repeatedly complained of fatigue. Considering the huge burden of work both within and outside the home this thakan (tiredness) is not surprising. Yet, they almost dismiss their labour and ensuing fatigue, taking care to allow husbands some extra rest after their hard labour.
This study was initiated with a definite intention of bringing the voices of dalit women into mainstream discourse. The strategy chosen was to study the stories women tell (chapter 5) and the songs they sing (chapter 6). The stories recounted in the book have been selected from a large number collected by the Centre. They have been chosen because they represent pervasive preoccupations and appear to say something about the cultural world of women. Many of the stories reinforce stereotypical role functions, and underline the boundaries and positions to be maintained within families.
However, the stories told by the Bhangis seem to offer interesting variations. Many of them are told in a spirit of lighthearted fun. Yet, on closer examination they reveal covert criticisms of the higher castes. This is another example of the way in which Bhangi women develop their culture of resistance; they prefer subtle attacks to open confrontation which may bring reprisals that they are not powerful enough to handle.
The songs collected by the research team suggest a dynamic form. Many of the songs articulate a new self-consciousness; some are expressions of current emotion, and several are political satire. The Vankars have a lament in which they sing of their woes under ‘this Congress government’. A Koli Patel phatana (insult song) proposes a reversal of gender roles where all will go to the seashore to eat ice cream and the men will eat the leftovers and wash the dishes. This song indicates that women realize that the gender division of labour can be altered.
This chapter highlights the strong identification that dalit women have with the Mother Goddess and how they celebrate her in the non-Sanskritised forms of Ambikamata, Khodiyarmata and Hadaikamata. The authors point out that though the Sanskritised forms like Parvati have considerable presence in the lives of these women, the songs emphasise the connection between the erotic and the maternal and see the Mother Goddess more as erotically powerful than a dutiful wife.
The tension between the original dalit culture and the subsequent influence of the Sanskitising mainstream is highlighted in the chapter ‘Marriage, Sexuality and Motherhood’. This chapter provides instances of sexual self-assertion by women challenging the monolithic understanding of women’s virtue constructions subsuming women’s sexuality in marriage. There are several incidents of dalit women having sexual encounters with men of the high Darbar or Patel castes. The writers admit that it is sometimes difficult to pinpoint whether these relations are voluntary or exploitative. Positing themselves against the upper caste perception of all sex outside marriage as sexual anarchy, the authors assert that desire experienced by the subject outside marriage be given a positive valuation.
This assertion appears a little simplistic in a work characterised by an appreciation of complex nuances. However, this is possibly an inherent reflection of the writers’ desire to communicate the agency and relative autonomy of dalit women vis-ˆ-vis upper caste women. Sexual candour, if not actual practice, definitively separates dalit women from upper caste women.
In a sensitively written chapter, ‘Negotiating Spaces’, the authors offer lucid definitions of the concepts of exclusion, spaces, women’s space, negotiation and power. They show how women use spaces to offer resistance in a milieu where it is difficult for them to directly resist those who have power over them. They also caution against romanticising women’s dissipated resistance through such spaces. They make out a case for understanding such fitful resistance as rebellion simmering below the surface, using it as a means of collectively articulating women’s protest and subsequent overt action.
The valuable information and insights are further strengthened by the epilogue and detailed appendices. This reviewer was surprised that the authors did not examine the question of violence against women in detail. There are references to violence by husbands against wives, by upper caste men against dalit women, by elder women-in-law against younger women. These instances have been presented, but unfortunately no attempt has been made to analyse this violence that is a cornerstone of both caste and gender oppression.
This book is well researched, cogent and comprehensive and will serve the needs and concerns of academics, development workers and activists. Translations into Indian languages in a less academic style would make the book accessible to many readers who do not read English.
Anchita Ghatak
WOMEN DEVELOPMENT WORKERS: Implementing Rural Credit Programmes in Bangladesh by Anne Marie Goetz. Sage Publications, New Delhi, Thousand Oaks, London, 2001.
MUCH has been written about and made of micro-credit for women. It attracts huge amounts of government and international aid and is often seen as a magic pill for all development ills. It is certainly on its way to becoming the cornerstone of gender and development policies both domestically and among multilateral organizations like The World Bank.
In most studies on the impact of micro-credit on women and development, the focus has been on the beneficiaries. Anne Marie Goetz takes an about turn and rivets her gaze on the experiences of people who deliver these policies to their intended clients. She examines the impact of these policies on the women (and also men) development workers, both field level and in managerial roles, at the Grameen Bank and the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), two premier and model institutions in the field of micro-credit programmes for women in Bangladesh.
