Contours of women's development: a synthesis of thoughts, efforts and challenges.

Over the last five decades, there has been considerable advancement in the realm of empowerment and development of women. The process has also led to many new areas of concern, the important among them being women's health (with increasing incidence of HIV/AIDS), feminisation of poverty, negative impact of globalisation and technological advancement, increasing role of the private sector, decentralised governance and the emergence of the 'market' as a source of finance and economic dynamism. Besides these, the 'international architecture' for development has also undergone considerable changes. Development is now addressed by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and country-specific poverty-reduction strategies. The MDGs have even set specific targets towards whose attainment the entire development community is geared up to work, while countries have also identified their own paths and strategies to meet this end.

Gender equality and empowerment of women are specifically emphasised in the MDGs. These concepts, however, require a differential understanding, across different nations, which is certainly one of the interesting and analytically challenging tasks ahead for the MDGs. Gender equality is also central to poverty reduction. The women's movement, the world over, is intensely concerned with the issues relating to achieving such equality. The means of doing so merge at the level of creation of large-scale awareness among women as well as building their capacities to fight for their own uplift.

There have been multiple ways of building women's capacities. One such is to take stock of women's own achievements as writers, leaders and as members of civil society that fights for their improvement. Several significant works have been published in the recent years, which highlight the various issues concerning women's participation in social and economic activities. This paper discusses some of them.

The first such issue is the significant initiative taken by women themselves to write their experiences both in their mother tongue and in alien languages. Through these compilations--in the form of books, poems and pamphlets--women as writers have expressed their experiences, trauma and problems. The concerns of the popular media and its products about women and their impact on the lives of women are the significant means of doing so. This is recognised by many feminist writers by stating that 'women, through their negotiations of social structures in the course of everyday life, are agents of change. The chief activity of the women's movement hinges upon this fact. Its rationale is a process of providing direction to such a change in keeping with feminist ideology' (Bhattacharya and Sen 2003).

The paper discusses another issue: that there has been a great deal of contemplation and 'putting together' of thoughts in the realm of gender discrimination, caused by factors like patriarchy, sexuality, culture and political economy. These have been the substance of on-going women's struggles. It reviews the wide array of themes surrounding this exploitation of women as a category, blending on a common footing and ending up contributing to critical thinking in gender relations, and thereby in gender studies too, as a discipline.

The third issue concerns the problems and difficulties, which women as 'workers' in the production system and as 'development workers' in nongovernmental organisations face.

The effort in this paper is to reflect upon some of the recent works in the area of women studies by taking a range of issues like women writers, role of media, women in movements, women as workers and as providers of development through the civil society organisations.

1. Expression of Gender Equality through Mass Media

(1) Women and Literature

One of the significant and recent additions to women's studies is the contribution to literature by women of the early 20th century and a little later. These works have portrayed the chain of women's efforts to improve their lives. The literary works were prompted by women's experiences of living through certain critical events in their lives (like the partition of the country following Independence in 1947), or the constraints imposed by patriarchy and the resultant exclusion from access to and control over life-saving resources, suffering inequality and deprivation, violence and torture (both mental and physical), militancy, consequent organisation and rehabilitation. They present the on-going march towards freedom and justice led by women and as expressed in their own writings. These are masterpieces written either by women themselves or told to and documented by other women. The academic and policy-making world is still at a loss about assessing correctly the complexity of gender-relations and gender-based information.

The literary works by women have succeeded in establishing that a significant distinction exists between the manner in which 'others' perceive women, as against what women themselves have felt about their own problems and prospects. Women writers have striven to present their views and experiences either by reproducing the works of the 'affected' women or by consolidating their views as expressed in personal interviews with them. Thus, the emphasis in recent literature on women's writings is upon the transgressive role of women of the 19th and early 20th centuries, who could rise from a stage where they were only able to read or write, to that of being 'read' by others. The significance of this transformation is that it brought to the fore literacy as a new resource that was made available to women under the 'emergent public sphere'. The second most important facilitating factor in such a transformed role is the emergence of debates and ideologies surrounding the issues of gender relations and gender ideologies. The net result has been an upsurge of interest in women's opinion and agency.

The most significant exposition of women's interest in literary activities became clear when women started to evince interest in certain early literary works. This was equated to the rise of a new social category in the society, viz., women who were writers about themselves. It was particularly true of the writings by women of the Bengali society during the middle of the 19th century, when its women took to literary compositions. The sources of their achievement have been attributed to many factors, both formal and informal; one such major inspiring source being the historians who placed a lot of emphasis on the works of the Christian missionaries in this regard.

Further, being introduced to writing about their experiences and knowledge did not allow the women writers to ignore their roles in the household. This was particularly important for those from the upper castes--from where most of them hailed. Instead of becoming a 'prison' for carrying out their feminine roles, the household came to enable the required environment for these women to carry out their writing skills. Of greater significance here was the role of the household 'males', who evinced much interest in women's literacy campaign--a fact admitted by women writers themselves as being notably high. Likewise, the opposition to this from the other women members in the household, especially the mother-in-law, is also highlighted in literature as being important. In fact, women's taking to writing was a secret effort, carded out in the night as an 'illicit passion', with none other than the husband providing the necessary encouragement and protection in this endeavour. The result was the success of Indian women to get into universal education much earlier than their counterparts in England did! This also led to the division of upper class Indian families into 'reformist' and 'orthodox' and the hysterical male outburst in the latter.

Interestingly, most of these women writers came from ordinary 'housewife' background and their writings vaulted across public-private divide. Writing from their homes, they had launched a new relationship with the external world. True to what they underwent as suffering, their writings reflected the same life of subordination, discrimination and exploitation of women. The viewpoints emerging out of the discussion suggest that they were fortunate enough to receive literacy at a time when it was denied to their counterparts elsewhere. These women used writing not for their own self-development, but they did so to disseminate and document the message that women undergo untold miseries. This way, they (women writers) rendered a noble service to other women.

Secondly, their writings were critical in that they led to a fusion of horizons that denied or at least diminished the borders and boundaries between genders and communities. Another significant aspect of these writings is that they have successfully put forth empowerment issues amidst their seemingly cultural introspection. This has often resulted in a convergence of ideas and perspectives.

