«Every issue is a women's issue"
WOMEN in the Indian sub-continent face a wide range of prejudice and oppression stemming from class, caste, cultural and gender discrimination. The
INDIA following article takes an overall look at the position of women in Indian society today, and the successes and difficulties facing the organized feminist movement. TRUPTI SHAH
F AMILY, caste and village bondag-
Yes are being used by capitalists to keep women workers subjugated, and pre-capitalist forms of oppression — like dowries, sati or female infanticide - have taken on new forms with the penetration of capitalism. Some people think that the dowry system, sati and so on are just remnants of the past, because of people's feudal outlook. But this is not true. The form is pre-capitalist, but they are being used by capitalism to strengthen itself.
Let's take the example of the dowry system. In the past, in the pre-capitalist era, dowry mainly concerned the higher and propertied classes, mainly the land-owning castes. The women from these castes were not allowed to work outside the home, so they were unproductive. But lower-caste women were always part of the production process, and were not considered as a burden to be fed by their families. So, there was no dowry system among the lower castes. Instead, there was sometimes the practice of "bride price", but not the dowry.
With the penetration of capitalism the family no longer remained the unit of production, and lower-caste women had to go out to look for jobs, which was extremely difficult. With this change in the economic situation, and with the process of "Sanskritization", the dowry custom became universalized. "Sanskritization" describes a process whereby the lower castes want upward social mobility, and to do this they adopt the customs and rituals of uppercaste people. So now dowry has become universalized in all classes, castes and communities.
The second example is that of sati -burning widows with the dead body of their husband. The incident of sati that took place in Rajasthan last year was the subject of several studies that showed that this was not a predominantly religious phenomena, but the product of a complex mixture of economic and political factors.
Impact of new medical technology
It is important to consider the impact of medical technology, such as the amniocentesis test that can determine the sex of the foetus. If the foetus is female then there is a widespread resort to abortion. This shows that the cultural and religious values, such as the preference for male children, are being used by the state — as well as the highly-educated medical profession — for their own benefit. The state support such practices because of their sexist population policy, and the medical profession for financial gain.!
So this treatment given to women, alongside their general status, is reflected in the negative sex-ratio of women in our coun try, which has been declining since the beginning of this century. In the early 1900s there were 972 women for every 1,000 men; now, according to the 1981 census, the number of women has declined to 935.
India's constitution gives formal equality to women in law and prohibits any kind of discrimination on the basis of sex. It also includes some pro-women legislation like prohibiting dowry, abolishing sati and laws against violence in the family and so on. But most of these laws are only on paper, in the statute books. In reality, the situation of women is very different and they are not
On the one hand the constitution gives formal equality to women, and on the other it supports the Personal Laws of different religions. These Personal Laws give different rights to women as regards dowry, marriage, custody of children and women's property rights.
All of the government's policies treat women as mothers and wives, and not as equal citizens. For them, women are the primary target of population control, and they are being used as human guinea-pigs for doubtful experimentation and injurious techniques of population control - like Depo Provera [a long-acting, injectable contraceptive with hazardous side-effects].
Before independence, questions like sati, the remarriage of widows or women's need for education were taken up by Westerneducated "enlightened" male reformers. They were dying to do something for improving the situation of women, but for them women were never equal citizens but mothers, wives and sisters. During the independence movement, for the first time women came out of their homes and into the struggle. But afterwards, they were again pushed out of public life.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, as a result of the limited success of the first and second five-year plans, and job opportunities created by an expanding public sector, the ruling class could satisfy the educated masses and working youth. But by the late 1960s, declining real wages and increasing 1. See "Right to life for females", /V 94, March 10, 21 1986.
INDIA prices forced the Indian working class to come out into the streets.
Various mass movements developed in response to the crisis during these years in both urban and rural areas. Some examples were the Naxalbari movement led by Maoist groups in the rural areas of West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Punjab and Kerala; anti-price rise women's movements in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh; and a movement initiated by students and supported by all the middle-class in Gujarat. In various parts of the country there were movements of tribal masses against the landlords, money-lenders and corrupt government officials, and a movement of tribal women to save the trees and forests from government officials and contractors. The railway workers' strike in 1974 was the culmination of all these movements, and women were not only a very important part of these struggles, but led and organized some them. Emergence of autonomous women's groups
With the declaration of emergency rule in 1975, all these movements were crushed. But women activists from these mass movements became more and more sensitive to specific women's issues, because when they came out of their houses to participate in these movements they had to face a lot of difficulties as women, not only from their families and communities, but also from their co-workers in the mass movements. So they became more and more sensitive to their oppression as women, and started talking about their similar experiences in different groups. The celebrations around the International Women's Decade gave these women the opportunity to get together and talk about all these issues.
The emergence of autonomous women's groups is the important phenomena of this period. These groups are formed and led by women to fight against oppression, exploitation, injustice and discrimination. Their first priority is to fight against women's oppression, and for them the women's movement cannot be subordinated to the decisions or needs of any other political parties or social groups and organizations. They keep their autonomy from all the political parties, and most of the time their way of functioning is non-hierarchical and democratic.
From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, such autonomous women's groups sprang up in almost all the major cities of India. Since then, these groups have remained the most dynamic force of the feminist movement in India.
Apart from traditional women's organizations and bodies set up by the government, which are not really part of the women's movement as such, there are six 22 different types of women's organization in , India — although sometimes the classificaInternational Viewpoint #158 • March 6, 1989 tion is somewhat arbitrary and there can be an overlap in membership. The first are autonomous women's groups. These are groups that are agitational in nature, making propaganda and doing consciousnessraising work and they fight women's oppression in a very militant way.