It cannot be denied that gender and development policy has taken an innovative turn in seeing women not only in their domestic and reproductive roles but also as producers engaged in entrepreneurial and market activities. Policy-makers now seek to increase poor women’s access to economic resources like credit that was traditionally considered a male commodity. Moreover, women are being employed in large numbers to carry out development work as they have an advantage in reaching and interacting with women beneficiaries. This is especially true in Bangladesh, which practices female seclusion and restricts women’s interactions with males. In the book, Goetz takes a look at women working as development agents to see whether and how they interpret the needs and interests of their women clientele and whether they identify with these interests and needs as women.
Goetz’s contention is that institutions engaged in development work, even those that profess gender equity as an important policy goal and largely target poor rural women, have structures and cultures of decision-making and practices that reflect the gendered norms of a male dominated society. This restricts and constrains the role of women development workers in identifying and championing the interests of their women clientele. The book overturns the fabric of development work and looks at what is happening at the underseams – at the motivations and experiences of field workers who are the conduits through whom development policies flow to become outcomes.
This she does by looking at (a) a profile of women development agents in comparison with their male colleagues in terms of class, education, family backgrounds as well as their motivations, experiences and reactions in doing the work they have chosen to do; (b) implementation of the policies of the two organizations – especially the presence or lack of discretion and flexibility in the implementation of policies by rural field workers and the different experiences of male and female workers in doing so; (c) the organization of space, time and culture within the two organizations – the ways in which these reflect (or not) the gendered structure of the larger society to which they belong; and (d) whether women, as field workers and especially as managers, are able to establish a ‘voice’ that is credible and authoritative.
Excerpts from group and individual interviews with both female and male workers, as well as case studies, clearly reveal that simply employing more women as development workers or targeting more women as beneficiaries of development is neither necessary nor sufficient as a strategy to counteract insidious forms of resistance to gender equity. Women workers as colleagues with male workers often face the same subordination and exclusion which women in general do. This focus on field workers and what and how they see what they are doing is crucial in making development institutions self-aware of their own resistances to making gender-equity a basis of their own organization. Alignments of authority with maledom or making traits of care and nurturance exclusively feminine – attitudes to which government institutions, NGOs and other institutions and many brands of feminism succumb – continue to be problematic.
The general notion that giving more loans to women (or employing more women) redeems development policy from a gender equity point of view is in any case quite ham-handed. Women make better debtors than men and it makes better bottom line sense for an organization providing credit to the poor to lend more to women than to men.
The mix of issues explored by Goetz raises difficult methodological problems. The question as to what constitutes women’s needs and interests has dogged the discourse on women’s empowerment from the start; it is also one which divides the different camps working for women’s ‘empowerment’. Do women themselves as a group share common interests? Is what they themselves identify as their own needs and interests not shaped by asymmetrical power relations that they have internalized?
It is a commonsense observation that women share more common ground with men of their own class than with women belonging to a different stratum of society. Anyone who raises the question of women’s empowerment then cannot choose not to impute interests and needs to women that is not flavoured by some brand of feminism he or she subscribes to – it is an unavoidable part of the nature of the problematic. Goetz foregrounds a ‘controlling presence for women, transformation of values that inform interpretation and communication, and leadership that does not command but represents.’ For development workers she sees a role for ‘local heroism’ where they are able to respond to the needs of the people they aid in their varied local environments and contexts.
Anne Marie Goetz knows Bangladesh and its various micro-credit programmes well. This familiarity allows her to provide answers to questions which we may not have imagined raising. She balances both the changing realities on the ground as also those that are unchanging. The purveyors of the development business are attempting to incorporate gender into their equations, whether theoretically or practically. But just as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle posits that all measurements require factoring in the agent doing the measuring, policy-makers and organizations engaged in development work need to work their own attitudes into the landscape they are professing to change. The book succeeds in conveying this.
Sangeeta Goyal
SHIFTING SANDS: Women’s Lives and Globalization edited by the Centre for Women’s Development Studies. Stree, Calcutta, 2000.
SEVEN authors use diverse approaches to examine the impact of stabilization and structural adjustment policies in India on the lives of poor women in the context of globalization within the locus of the household. The focus is on the uneven impact of these policies across households by socio-economic class, in particular the disproportionate burden that women in poor households bear vis-ˆ-vis men. As governments reduce expenditure on social sectors like education and health, the price of goods bought by the poor increases due to deregulation. Further, the patterns and distribution of employment and livelihood opportunities change as the economy undergoes structural alterations.