For example, as most of the articles were being written in Bengali and other such Indian languages, their translation into English was their first priority. The translated articles have been given a fitting introduction that captures succinctly the situation in its totality. For example, nationalism's creation of a new patriarchy led to a divide and a further contradictory gender relationship. Thus, the social category that was born in Bengal with the title 'Lekhika' helped in building and popularising the new image of woman as one who is self-confident, opinionated and transgressive. The elite background from where they had originated made matters worse for others to swallow the truth that these women were now into writing. On the contrary, their elite and urban upbringing enabled this transformation, irrespective of the religious background. All this was at a time when tradition demanded that the Hindu women shun wearing the footwear, violating which they became equal to westerners in the eyes of traditionalists. These writers not only violated the rule but also argued for seeking a bride's opinion in arranging for her marriage.

An analysis of a few such writings shows that women writers have traced how the evolution of freedom and emancipation of the Indians, alongside the women in India, has taken place. These original writings by women shed light upon their own powerlessness as also of the nation that is colonised. They speak of the 'home' as the right place for women who should strive for good domestic management. Gradually, as India won freedom and set to attain an integrated economic and social advancement of all citizens, the writings also very well reflected these transformations. Education was allowed for all and hence, was not an issue when some of these articles by women were written. Economic freedom enabled even perceptions of patriarchy to vanish. New-found status and recognition to women writers has only brought new roles in nation-building and its management, politically.

All these, in a way, show that a critical portrayal of women's writings in the post-colonial society reflected the on-going debates on empowerment taking historical routes. The women's question came to be subjected to many intersecting power structures. We have traveled quite far away from the days when women started writing. But they bear torchlight to the fact that 'empowerment' is social formation that is largely attacking power formation. For example, the advantages of women taking to writing were something that enabled them to come out of silence (Kuortti 2003). The practice (of writing) reflected something more serious that was related not just to writing but writing in an alien language, English. However, such women came from the upper class background, since 'as a colony' English writing was associated with class, race (caste) and power. It is felt that despite the problems many Indians have with this alien language in its comprehension, English has come to stay as the official language, carrying the hegemonic west with itself.

This leaves us with the important issue of women who were from the deprived classes. It refers to literacy itself that was a major shift from a world of nowhere to one where every possible avenue opened up because it acted as one of the strategies of empowerment. 'As a colony', English 'was inescapably associated with class, race and power; after Independence, it has grown in power and status, yet the problematic English as the language of the hegemonic West remains' (ibid).

Women writers in English in India have come from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. As a result, their vision of India also varies. A number of factors have been the reasons behind their writings and their views on 'Diaspora' writings of Indians and regional languages. Their views support many goals of feminism, although not explicitly stated (ibid).

Considered as an alien language and more so of the colonial rulers with economic and political power, even men's writing in English was looked upon as a challenge. Thus, the questions--such as, who is an Indian and what status does English language has in Indian literature? What factors contribute to making a writer, that too when one is trying to use the language of the oppressor?--became important and were set by alien standards.

Out of her curiosity, Kuortti set out to collect a bibliography of such writers that culminated in Indian Women's Writing in English: A Bibliography (Kuortti 2002). Information about 444 writers and their works has been collected by her, a telling evidence of the vast range of geographical, historical and stylistic differences in their works. This and the work by Naik, viz., A History of Indian English Literature, are enough proof that women novelists have succeeded in making a significant dent in the subject.

However, Kuortti differs from Naik and does not conform to the idea of any thematic school. She even draws a history of the growth of feminism in India--from social movements and activism to journalism. What is bothering her is the obvious collusion that the two dimensions of ideological spaces for women, viz., the traditional and the activist (because activism is influenced by western ideologies), run the risk of being ignorant of and unsympathetic to traditional notions of status of women. In support of her last argument, Kuortti refers to the feminist works of Madhu Kishwar, which condemn such feminism as being not able to maintain the idealistic agenda. Vrinda Nabar draws support to this fact where she criticises Indian feminism as different from its western counterpart. Socio-cultural realities are different in the two and application of the western yardstick to Indian circumstances is impractical and difficult.

With such a background view of Indian feminism, how could one understand the stance from where Indian English women wrote? It is uncontested that English writers of India, men or women, are from elitist, urban middle and upper class educated categories. The real question here is: what sort of message has this literature, coming from writers of such a class background, would have on feminism in India and its efforts at liberation of women folk?

Kuortti has purposefully chosen a cross-section of Indian English writers with different backgrounds--class, region, culture, language, careers, writers of prose and poetry, journalists and so on. The commonality in their immediate expression about the use of the word 'feminism' was the reservation against the use of that word in the context of their writings. For Shashi Deshpande (one of the foremost Indian writers in English language), feminism is activism in India, rather than any theory. 'It is the sense of activism and not Simone de Beauvoir or Germaine Greer or anything. What brings changes is activism'. 'Statistic' strategies are criticised by Kishwar, but to Deshpande, legislation has done some good to women. She is particularly happy about the awareness part of such efforts, legal or otherwise.

The issue (though it is also in the context of feminism or at least gender-based discrimination) to Deshpande is the difficulty in getting a work published outside India. Despite agreeing that this is a universal problem encountered by all women, and more so all marginal language groups across the globe, she has shared her experience that 'whether in Finland or UK or USA, only a feminist publisher would publish women's work'. She began experiencing marginalisation as a woman writer, but shuns the label feminist, despite such realisation and her own means of overcoming such a barrier.

The writings of many women do touch upon the issue of women's empowerment and need for emancipation but refuse to be categorised as feminist literature (Shama Futehally and Shashi Deshpande). They prefer to address feminism as a human story and fear labelling it as either 'socialist' or 'feminist'. Interestingly, such academicians do make observations about changing men to enable women's empowerment, but disagree that they are following 'established feminist representations'.

Besides such alienation from certain feminist ideas, the clash between feminism and their own traditional notions are reflected well in some works (Anuradha Marwah-Roy etc). Take the case of custody of one's children in the event of a woman's divorce from her husband: The argument runs along the lines that a woman opted for taking care of them as she felt 'motherhood' as 'a privilege and not as a responsibility'. Obviously, this notion varied from that of the feminists who felt that insisting on custody would mean hindering her freedom of opinion as a divorced woman.