The degradation of the environment as the economy becomes more free market oriented often results in greater costs for women. Joy-Ranadive Deshmukh, in the book’s introduction, underlines the paradox: while globalization requires high quality human capital as the prime engine of growth and development, stabilization and structural adjustment policies make it harder for the poor to engage in proper human capital production.
Deshmukh opens up the household for analysis, pointing to the many roles that women play as producers, consumers and distributors. Policy-makers have a misleading picture of the household as an undifferentiated unit, which hinders them from making a proper assessments of costs and benefits of structural adjustment and stabilization policies on the different members. Globalization demands better developed human resources. If households and women are the locus where such development takes place, this neglect or ignorance of the household and women’s contributions may well negate the professed goals of economic development and growth.
K. Seeta Prabhu examines the trends in education and health expenditures by the central and state governments in 1990-91 and 1996-97. One of the conditions of SAP is fiscal and monetary tightening by the government. The experience of other countries, as also India, has been reduced social sector expenditure. As the poor are most dependent on these expenditures, such cuts hurt them the most. While reduction in expenditures do not necessarily entail loss in well-being if sector specific policies are simultaneously undertaken, for example changing the pattern of expenditure towards primary health and educational facilities and making resource use within the sector more efficient, this has not happened. In the context of globalization, with an emphasis on tertiary education, such sector specific policies may not find the requisite political support. The health sector infrastructure, which is already poor and requires major overhauling too, will bear the brunt.
Malavika Karlekar provides a comprehensive description of women’s various roles as producer, consumer and distributor of household resources as well as reproducers. Studies have shown women and girls to be the most susceptible to morbidity and mortality and the last to receive medical attention. The poor provision of primary health facilities exacerbates the situation. If SAP requires women to expend more effort in maintaining food and livelihood security of their households, it will adversely affect their health.
The two chapters by Kumud Sharma and Sumi Krishna draw out the linkages between gender, poverty and the environment and the impact of SAP on these linkages. Both acknowledge the diversity of ecosystems in India and the complex ways in which communities engage with them, exacerbating the difficulty of generalizing from specific cases. Kumud Sharma points to women’s lack of access to and control over resources. Environmental degradation can be expected to accompany SAP as the structure of the economy increasingly follows market diktats. It will not only mean greater workload for women, but also endanger food and livelihood security for poor and vulnerable households.
Sumi Krishna’s essay is the most clear-eyed in the entire book. While less than categorical about the negative impacts of SAP, she cautions against taking an overly romantic view of traditional societies being mostly egalitarian both regarding the access of the poor to natural resources or the role and status of women being higher than in overtly patriarchal communities. Extending the picture of the household provided by Ranadive, she points out that women play a role in conserving resources. The environment should be made separate and not subsumed under the household economy as an undifferentiated factor. Moreover, with respect to access and use of available natural resources, it is not the household but the community – the ways in which different households interact – that is more important. Therefore the community should be a part of the analysis.
Krishna draws lessons from the Green Revolution experience, which had large environmental and social costs, and speculates that the impact of SAP could be much the same. She discusses the possible impacts of international trade and biotechnology on agro diversity, as well as on the status of women who may find themselves more marginalized as a result.
The book as a whole remains speculative about the probable impacts of SAP on the changing position of women in India. In general, few empirical studies exist for India that attempt to assess the link between global and macro-processes and micro-behaviour with a view to answering questions about the status of women. The study under review itself suffers from the same problem. A single chapter by Preet Rustagi, Vasudha Jain and Indrani Mazumdar profile the lives of ten women living in a slum. They admit that their findings cannot be considered as evidence to the questions informing the book’s purposes.
Without empirically informed studies, it is hard to understand how things have actually changed with the onset of globalization, and strategies to deal with them will and do remain in the sphere of rhetoric. If the impact of SAP on women is as adverse as the book suggests, it is imperative that empirical studies form the next wave of research. Only then can we make a real effort to protect and enhance women’s position in the face of a fast changing national and world economy. Many such studies have been conducted for Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and South East Asian countries. It is surprising that we have none for India even though the questions have been around for over a decade. A single study focused on providing a before and after scenario would have been more revealing than a book marked by speculative detail.
Sangeeta Goyal
NEW REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES, WOMEN’S HEALTH AND AUTONOMY: Freedom or Dependency? by Jyotsna Agnihotri Gupta. Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2000.
Jyotsna Gupta has undertaken an ‘enormous task’ – the study of new reproductive technologies (NRTs), the term referring to the new technologies designed to intervene in the process of human reproduction in three areas: prevention of conception and birth, assisting reproduction, and genetic and pre-natal diagnosis. She examines the uses of these technologies in India and the Netherlands, especially for their implications for women’s health and autonomy. These countries were chosen as they are both involved in supporting research in the development and use of NRTs. The purpose was to study their commonalties and differences and to examine the central question – ‘Does the use of NRTs give women more or less autonomy?’
The study attempts to understand the roles of men and women from which these technologies emerge, the politics of reproduction within which these technologies are used, and how they reproduce gender and power relations implicit in the development, applications and the use of NRTs. The methodology followed an historical approach and an egalitarian research process characterised by reciprocity and intersubjectivity between the researcher and her subjects. Interviews were conducted with various actors in the field, i.e. users, potential users, non-users, developers and providers, policy-makers and representatives of international organisations involved in population activities, the understanding being that the use of NRTs is not an individual affair but takes place within the context of ideologies and policies of motherhood and population control.
The author has presented the debates on these technologies, their scientific/medial aspects and their social, legal, ethical, economic and health implications, by using the concepts of autonomy and reproductive freedom as analytical tools. The chapters in the voluminous book include gender constructions and control of women’s bodies, deconstructing/reconstructing motherhood, gender perspectives on control over reproduction and population policies, the different technologies in use and voices from the field.
The author supports the view that these technologies offer women choices, but also that they make possible the control of women by the state, religious leaders, the medical profession and men. In promoting population policies through the use of NRTs, national governments, population control organisations, multinational drug industries, public and privately funded bodies, medical researchers and health workers have a significant impact on the health and autonomy of women.
According to Gupta, it is important to understand that reproduction has an individual and a social dimension and there is tension between these, for instance between birth control and population control. The central question in the study is answered by detailing the important factors and actors affecting women’s reproductive autonomy at the micro and macro levels.
The factors which play an important role are related to culture, like patriarchal ideologies which exercise control over women’s economic resources and mobility, family and motherhood ideologies, ideas regarding woman’s nature, sexuality and reproduction, which in turn are related to socio-economic conditions like access to education and income generation for women, quality health care and childcare facilities and women’s participation in the democratic process at different levels. The actors are population controllers who devise state-led policies, international donor governments, the state, the media, women’s interest groups and so on.
Gupta states that NRTs as a choice for some women may become coercion for others. With the development and use of NRTs, the slogan of a ‘woman’s right to choose’ brings out the contradictions in that demand and sharpens differences between women. They offer contradictory possibilities as some women might reject some while others might embrace them in their strategies for autonomy and control over their lives. Reproductive freedom is an essential element of women’s autonomy. However, unless other conditions of autonomy like access to resources, equal decision-making with partners, respect and mobility, are met, NRTs fail as a prerequisite for gaining autonomy in other areas of life.
Though technologies per se do not improve sexual/gender relations in ‘unfree conditions’, she feels that it may be difficult to reject all existing reproductive technologies until better alternatives have been developed. She suggests that women should demand better and safer methods and more transparency regarding methodologies and decision-making roles in the development of technologies as well as their marketing. She concludes that NRTs while offering some new freedoms to women, also create new dependencies for them.
Notwithstanding much discussion in the West on the medical, ethical and legal aspects of NRTs, the discussions on the consequences for women as an oppressed group are restricted to a small group of feminists. Gupta shares the views of a category of feminists who believe that technology is historically and culturally determined and is shaped by economic and political interests. She calls for a critical look at the nature of these technologies, the ideas from which they originate and the prejudices they reinforce, demanding a total ban on their development, while urging for a new praxis of science.
Other social scientists have taken the position that all NRTs are different and that many women could use them according to their circumstances and priorities. The issue they raise is whether political and cultural conditions can be created in which these technologies can be employed by women to shape the experience of reproduction according to their own definitions.
But in contexts where this is not possible, there is no doubt that the unfettered use of these technologies, combined with an unethical and irresponsible medical system, can create more problems than solutions for women.
Though NRTs have been extensively discussed by social scientists, ethicists, lawyers and technologists for many years in the West, this study is among the few that attempts to detail the debates and emerging issues in the context of the invisibility of such social science research in India. It is important that this is followed up by in-depth studies of the everyday realities of women using these technologies. For example, in India, exploration of the implications of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) and genetic screening technologies is absent, even in discussions among health researchers and feminists.
These current and potential use of these technologies raise many new problematic questions. The search for the ‘perfect’ baby through genetic screening, sex determination, pre-implantation diagnosis, commercialisation of egg/sperm donation and motherhood and hormonal contraceptives raise many social, ethical and legal issues. Is a society like ours, where researchers and activists struggle to ensure access to quality public health services, few are ready to address the emerging complex social, ethical and legal questions thrown up by these NRTs.