In a nutshell, all these works definitely induce one to think deeply about the new, unexplored phenomenon of how women writers in English have felt about their writings having a link or no link with feminist ideology and practice. The issue here refers to the reservation that some of the renowned Indian authors (women) have expressed about the applicability of feminism in the Indian context. One need not, as Kuortti has suggested, accept these at face value but her intention is to keep us aware of these debates. There is more good than bad in these arguments as they present the views and notions of well-known writers and some of their well-known write-ups. As we are 'shuttling between' 'unequally equipped cultural spaces', universal feminist agenda is being eroded (Lionnet 1997:1), and in its place, we could have comparative feminist criticism, as the feminist post-colonial writer is alienated in her/his status today.

The above point is important since post-colonial feminism is a wide issue and has different concerns (Srivatsava 1996:13). One has to take stock of how feminist critique is applied in such a situation. Hence, there is the effort by Kuortti. In the place of a conclusion, she has provided a set of, what she calls as, 'possible approaches'. Some of them are: Some Questions on Feminism and Its Relevance in South Asia by Bhasin and Said Khan (1986); Understanding Gender by Bhasin (2000); Post-Coloniality and Third World Feminists by Ulla Vuorela (1999); and Gayatri Spivak's Strategic Essentialism (1993).

As a last blow, Kuortti also asks us whether we could do away with feminism altogether and replace it with terms like Womanism (1). She wants us to be 'remembered and reminded' about the contextual and historical realities of the struggles on the lines of Nabar's contemplation as to what extent the experiences of women's status of the present is contained in the past.

(2) Women and Displacement

Forced or induced transfer of population from one habitation to another that too to an unknown one, is a severe example of displacement and disruption of livelihoods. War, natural disasters and political decisions cause such displacement, where the society in question undergoes a long duration of problems associated with disequillibrium and resettlement. Partition of a country, as a fall-out of political demarcation of geographical boundaries, is one such cause for displacement. While much is written and filmed about the Indo-Pak partition of 1947, which led to massive transfers of population in the eastern and western parts of north India, what had failed to catch the attention of such documentaries were the region-specific distinctions that characterised such displacements.

It is only of late that the issue of such region-specific and gender-specific distinctions in one of the world's most enforcing migrations, that took place in the Indian sub-continent, has been reviewed. Works by a few scholars (Butalia 1998; Menon and Bhasin 1998) did attempt to portray how the events took a rustic turn but have not concentrated upon the one in Bengal. Several women writers have tried to plug this serious gap in literature (Bagchi and Dasgupta 2003). They have attempted to bring out the human dimension of the second partition of Bengal in 1947, emphasising on the gender perspective.

Not just that, while emphasising that partition was one event that has led to differential outcomes and consequences to the two regions, these works have also outlined the various dimensions of such differences. For example, it is argued that in the case of Bengal, the affair has been longer than that in Punjab's case. In Punjab, the event has led to tensions and events extending to the 21st century. The clashes surrounding election issues in October 2001 and the carnage in Kolkata the same year are offered as examples of how the partition in Bengal had produced a process of slow and agonising terror and trauma, often accompanied by violence. Other events like the language movement, opposition to the rule by West Pakistan etc., are the torchbearers of such differences. Subsequently, the country has become a target for fundamentalist forces followed by violence during elections. However, despite such outburst of differences, protests and conflicts, the region is described to be porous and flexible compelled by economic and human considerations.

What stands out as the distinctive similarity between the two regions--Punjab and Bengal--is the issues relating to women. In both the places, they have stood out as victims of physical violence, torture and even death. The modes of such torture have been inhuman--rape and death, rape and compulsion to raise a new home with a new man from the oppressing community, or rape and abandonment as prostitutes.

It is nothing new that the world over, women are always the worst targets of violence caused as a follow-up after a communal clash. Often, torturing, raping, killing or humiliating its women-folk exhibits the wrath on a certain community. This is a universal phenomenon and is described poignantly as, 'the female womb becomes occupied territory' (Stasa 1994).

Women are already 'displaced', since they tend to leave their natal homes after marriage, and go to live with those of their husbands. The argument here is that women become the worse sufferers of partition since they tend to lose their homes and hearth too. This 'micro' aspect is lost while resettling the displaced community. Women are viewed as the carriers of family's honour and defiling them/ their bodies is more than equal to causing irreparable loss to the enemy; the ideal is to safeguard their honour by protecting their women as their bodies are 'territories to be conquered'. The fear of rape was a barrier to women's development and, worse, it marginalised them further. For example, it is quoted that many Bhadralok middle class refugees became sensitive about the possible threat of possession of their women by the Muslims.

Women writers have also captured the struggles and travails of fellow women under such circumstances to rebuild the 'rhythms of daily subsistence'. This was against the mass-scale displacement captured in these essays (Bagchi and Dasgupta 2003). For example, the agency of women to pick up the strands and start the family routine in the changed circumstances is one such. At stake was the caring and nurturing role of women, which also got ruptured and began to haunt them. When so much of importance is given to empowering and developing women as equal citizens, those women affected by partition were denied the required power to come out into the space.

Lastly, the point that stands out in this documentation of women's oppression and violation of their rights, in the aftermath of partition, is the multiple ways in which such women have stood out against the evil forces that tormented them. In many cases, what stood out were women's exemplary courage, resilience, fortitude, patience and strength to keep the kitchen-fire burning. 'Grinding poverty, broken homes and psyche, exodus, displacement and assault--all these have only enabled them to acquire new skills'. Thus, the message such writings offer is that the tortures and exploitation following partition ended up in providing an opportunity for these women to move into the public sphere, not common and, in a way, forbidden to them.

One more element in this saga of trauma, triumph and the march by women in such traditional societies as Bengal, was the supportive role played by the political party, viz., the Communist Party of India. This factor is also termed as being distinct from other such regions. Termed as the pronounced leftist impulse, it is described as that which gave partition in the East a different flavour. The party encouraged women activists to mobilise affected women to organise into groups and muster support to lead a life of dignity.