Anjali Widge
PERPETUAL MOURNING: Widowhood in Rural India by Martha Alter Chen. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2000.
THE title of the book is disturbing, yet compelling. In my travels across rural India over the last 15 years, initially as a women’s empowerment programme manager and subsequently a researcher, I came across single women – those who had been widowed, deserted or those who never married. I also came across women who were struggling alone, within families and with husbands. I came across women who were the main breadwinners and who supported their families – including husbands. I also came across women who were sexually exploited – sold, used and abused – despite being married and with husbands.
While the social status of the women I met varied, I never came across widows who were in perpetual mourning. Talking to them and working with them (a significant number of women working as social activists are single), I was happy to see that many of them were strong and with a wonderful sense of humour. Life is harsh and they are perhaps the most marginalized group among poor women, but they saw their life as a struggle – before and after being widowed. The event of the death of the husband was one more blow in their life full of struggles. After the initial shock and grief, many women emerged stronger and more autonomous, despite the weight of being a Hindu widow. The poor rural working women are different from those who are not permitted to work or step out of the house. It is the latter who may mourn for a long time and whose spirits are crushed beyond endurance. But all of them agree that widowhood is but an extension of ritualistic, social, economic and physical oppression experienced by women and girls in our society – be they Hindu, Muslim, Christian or from any other religion or sect.
Martha Chen’s book is interesting, unique and of value to lay persons and researchers. It is unique because the book draws upon detailed life histories of 500 women across the country – from the so-called matrilineal society of Kerala to the oppressive patriarchal society of Rajasthan. While the formal status of women in different regions is different, the one thread that binds them together is the way our society looks upon widows – as inauspicious, as a burden, as having no legal rights (as a wife or daughter or daughter-in-law), as a commodity who can be sold and passed over to other men (by in-laws, fathers and brothers), as a source of unpaid family labour and most disturbingly as a sexual being who is a threat to family honour (and social order) on the one hand and easy prey on the other. As we go up the caste and economic hierarchy, the ritual status worsens and dependence/exploitation increases. In working class and poor middle class families women are left to fend for themselves and this does, in subtle ways, improve their social status.
A valuable contribution of this book is an insight into ways in which the social norms that govern widows stem from and regulate the lives of married Hindu women. The spectre of widowhood looms large and a range of ritual fasts, festivals and role models (piety, devotion) are structured to either ward off the misfortune or to cope with it. Similarly, relationship with natal family (especially brothers) is also mediated by the fear of widowhood or desertion. Women’s inability to fight for their share of natal property (despite favourable laws) is invariable linked to the desire of sisters to maintain cordial relationship with their brothers. This perhaps explains why laws providing for equal inheritance for daughters and for widows to inherit husbands’ property have little meaning when women rarely asset their rights.
An interesting thread that runs through the book is the issue of remarriage – levirate or otherwise. While the relationship between caste hierarchy and practice of widow remarriage is discussed at some length, emerging mutations, especially in Rajasthan and other contiguous areas, have not been explored. For over 15 years now sathins of the erstwhile Women’s Development Programme and NGO activists of Rajasthan have highlighted the prevalence of sale and re-sale of widows under the guise of ‘Nata’. The husbands’ family sells women to men (who may already have a wife and may need additional labour or may in turn use her in other ways). The father/brother of the women share the sale price. Activists in Rajasthan have highlighted the plight of women who have been repeatedly ‘married’ through the back door and handed over from one family to another. The so-called guardians of Hindu culture and tradition have not questioned the religious and social sanctity of this practice.
Functionaries of Mahila Samakhya in Uttar Pradesh narrates similar experiences. This practice may become more prevalent in those parts of the country where adverse sex ratios, especially in the younger cohort, may tempt families to barter young widows for economic gain. Systematic documentation of different forms of remarriage and exploitation of widows would be necessary if women’s organisations and human rights groups are to fight against such blatant violation of human rights of women.
Vimala Ramachandran
WOMEN, FAMILY AND CHILD CARE IN INDIA by Susan C. Seymour. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999.
Seymour’s study on the transition in child care and family patterns over a period of 30 years in Bhubaneshwar is refreshing and enjoyable because it combines deep insights into the changing social processes in modern, urban India along with the viewpoints and responses to those very changes of the subjects of her research, the women and men of Bhubaneshwar.
Seymour begins her study in 1965-67 focusing on the lives of 130 children and their extended kin and returns in 1989 to focus on the women, the mothers, daughters and grandmothers. The result is a fascinating account of changing family structures and gender systems. The changes are documented by looking at both the old town of Bhubaneshwar and the new capital.