The challenges of living through the aftermath of partition, however, were not easy. It was not only true of the ordinary women but also of their leaders. In other words, for all of them, women's chastity became the focus of gendering post-partition living. The worst form was one where sexuality acted as a manipulating device in politics. Sabitri Roy's narration of how her book was banned by the Communist Party, just because she did not oblige the sexual advances by her party leader, is shocking. She had to even lose her access to leadership ranks. The price that women who ventured into the public sphere had to pay was, thus, very high. These are reflected in the writings of creative women, which portray the problems that they underwent in balancing between the demands of the individual and the collective.

In summary, the objective behind the above writings is to make explicit those aspects of post-partition troubles and trauma that have a human and creative face to themselves. The second important message that these works convey is that partition, though a one-time event, is being relived every day through the 'eruptions' in every day life--in the form of assault and rape, killings, and socio-political instability. Women writers have successfully analysed the partition issue and provided a gender narrative on it, exploring thereby the agony and struggles of the 'nowhere women'. They have also provided a summary of information obtained from interviews relating to the outbreak of riots, communalism, heroism and resistance by women against atrocities and personal accounts by widows in Brindavan about their exposure to torture and exploitation for over five decades. The narration takes the form of poems, short story, play-extract and screenplay. The last part is about documentary evidence regarding discriminatory treatment meted out to the refugees.

Another dimension of creative writing by women rests on the premise that women's movement in its search for avenues for women's liberation and development, has given way not only for certain forms of empowerment (like economic and political), but has also strengthened further discourses in modernity, feminism and progress. These have become 'lived realities' (Chanda 2003) only through popular culture. Women's journals, advertisements and TV serials are held as examples of such popular culture. The works ponder over the idea as to whether these could be successfully used to disseminate the goals of feminism. Chanda, for example, goes on to ask a more serious question: Whether these new forms of popular culture intend to bring in new restrictions against women's liberation? And, if so, what are their implications for feminism?

The basic premise on which the book is based emerges from the fact that most often than not, women tend to learn about the issue of feminism much later than their own engagement with it. For example, their access to consumerism, to work, to positions of power--both economic and political--are viewed by women as being 'normal'. Women have been learning about this newfound freedom, and access, from the media. The link is that media is 'predicated' on the consumer society, and a variety of modernity, which again is dependent upon the free market. Thus, it is a problematic that Chanda tries to resolve in her work. The route she sets out on is by making a survey of few middle class women in the cities of Jamshedpur and Calcutta and has engaged them in dialogues with her in three languages--English, Bangla and Hindi. The respondents were made to pick texts from popular media that had close encounters with their own lives and belief systems.

Using random sample surveys and a couple of group discussions, the author has tried to listen to the women as they narrated their beliefs, desires and views in relation to some of the popular culture that they have been exposed to. In other words, it is respondent-friendly type of source material that is gathered. Instead of selecting popular media, only those texts that influenced women as relevant to themselves and to their lives are chosen.

The result is a revealing fact about the way these women knew the many strands of feminism, and the manner in which they construed it in critiquing the society. The central argument made by Chanda is, therefore, to contemplate using popular media as the weapon to hasten the process of emancipation of women and enhance their knowledge of feminism. The fundamental question is the way the market-savvy capitalist has banked upon feminism that sells and returns huge profits to itself. Her study took its genesis in the circumstance that when feminism sells as popular culture, does it affect the structure of the society that purchases it? Women's attempts, successful or not, to negotiate the subtle power structures, which are put in place by consumer culture, has formed the 'bedrock' of her study.

The above discussion shows that writings of women have dwelt upon, on the one hand, the changing (or not changing) status of Indian women, as reflected in the early writings of Bengali Women, and by the modern post-colonial Indian English authors. On the other, they have portrayed effectively the severity of the impact of partition as a triumph of the victors, returning as a trauma for millions of refugees, among them the worst affected being the women. Lastly, they have discussed the new-found package to freedom offered by the media culture.

All this succeeds in providing a refreshing ground towards achieving a greater and deeper understanding of what feminism and gender inequality was and is. It reflects the variation that cultural contradictions could bring to the fore in a subject like gender at a time when it is assumed that all women of all countries have commonalties as regards their degraded status in comparison with that of the men. The details bring to focus the relatively shocking fact that activism has, in fact and contrary to speculations, proved to be less effective, as compared to the mass media and its culture, that has really been successful in impacting the lives of women. For example, one such work narrates how women were humiliated, both in body and soul, and how some of them could fight back, with or without the support of the political party or the community (Bagchi and Dasgupta 2003). Such women's writings give messages of not only their suffering but also enthuse the present generation of women, who are also undergoing torture in a free society, characterised by modern ideals like democracy and decentralisation. The writings of early Bengali women support the view that the zeal 'to fight back' actually rests in women, no matter whether there is the support of the ideology or not. Despite being 'upper' caste/class women, they wrote strongly condemning the very social order of which they were a fragile part. These works take us on a different route where the Indian women writers in English came close to feminist ideologies but remained well within the frame of being journalists or writers.

Does this suggest that the notion of feminism that we have borrowed from the west is unsuitable to the Indian soil? Or, is it only meant for the downtrodden women, while their counterparts who are educated and hence could express their problems in the form of writings were able to emancipate themselves? Both Bagchi and Dasgupta and Joel Kuortti wrote bringing in their own experiences as affected people from a feminist standpoint. This only assures that there are a variety of approaches and routes to portray something that we could label as feminist.

In the midst of all this, the question that arises is: since the very introduction of the word feminism to women is 'courtesy the mass media', is it giving proper direction to the next stage of struggle by them? (Chanda 2003). While feminism toiled hard to bring about economic and political representation and empowerment of women, consumerism is emerging as the feminist agenda now. If that is the case, then the question is whether the 'immense power of the mass media' could be used as the platform for achieving gender equality? Not so, since the author herself concludes that an objectified body is certainly an oppressed body and feminism is 'a customised pizza'. It has to strive much harder to find an alternative to patriarchal model because it is here that gender-based hierarchy and discrimination begin and even end.

2. Roles of the State, Civil Society Organisations and People in Contesting Patriarchy and Structured Discrimination

(1) State Intervention in Development: Panacea or Extension of Discrimination?