The author conscious of her own location as a western social scientist looking at another culture and the divergent assumptions about the ‘normal’ in culture and human development that accompany such an exercise. She outlines the assumptions of much of western psychological research, which treats the individual as central and focuses upon individual self-development. In such a society, self-reliance and self-realisation are the expected and valued outcomes of child development and close dyadic ties between mother and child the norm. In sharp contrast, the preference in Indian society is to rear children collectively, with multiple caretakers. Close mother-child bonds are discouraged and the goals of socialisation are interdependence and embeddedness in the family, not independence. Thus the concepts of personhood also vary, leading to vastly different outcomes both at the societal and individual levels.
Seymour is aware of the caste and class variations that criss-cross Indian social structure and their implications for both child care and child rearing and gender roles. The typical Hindu patrifocal takes a beating with poor families. Chapter five, titled ‘Caste/Class and Gender: To Be Poor and Female’, sensitively deals with the dilemmas of the poor. ‘If one is poor in Bhubaneshwar, it is very difficult to fulfil certain patrifocal family ideals’ (p. 145). The different worlds occupied by women in the higher rungs of the social hierarchy are compared with those at the lower end. ‘A poor low-status married women is oriented much more towards economic survival than toward the continuity of a husband’s patriline’ (p. 145).
Women in poor and lower caste families generally enjoy greater equality with their menfolk, are less subservient to their in-laws and their menfolk than women from upper status families. But there is a considerable price that this greater equality extracts from the poor women, and that is hard work in both the domestic and public realms. There is little to go around; they also experience a high rate of miscarriage and infant mortality. Her respondents talk of the tremendous importance of having children and the pain of losing children (p. 175).
The chapter on ‘Systems of Family and Gender in Transition’ succinctly and sensitively sums up the dilemmas that face Indian women and society. Outlining the areas of change and conflict, particularly regarding questions of orientation towards interdependence or independence and personal autonomy, the author poses what she considers the critical sociological question: whether increased individualism is necessarily linked with modernisation, i.e., industrialisation, urbanisation and western style schooling (p. 271). She suggests that it is perhaps too early to conclude that a significant shift from a collectivist/interdependent society to a more individualist one is occurring. However, there is definitely a movement in the direction of increased independence and autonomy for women.
Seymour takes issue with the approach of the Government of India’s report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India – Towards Equality – for its emphasis on western individualism in portraying the situation of Indian women. Contrarily, she suggests that the thrust of her work is to demonstrate that women are not merely passive victims; ‘...they are also actors who help to shape (reproduce) and reshape (transform) their sociocultural system. But they must do so within their culture – within the constraints of the prevailing social order and belief system in which they find themselves’ (p. 276). Discussing the psychocultural development of Indian women, she stresses the significance for women’s self-esteem of growing up within communities of women, even though two indicators of sexual inequality – purdah and sexual segregation – help to create these communities. Moreover, an emphasis on interdependence rather than autonomy in childhood socialisation does not inhibit the development of an inner sense of self.
Seymour refers to longitudinal studies by other anthropologists and concludes that they all suggest a movement towards the loosening of familial bonds of authority based upon age and gender hierarchies in favour of increased husband-wife intimacy and relaxation of restrictions on women.
Vasanthi Raman
GENDER AND SPACE: Femininity, Sexualization and the Female Body by Seemanthini Niranjana. Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2001.
Gender and Space – Femininity, Sexualization and the Female Body is a conceptual inquiry into how gendered bodies and spaces are produced, and the spatial axes underlying their everyday practices. How do bodies, particularly female bodies relate to space – physical and social, how do they inhabit and negotiate space/s at different levels? How can we explain and understand the ‘polyvalence of everyday spaces’?
Seemanthini Niranjana takes on a difficult and unusual task, of building a bridge between the abstract concepts of gender and space, and the realities of everyday life of women in Aadalapalya, a cluster of two villages and four hamlets 30 kms from Bangalore city. What makes it particularly unique is that it breaks away from the mode of the traditional anthropological monograph. Niranjana revisits the fieldwork site for her doctoral dissertation in a different and innovative way, using it as a base for conceptual musings and theoretical leads, weaving concepts in and out of her narrative. As a result, the book is something between a mini ethnography, a feminist anthropologist’s reflection of the process of engaging with the field and the discipline, and a theoretical springboard.