Setting out on the broad agenda that poverty in Asia could be traced along two dimensions, viz., geographical and social, some of the recent works (Kelkar et al 2003) have argued that issues of indigenous people, and among them of women, intersect in understanding poverty dimensions. For example, women across these indigenous societies are inextricably linked with the patterns and processes of livelihoods of their communities; thus, any effort to improve people's livelihood should necessarily include ways of enhancing the social, economic and political situation vis-a-vis women's status in these societies.

Covering a wide range of societies in Asia, these works address many issues of relevance to women's development and entitlement. One such is the light shed on the failure to recognise the immense contribution to conservation of natural resources by women. This invisibility of women's work is attributed to not only poverty and unproductive toils of women to earn their households' livelihoods, but more often to state interventions. The argument put forth is that privatisation and market forces have largely led to the weakening of women's position in the indigenous communities. The reason is that, these, as well as the state interventions, have been dependent largely upon the predominant, if not exclusive, role of men in most sectors of society. The work presents the struggles and resistances of women to this changed scenario, and the formation of women's agency to claim gender equality and mitigation of poverty. The works have gained an understanding of gender relations across China, India, Thailand and Malaysia through studying the processes of shift from matrilineal to patrilineal societies, i.e., within these forest-based societies. The worst factor that they bring to focus is that it is this state intervention that has in fact enforced male domination upon matrilineal societies, which were hitherto generous in providing authority and power to women. A number of case studies have significantly explored issues relating to transformation of matrilineal systems into patriarchal ones, and at the same time looking at the growth of a patriarchal gender system. They have tried to respond to the question whether gender relations within the household and the community tend to undergo a change, as members are exposed to broad religious, cultural, social and economic restructuring processes?

This question is discussed against the backdrop of gender relations of forest societies, by analysing the situation in four different contexts: The first one is described as the "imposition of colonial or national rule over them that led to imposition of 'mainstream' values and consequent domestication of women".

The second situation or context consists of preparation for re-establishing the local community's control over the forests. What is shocking to note here is that a number of such efforts at re-establishment were accompanied by purificatory processes to cleanse the system of the influence of women witches.

The third situation looks at the introduction of devolution as a policy, where women's exclusion intraditional tribal councils was carried over even to the state-sponsored committees. The inclusion of women in committees and subsequently such roles becoming institutionalised is captured in the fourth situation. The credit to this graduation is attributed to women's own efforts and/or the support from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and external actors.

In most patrilineal societies, women's participation in productive and reproductive roles did leave them with social empowerment and some level of gender equality, at least in the household sphere. Women's access to forest and forest resources was able to mitigate this inequality in gender relations. Whether it is the use of forest resources (like cutting trees for firewood) or access to fireplaces, invariably, it was gender relations which determined the complex set of social behaviour.

(2) Caste and Gender: The Inextricable Relationship in a Globalising Society

It is generally accepted that social issues determining gender relations and behaviour in the Indian context are further strengthened through yet another significant institution, viz., the caste system. That caste is not only a symbol of social inequality between various social groups, but also between the two sexes, gets better established in a few outstanding works (Chakrabarthy 2003) on caste and gender. In a way, hers is the first systematic attempt to look at the interface between caste and gender. The work tries to explain, fundamentally, that 'checks and balances' characterise patriarchy in India. The complicity with which women have been facing the turmoil of caste and gender oppression is explained vividly to establish that women get rewarded by consenting and conforming; and face problems if they failed to do so. It is argued by such literature that theorising is not always easy and that there is an absence of a sustained dialogue between mainstream sociologists and gender experts. It considers the axis of caste and gender as two discrete entities in the Indian social stratification system.

Taking the Mandai agitation as a significant event to establish these tendencies, there are explanations to the effect that caste contradictions became sharp only after such events. Traveling from a mere purity/pollution framework, towards the trendy understanding of the links between the two axes of stratification, many issues came to be explored. Sustained dialogues between mainstream social scientists and women's studies scholars have gradually led to a sharpening of analyses of caste. Feminism itself came to be criticised for neglecting the woes of women from vulnerable communities who had to bear the triple burden of being women from the Dalit, labourer and patriarchal backgrounds. Thus, it is argued that analysis from a 'caste and gender' point of view became more pronounced in the subsequent women's movements.

The above ideas and experiences are captured through debates on the changing perspectives of caste. They have concluded that the sociological writings coming from men have intellectualised and masked the structure of caste system, covering the reality. It is also argued that the earlier writings or debates on caste by scholars like Louis Dumont or Micheal Moffat dominated the scene. It presented the system of caste as a set of consensual values, perceiving from a purely Brahminical/upper caste stand-point than a "bottom end up" approach as propounded, for example, by Dr B R Ambedkar. Such arguments have only established that cultural oppression is more dehumanising than economic exploitation for women and Dalits alike. Domination and symbolic domination have produced symbolic hegemony. However, this has been refuted by successive protest and reform movements from the oppressed groups that have tried to create a normative world for themselves with dignity, self-respect and power. Thus, Dalit struggles are oriented towards achieving socially constructed meanings, definitions and identities. The argument put forth by feminists brings to central stage that caste has to be understood from a feminist lens, not from its ideological standpoint of principles of purity and pollution but as one that is characterised by other kinds of opposition like domination and subordination, exploitation and oppression. Building class into the framework of caste is also significant, as it enables an inclusion of gender into this framework. Denial of knowledge is hailed as the elementary formulation of inequality in traditional India. The feminist analysis of caste concludes that the denial led to crippling of low castes and women of all castes and made Brahminic ideology more hegemonic.

Progressing further, feminist scholarship is no longer merely debating whether women's status is high or low (as inherited from historian Altekar's dominant paradigm). The debates have moved on to understand the structures that make for women's subordination. Feminist studies have established that such subordination was conditioned in its extent and form by social, economic and cultural environments, where women are placed, thereby providing a historical basis to women's subordination in India. It is here that historically, patriarchal institutions have come into existence. In her studies on gender and class, Gerda Lerner, for example, found that productive and reproductive roles were organised around notions of control over female sexuality. Thus, strategies devised to reproduce the system of oppression become important here. It came to be established that caste had an intrinsic relationship with gender; links were seen between class and gender and strategies of reproduction of the system with endogamy, patriarchy and so on, as mechanisms to preserve land, women and ritual quality. Important has been the realisation through feminist lens that the lower castes have also begun to monitor their females' sexuality, without realising that the norms were "derived from the very structures that oppress them in other ways".

Placing a heavy emphasis on caste system as defining social relations in the subcontinent of India, there is a strong argument that they are shaped, based upon the dominant hegemonic model of gender and caste, which was reproduced and consolidated upon the compliance of women. Needless to mention, such compliance was achieved through coercion and forced/induced consent on the part of women. Women's subordination was achieved partly through their investment in a structure, which rewarded them since they agreed to subject their sexuality to stringent controls. The discussion goes on to justify what Dr Ambedkar had rightly analysed--caste as a system of graded inequalities and that patriarchies in the subcontinent were also graded according to one's caste.

After British rule, the increased attempts by castes towards mobilisation led to stringent practices of control over the sexuality of their women-folk. The entire structure of class and caste linkages is being reworked under new social processes. Movements to protest against caste-based oppression and women's movements have together 'factored' caste as a concept in such oppression. Dalit women's voice is beginning to be heard; rules of marriage and sexuality for women from different castes; honour killings etc,--all these are mirror to continued resilience of caste system and Brahminical patriarchy; there has been a closer and stronger bond between caste and class as exemplified in the domination of certain castes in social and economic power, hold over material resources; existential reality of caste continues although its contours have changed; women of vulnerable communities experience the same kind of problems of gender-based discrimination but have begun to share the material resources and ideology of men of their caste to some extent.

On the whole, the unraveling of the relationship between caste and gender is even more difficult than recognising their working individually as dominant ideology. Where patriarchal models are still strong, what has emerged new and glaring is the link between rising violence in caste and patriarchy.

(3) Issues in Poverty, Female Sexuality and Gender Relations in the Household

The complex issue of women's sexuality in the context of patriarchy, gender, class and fertility is another important issue in gender studies (Seal 2000). Commenting upon the broad assumption by demographers in India that family size and fertility behaviour are the result of household decision-making processes as a homogeneous unit, it is argued that hitherto studies have ignored the issues of class and household members' desires and experiences. Women's so-called agency in reproductive behaviour/processes is the lacuna identified by this study that exposes the ways in which class and gender contexts negotiate in the sexual domain. Women's attitude to sex, gender, love and affection are not reflected well in studies, while there is some reference to poverty and cultural practices as generating subcultures of reproduction and sexual behaviour.

When we trace the history of such interventions, we find that the 1970s saw the growth of a link between women's roles and their effect on fertility outcomes. This in a way led to incorporating gender as a variable in population studies. The 1990s saw an entry of issues like class, gender and sexual division of labour in the household. Intra-household power struggle was an important issue to the Cairo and Beijing meetings and Rio conferences. When evaluated against the principles of Gender and Development (GAD), the experiences of women with respect to sexual and birth control activities show a relation between household gender relations and female sexuality. It shows as to how women's circumstance (under which their reproductive system takes shape) is left to be a neglected area or has rarely been studied or understood. Light needs to be shed upon the inabilities or constraints under which poor women have to address issues of development. Feminist perspective tends to see women as only 'clients' and overlooks their limitations and struggles, safeguarding against women's suppression. Therefore, processes have to be understood better than the outcomes. Expression of sexual interests, vis-a-vis delineation of sexual encounters, attitudes and behaviour, tend to be guided by patriarchal dictates. Conjugal autonomy in matters of conception choice is out of any negotiation or bargaining and depends entirely on asymmetrical conjugal reciprocities and gender hierarchies. Controlled by ideology and prototype of womanhood, as the debate by Seal goes, a woman is visibly caught up with her own socio-economic dependence for sustenance and security on her husband or other male relatives. Thus, a strong link is established by Seal's study between women's sexual agency and her material position and gender relations in the household. However, on-going research has established that coercive factors do influence perpetuation of material and gender differences between spouses that reflect in many other contexts (some of them being allocation and control over resources, household decision-making, and so on).

Studies have also shown that paid work is no panacea for this state of affairs, as 'women's agency' depends on household circumstances and a host of other factors. While there is indeed noticed an increase in woman's economic activities in the productive sector, there is also a decline in the government's investment in the social sector to address impoverishment of women and other gender inequalities. Thus, economic contribution of woman and her household is a grey area of research which has scope for enhanced studies. Gender attributes right from birth influence the girl child's access to education, basic needs and later to the fruits of her economic activities. Women's life chances are increasingly conditioned by the dynamics of gender.

It is here that feminists have supported the gender and development framework as the suitable theoretical model to address institutionalised gender processes at a holistic level. It is expected to provide suitable settings for discovering some of the complexities that prevent women from gaining access to resources. However, experience has shown that the framework has limitations in providing any sort of solution to women's struggle in the long run. This is also true of women's perceptions about options available for birth control and family planning. Government initiatives in this direction have been a failure as they are not gender-sensitive. It is taken for granted that men and women have equal and similar access to these choices, a strategy that has not materialised in practice. Formation of women's groups in recent years has enabled some level of awareness coupled with very partial decision-making, particularly in the realm of reproduction. It appears that micro-research using case study methods would better facilitate the documentation of the possible success women have achieved in this regard.

(4) Trade Unionism and Women: Categories and Identities

The 19th and 20th centuries witnessed tremendous changes in the ideological structure and thinking in the lives of the working class. The communist manifesto emerged at this time only to collapse during the latter part of the 20th century, due to the interplay of a number of socio-economic and political factors. However, working class behaviour in both the scenarios came to be understood not so much in an objective manner because of the influence of a number of factors like class, community, modern and traditional societies, capitalist and pre-capitalist or east and west. However, these distinctions are dismissed as meaningless (Fernandes 1997) in so far as their relevance to understanding the working class in India is concerned. The strength of such dismissal lies in the fact that gender is something which goes beyond the "capitalist or pre-capitalist terrain."

Building upon factors responsible for understanding the complexities of such identities like hierarchy, power, deprivation and opportunities, there have been attempts by feminist writers to connect them with issues of gender, caste, class and ideology (ibid). The fundamental argument here is that political processes take place in every society, on everyday, as a result of various forms of contesting of power by workers and managers. The resultant factors are the creation of boundaries between entities such as gender, class and culture. Thus, political boundaries are not constructed out of externalities much away from families or community relations; but are very much based upon hegemonic practices within these community and/or work organisations.