At one level the book is a critique of the narrative mode in traditional anthropology and the problematic of representation. At another, it looks at ways in which ‘spatial registers’ are evolved and maintained, and how these ascribe feminine behaviour and normal/moral lifestyles of women, in the process ordering and maintaining prevalent perceptions of the good woman/bad woman. Finally, Niranjana also explores the gaps in anthropological and sociological analyses in theorizing on gender and space and scouts possible openings for developing such theories, or incorporating them into existing theories. Often, at the risk of belabouring a point, Niranjana is preoccupied primarily with seeking ways in which femininity and sexualization of the female body translates into ‘spatial limits and boundaries’.
The book succeeds in raising some vital issues for feminists, anthropologists and scholars, for instance, the assertion that academics and feminists have to revisit the category of gender and see if it has not been allowed to stagnate as a concept. Or how one can revive the notion and infuse a new sense of understanding by using the approach of spatiality, i.e., through the lens of a socio-spatial matrix.
Niranjana aptly captures the distance – in time and in the ‘experience’, remembered and otherwise – between the fieldwork and its representation, i.e., between ethnography and the writing, between the experience and its presentation. Drawing attention to the ‘partial nature of truths in anthropological accounts’, she questions the validity of the insulated and self-contained ‘anthropological moment’. Self-conscious and self-critical of her peers and her discipline, Niranjana makes a contribution to ongoing debates of representation and fashions her own style of reflective, holistic narratives.
Conceptually interesting distinctions are made between place, location and space. While place has a givenness and location has been ascribed a politics, a dynamics, space has largely been perceived as emptiness. Space is not emptiness, which acquires meaning only ‘in oppositional relation to adjoining entities.’ Instead, it is an active organizing principle with autonomous characteristics, central to the experience and form of the social structures we live in. It follows then that a patriarchal structure leads to a particular organizing of space, and vice versa.
Within this must be considered the materiality of bodies – the actual implication of a body, being male or female in this structure, mediated through space – and the ways in which the body relates to or is made to relate to this space. This is the theoretical landscape in which Niranjana’s analysis is set, ultimately aiming to trace ‘how the body, and the modes in which it inhabits space, itself comes to be deployed as a medium through which "female" is constituted’ (p. 16).
Niranjana localises the private-public dichotomy in the language and the context of the community with a mapping of the ‘olage-horage’ of the region. ‘Olage-horage’ refers to the ‘inside-outside’ matrix, the ‘axes along which their world is ordered.’ These boundaries are defined and mediated by the community according to a complex interplay of caste, kinship, ritual and of course, gender. So village boundaries, as perceived by the villagers, are guided by the placement of shrines of guardian deities. Even an entire region of 33 outlying villages can be perceived as ‘ours’ as it falls under the supervision of one goddess’ domain. This ‘culturally resonant’ meaning endowed to ‘uru’ (our village) is distinct from the administrative category of ‘grama’. For others, the boundaries of one’s own end where caste affiliations end. Often for women, ‘my village’ is perceived as the natal village, rather than the affinal one. Myth or beliefs that define where one may be exposed to undesirable spirits or people, such as thick forests or deserted patches, also guide what is ‘inside/outside’.
The implication in each case, to our discomfiture, is that like the perception of the ‘private’ before it was challenged by feminists, the inside or the innerspace is one of security and safety: one’s own village, one’s own household, one’s own people are familiar and therefore, safe. Not only is the inside safe, it is also intensely moral. This is the logic which then guides the feminization of the spaces characterized as ‘inside’ and becomes the tool by which to set the standards of female morality and its regulation. Women’s daily lives must be confined to these inside spaces, and their every act must be measured so as not to threaten the morality and purity of these, so much so that even moving to far-away outside sites for work or wage labour is looked upon with suspicion, although working on one’s own field is still prudently considered an inside job.
Where there is female morality, can female sexuality be far behind? Within this ‘olage’ is played out a similar regulatory exercise of mapping ‘bodily matrices’ – that is, how the female body is looked at, experienced, presented and thereby regulated. Niranjana looks at the transition from girlhood to womanhood with the concomitant rites of passage, within the context of a heightened communal anxiety and awareness of the ambiguity and dangerousness of women’s fertility and sexuality. Of particular tension is the liminal period between adolescence and marriage. It is only after marriage, mosr so after motherhood, that the community sees her ‘womanhood’ as being realized and is able to breathe a sigh of relief.
From these perceptions of women’s bodies and morality, it is evident that female sexuality becomes legitimate only in the context of marriage and motherhood. Marriage, therefore, becomes the core of the ‘matrix of sexualization’. Niranjana elaborates that ‘the matrix specifies certain codes of moral conduct within the community and is often responsible for the active espousal of conceptions of the feminine... it contains injunctions regarding shame and honour, marriage and motherhood, and works towards regulating the movement of women, their activities, dress and even speech’ (p. 69). Ultimately the matrix is another regulatory mechanism for women and its embodiment by women themselves is the premise of self-regulation.