Based on a thoroughly developed discussion of how identities created in everyday lives become central to contemporary debates in feminism and in cultural and social theories of class formation, a strong case for gender hierarchies in a class-less set-up is made. This has enabled an understanding of the livelihoods of people (among them, of women in particular) and the generation of a theoretical framework, which facilitates the understanding of roles through socio-cultural identities. The crux of the argument is that relationships between individuals result in the production of certain processes, because they are managed in such a way to facilitate this process. Feminist analysis, like the one carried out by Fernandes, has come up with a significant and timely exercise in unfolding aspects of women's labour. One can find an analytical display of nexus between gender, caste, political processes and formation of identities or categories. Using the findings of ethnographic studies of working class policies in the Calcutta Jute Mills, Fernandes argues that these identities are the products of "institutional discursive and everyday social and cultural practices". The entire analysis centres on testing the prevalence of hegemony and resistance under various circumstances (like the family, work place, community, etc).

Since trade unions and community organisations are generally not free from hegemony, her work points towards the fact that resistance against these forces is based on the relations between the various categories of which gender is a part. She argues, for example, the question of marginalisation of women cuts across boundaries of ideologies, since women are a different participatory group. Similar studies on the issue are nevertheless welcome, because it is only such studies which enable the required analytical framework and space to understand gender relations in the production processes. Working class politics is characterised by boundaries of class interest that become contingent upon caste hierarchies through a specific political process involving the participation of managers, workers and unions. Such is the premise upon which an understanding of women's marginalised status rests. It is supportive of Gramsci as it declares that relationships between people and hegemony are influenced by a number of cultural identities. It is also supportive of Bourdieu while classifying the social construction of category as a part of the hegemonic process. All this has made a convincing case of analysing the political activities of workers and to see how strikes, protests and other forms of struggles by workers' representatives are nothing but a creation of identities marked by hierarchies. Obviously, gender is not alone in understanding this scenario, but has to be a part of class, caste and other ideologies which go beyond any organisation.

(5) Institutional and Gender Issues in Delivering Development: Some Reflections and Best Practices

There is a strong opinion that the development workers, working at the grassroots level, merit to be ranked as the most significant contributors in making our development goals realistic. It is argued that all our discussions about development, participatory social change, and access to human rights become realistic only when these are translated into real life benefits and when the vulnerable communities or individuals are enabled thereby to transform themselves. Visualising and planning is one thing, but actually bringing about development is another. It means nothing less than countering or incurring the wrath of the 'powerful', 'exploiters', the 'dominant' and so on and so forth. The messages of change--like equality between 'high' and 'low' castes, equality between the two sexes etc.--are not satiable but bitter and unpleasant. They also result in bitterness, resistance and often in violent response. The affected lot could be anybody from the top class development workers--all of whom are burdened with the responsibility of bringing about the required change.

Such thoughts have motivated several writings by feminists and women development workers themselves, initially triggered by their own experiences. One such is the work by Goetz in the mid-1980s working for a UNDP programme in Africa. The narrative in the preface of the work in itself is enough to draw one's interest in the theme. It successfully motivates one to pay attention to gender issues much earlier than they came to receive attention in development works.

Marginalism, alienation from mainstream work and even sexual harassment --all these were important gendered features of the development process--at a time when Goetz was working for the lead agency in charge of promoting the UN Decade for Women. But, strangely, the UNDP had no projects for them in its portfolio. Thus begins her account of women development practitioners working in male-dominated development institutions. The paradox experienced then was that one had to become a 'sociological male', which was tolerated, much better than the attempts to integrate gender-equity goals into the organisation's mission. A significant stand taken by Goetz is that relating to the acceptance of the roles of men by women, but not from a feminist perspective. This she considers as imposition of patriarchy in development goals. Worse are the institutional patterns that run much deeper patterning the incentive system that motivates the staff. For example, delivering development often dilutes the efforts of those workers who may have to take much trouble to adopt non-conventional approaches to understand the problems and constraints for women. The slow and informal path that women workers tend to take in addressing the complex issues of gender are not rewarded at all. The question 'If this is true of development workers of multilateral agencies, what would be the conditions of women workers representing government?' has inspired such authors to look into these issues. What particularly bothered them were the bureaucratic structures that these workers had to face in the course of their work.

Poverty reduction or its alleviation has been the much preferred and prioritised goal of all developmental programmes, whether in India or in the other developing nations. Undoubtedly, the role of institutions is significant in this context since the effort to locate and address poverty is no non-political issue. It is truly a 'political challenge'. A number of vested interests have to be kept at bay while doing so, a problem that tends to get far more complicated when the issue is that of women's poverty or poor women. The opposition to such effort would not only be class-based but also gender-based, as men are also equally opposed to the idea as the rich are towards the poor.

Such being the institutional climate where development has to be delivered to reach women, women development workers play crucial roles and also face many challenges (ibid). Based on a comparison of an NGO and a state development agency in Bangladesh, two rural credit programmes in Bangladesh--one being a state-run programme and the other by an NGO--are evaluated for their performance. Both have been credited with leading to improvement in poor people's lives. Bangladesh, in fact, became the pioneer in these innovations when micro-finance programmes for the poor were introduced all over the world. The crux of the issue here is that the programme focused only on poverty eradication through women's empowerment and participation and did not bother to identify and encourage fulfilment of women's own needs and interests. What was ignored here was the institutional capacity of these programmes to result in the latter type of changes (women's own need fulfilment) and creation of changes that would institutionalise the capacity to do so.

Although concerned originally with the possible differences in organisation of programmes and structural characteristics of these institutions, the course of study led to the realisation that the differences were in fact in the attitudes and work practices of field level staff in both of them. Glaring differences were perceived in the behaviour and perspectives of men and women field staff. This established that gender was an important determinant of development workers' own responses to organisational incentives and institutional structures.