Women, however, are both given and take on important roles as cultural icons and religious conduits. They are ascribed critical ritual spaces wherein, in the same spirit as being the holders of morality and chastity, they are given the responsibility of performing rites during festivals and religious occasions. Whether it is through fasting, maintaining pollution/purity norms and observing rituals, women are the ‘conduit through which flows of well-being are invoked and ushered in ...based on the strength of the woman’s devotion’ (p. 75). Although women are symbols of auspiciousness across castes, Niranjana’s ministudy of rituals in the community clearly marks out the close link between women’s ritual space and caste identities.
Niranjana introduces the elements of power and agency by looking at the arenas of disputes and women’s speech, both strongly lodged in the context of the ‘inside-outside’. Challenging the presumption of the ‘outside’ as the domain of power and control, she examines women’s agency without restricting herself to the idea that it refers only to political, transformative action. As Niranjana says, ‘Disputes within a community provide a very revealing picture of the fields of power, alignments and pressures structuring its space’ (p. 89). It is in the time of disputes – whether related to caste, property or family – that the importance of limits or the threshold of permissible behaviour is highlighted. In particular the roles and spaces assigned to each member of the family/community and the shame of transgressing these come to the fore; for instance, it is a shame for ‘internal matters’ to go before the panchayat.
Niranjana also locates the way women use speech as a form of resistance and subversion. In a fascinating angle she closes in on gossip as being an invisibilized form of agency which, though marginal, helps to define and maintain boundaries. Often conducted in an ‘ambience of morality’ it facilitates the perpetuation of dominant norms of femininity, morality and sexualization. Further, it provides immense scope for policing behaviour (both of men and women) and harnessing public opinion, and even (poetic) justice. For example, in one particular case she notes: ‘(Siddamma’s) strategy in dealing with the situation seems to be to let others know about her husband’s affair, so that gossip will control his behaviour... She prefers this to seeking justice at the panchayat, for (this) would enable her husband to take her to task later for having made domestic concerns "public".’ (p. 94)
The book’s strength lies in its novel structure and attempt at actualizing a new narrative form. To her credit, Niranjana also makes a commendable beginning in conceptualizing and communicating a perspective on gender and space. However, in places it appears to be an exercise, though well crafted and in an interesting manner, of stating the obvious. While stating the obvious is critical in gender studies, and legitimate given the aura of an expose, one needs to be cautions of supra theorization and beware of ‘spreading too thin’. One casualty of attempting to ‘condense concepts on gender and space’ is readability; this is evident in continuous attention to and stress on articulating what is about to be said, what is trying to be suggested and so on, leading to repetition.
The concept of time, and its interplay with the concepts under study, has also been underplayed. It would have been of interest to look at how space was ordered before and how it has changed in recent years. Neither the generational aspect of space and its ordering, particularly for women, as well as the generational aspect of agency within the existing time frames and circumstances have been explored.
The discourse on female sexuality is largely confined to heterosexuality, particularly in the framework of marriage; the concept of sexualities – bisexuality, homosexuality, and transgender – has not been explored, whether in the framework of the field or outside it at merely a conceptual level. This is critical to the theorizing of gender and space – particularly from the angle of femininity, sexualization and the female body. Interestingly she also steers clear of violence and the threats inherent to transgression of boundaries, spaces and their implications on the female body. While safety within the ‘olage’ is reiterated, it is strange that this is not questioned in the context of domestic violence and sexual abuse. Profiles of women who have transgressed their limits in various ways, and the ensuing punishment would have been relevant.
Niranjana’s observation that our understanding of gender needs to be revised vigilantly, and not allowed to reify, is insightful. She feels there is a need to redefine gender and move away from the pre-given conceptualizations of gender premised on inequality and sexual difference.
Indeed, in her analysis she succeeds in looking at the creation of gendered bodies without constantly referring to what it means to be a man, and outside an evaluational mode of equality/inequality. However, not explicitly stating it does not mean inequality or an oppositional category of the feminine (sexuality/morality) does not exist. On the contrary, Niranjana’s is a classic study of the operation of patriarchy in a village community where an explicit judgement of inequality and the implications of feminization and sexualization for women are warranted.
While her concern that feminists have to constantly re-engage with the concept of gender is valid, to steer it into a post-feminist plane, away from the imperatives of inequality that do order the practice of gender, is perhaps premature. As an old adage aptly proclaims: ‘I’ll be post-feminist in the post-patriarchy.’
Manjima Bhattacharya