Such studies essentially suggest that the field workers' discretion should be added to the design of development programmes. Whenever a development organisation undertakes work in the realm of gender, with a large section of women as clients and most of its staff also being women, then it is certain to promote 'counter-cultural goals against social resistance'. Such reflections and findings came to emphasise, for the first time, that in such contexts of development organisations working for women's empowerment, it is not only that women beneficiaries who are to be mobilised, but often the staff of the organisation also undergo changes in their personal lives and beliefs. While it is true that field staff are the agents of new values and perspectives leading to structural and ideological changes in the client population, their own views on the 'legitimacy' of these changes do play a significant role here. Studies (Goetz and Gupta 1993) have fundamentally tried to look at whether women development agents could manage their work among the clientele, overcoming their own differences of gender and biases arising out of them, when they perceived gender relations among the former. They have concluded that variety in organisational structure, practice, culture and design tends to affect the capacity of women staff to deal appropriately with their women clients and to communicate the views to the management level. During those days and before, men used to be the majority workers in such programmes and the job favoured their conveniences and capacities. The new wave of development workers who are women is seen by them as a positive sign since they enable building new forms of gender relations and introduce gender-sensitive development administration framework to the institutions.

Taking a detour of how feminist thinking began in the 1980s and 1990s, defining terms like power and authority in the garb of radical, liberal and socialist feminism, the above analysis puts forth the argument that the role of the state or even the NGO as the agency of development has been always ambivalent about the real meaning of these terms. While radical feminists looked at authority as exercise of power in the sense of domination, the latter two schools of thought defined it as gaining power by women to fight against patriarchy and to de-politicise their interests. There is a strong case made for defining the term 'authority' in the sense that it refers to representation and receptivity to clients' perspectives and needs, even on the part of a public servant. The clash between the masculine cultural concern and the feminine obligation to be responsive is brought out well by this research. Referring to another aspect of public administration's role of 'service', it is argued that the public servants tend to use masculine notions of agency in addressing this need rather than acting through the agent (i.e., the woman). The former signals autonomy, while the latter, some degree of subordination. The sad note that the research draws is that the notions of empathy, responsiveness, receptivity and willingness to listen and to act in the interests of others are absent in the set-up where development workers are made to strive to bring about women's empowerment.

Conclusion

To conclude, one can argue that we have traveled much farther from what has been documented in the early writings of women, what Goetz has feared through her 1993 study, or the participation of women in movements and representing labour force. For example, today there are more concerted efforts to mainstream women's interests in development projects; likewise, there are a far greater number of women development workers than men, especially at grassroots level. However, this seems to be true of programmes meant for women's empowerment and development. In the other sectors, men's dominance continues. There is a tendency to appoint more women staff at the grassroots levels when the programme is for women. But are women development workers made to represent non-women-specific programmes? How far are male development workers engendered to work representing women's interests? Is there a continued divide between the state-sponsored and NGO-sponsored work here?

Likewise, in the context of women's ability to write about their problems and experiences, issues are now well established and are positive. This is an encouraging sign for women's empowerment and mainstreaming of gender into development. However, there are multitude of other forms of exploitation of women and their continued oppression despite the above. The books referred to in this paper have succeeded in opening the Pandora's Box further to delineate the further goals of women's movement and feminist research agenda to enable clear strategies and processes in attaining greater levels of women's empowerment and entitlements.

References

Bagchi, Jasodhara and Subhoranjan Dasgupta (2003) (ed). The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender and Partition in Eastern India. Kolkata: Stree, pp 272.

Bhasin, Kamla (2000). Understanding Gender. New Delhi: Kali for Women.

Bhasin, Kamla and Nighat Said Khan (1986) (rpt. 1999). Some Questions on Feminism and its Relevance in South Asia. New Delhi: Kali for Women.

Bhattacharya, Malini and Abhijit Sen (2003) (ed). Talking of Power: Early Writings of Bengali Women from the Mid-nineteenth Century to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century. Kolkata: Stree, pp 1 68.

Chakravarti, Uma (2003). Gendering Caste: Through a Feminist Lens. In 'Theorizing Feminism' (series editor Maithreyi Krishnaraj). Kolkata: Stree, pp 183.

Chanda, Ipshita (2003). Packaging Freedom: Feminism and Popular Culture. Kolkata: Stree, pp 195.

Fernandes, Leela (1997). Producing Workers: The Politics of Gender, Class and Culture in the Calcutta Jute Mills. New Delhi: Vistaar Publications, pp 395.

Goetz, Anne Marie (2001). Women Developing Workers: Implementing Rural Credit Programmes in Bangladesh. New Delhi: Sage Publications, pp 443.

Kelkar, Govind, Dev Nathan and Pierre Walter (2003) (ed). Gender Relations in Forest Societies in Asia: Patriarchy at Odds, New Delhi: Sage Publications, pp 323.

Kuortti, Joel (2003) (ed). Tense Past, Tense Present: Women Writing in English. Kolkata: Stree, pp 235.

Lionnet, Francoise (1997). Post-Colonial Representations: Women, Literature, Identity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Marwah-Roy, Anuradha (1993). The Higher Education of Geetika Mehendiratta. New Delhi: Orient Longman.

Menon, Ritu and Kamla Bhasin (1998). Borders and Boundaries: Women in India's Partition. New Delhi: Kali for Women.

Seal, Arna (2000). Negotiating Intimacies: Sexualities, Birth Control and Poor Households. Kolkata: Stree, pp 126.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1993) (ed). 'In a Word', interview in Outside in the Teaching Machine. New York: Routledge.

Srivatsava, Sharad (1996) (ed.). Feminism and Feminist Movements. In 'The New Woman in Indian English Fiction. New Delhi: Creative Books.

Stasa, Zajovic (1994). Women and Ethnic Cleansing: Women against Fundamentalists. London.

Vuorela, Ulla (1999) (ed). The Post-Colonial and the Third World Feminists. In Women of Race and Feminists: Crossroads of Women's Studies and Development Studies. by Jaana Airaksinen and Tuula Ripatti, Tampere: Vastapaino.

(1) As in the context of Afro-American women by Alice Walker's Womanism (1984).

K G Gayathridevi, Associate Faculty, Centre for Ecological Economics & Natural Resources, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Dr V K R V Rao Road, Nagarabhavi, Bangalore -560 072. E-mail: [e-mail]