The second are grassroots or mass-based organizations, like trade unions, agricultural labourers, democratic rights groups, tribal organizations or slum-dwellers. These organizations are mixed, but sometimes they take up specific women's issues and organize struggles around them. The third category are those groups providing services, like shelters, legal aid or health and social services for women. Fourth are professional organizations including women doctors, lawyers, scientists, journalists and so on. Fifth are women's fronts or women's sections in the different political parties — all the political parties have such fronts or women's wings. Lastly are those groups involved in research, documentation or publication of writings on women's issues.
The women's fronts of the various political parties are focusing their activities mainly on electoral victory. They come out on the streets for fighting for women's issues, but most of the time their programme is divided on nairow political lines and their first priority is not women but the needs of their own party.
The professional women's organizations focus their attention on discrimination, job promotion and equal opportunities, creasing wages and so on. The trade unions and other mass organizations highlight the economic exploitation of women workers
Class, caste, culture and gender
Among all these different women's organizations, it is the autonomous women's groups that are the most dynamic and militant part of the overall women's movement. The leadership of these groups is mainly made up of middle-class, educated women, but they are very committed and dedicated to the cause of women. Most of them are feminists, and many of them are involved in other mass organizations. Some are liberal feminists and some are socialist feminists — there is no radical feminist current
But this middle-class feminist leadership have tried to establish contact with women's organizations in rural and tribal areas These autonomous, feminist groups have developed a perspective over a period of time that class, caste, culture and gender are four integral parts of women's oppression, hence the struggle against these four components is indissolubly linked.
What the relationship should be between these four dimensions has been the subject of debate for several years inside the feminist movement. Many of them have taken a position that we support, which is that all these four dimensions of women's struggle must be pursued simultaneously. A women's movement that ignores the influence of caste, class or culture will remain limited, ineffective and isolated from the motor forces that are the sources of structural change. On the other hand, a women's movement that allows the gender issue to be subsumed by class, caste or cultural questions is in fact negating the full liberation and empowerment of women as women, which can only be attained by the final uprooting the ideas and institutions that perpetuate inequality between sexes, even in post-capitalist societies.
The autonomous women's movement has always supported struggles against communalism and the caste system. For example, Manushi and Saheli were two of the main organizations to investigate and raise the issue of mass killings, rapes and atrocities against Sikhs after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. In other parts of the country autonomous groups - such as the Forum Against Oppression in Bombay, or Sahiyar in Baroda - have always supported the struggle against caste and communalism, struggles of slum-dwellers for housing, workers rights to unionization. For example, after the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, women's groups from all over the country sent delegations to give concrete aid, investigate the circumstances and organize the fight against the company's negligence.
These groups have developed the slogan: "Every issue is a women's issue". Women
March 6, 1989 • #158 International Viewpoint are half of humanity, and all the issues that affect the oppressed and exploited masses also have a specific impact on women as women. The women's movement has taken on the task of interpreting all these problems from a women's point of view, and enrich the perspectives of these various movements with this dimension.
A widely discussed example of the relationship between the feminist movement and the mass movement is that of the Bogra movement. Bogra is a district in Bihar, and it was a struggle of landless labourers against the temple priest who owned most of the land in that area. It was led by a youth group influenced by the radical side of Gandhian ideology. The struggle faced heavy repression, not only from the state but also from the land-owner/priest, and women were always in the forefront of this The fight for women's right
Women activists in this organization were very conscious of issues such as participation of women in meetings, language, representation of women at public meetings and so on, and they began organizing separate women's meetings to discuss all these problems. A whole series of issues were raised by them, like wife-beating, the traditional division of labour inside the family and questions such as alcoholism. At the same time, they fought side by side in the broader movement around the land
When the land was eventually won, there was a big struggle about whose name the land should be registered in — it being seen as natural that it should be in the men's names. But the women said, "We fought for the land just as the men did, so why should it be registered in our husband's names?" They had to fight not only with state and government officials, but of course with their male family members. Finally, some of the women did get land in
Both of these struggles - for the right to land and for women to have land in their own name - have had a positive impact on the status of women in that area.
There are other examples from all over the country of women's groups that try to incorporate feminist questions in the general class struggle and the mass movements. It is not always a very successful relationship. Sometimes there is a great deal of tenconclusions from these experiences for our future work in this direction.
The first is that it is generally argued in many of these mass organizations that the time is not ripe to talk about women's issues, because it will weaken and divide the movement, divide the working class and so on. But several of these experiences show that the fight for women's specific demands inside the mass movements or the class struggle does not divide, but leads to the maximum possible participation of women. Secondly, when women were organized in any mass movement and came out of their homes, they begin to realize that the oppression they confront in the family as woman is not just a personal problem but a social one faced by all women. They become more and more aware of their specific oppression and begin to have doubts about the age-old patriarchal norms and forms of society. In organizing together, they gain strength to organize against this oppression and, if there is a correct leadership, they can provide a link between the mass movement and the feminist
In India there is evidently a great diversity of local situations and struggles, and so the issues taken up by women's groups at local level cover a whole series of questions. Examples women - rape, alcoholism or beating, dowry harassment, violence in the family; problems of working women and the oppression and exploitation of dalit [untouchables] and minority women; communalism; campaigning against obscene posters; problems faced by servants; temple prostitution; deforestation and the environment; slums and housing rights; the torture and harassment of women prisoners; the Personal Laws and so on.
Some of these issues are very specific to the local situation. But there are a few issues that have been taken up nationally by several women's groups campaigning together. The first was the anti-rape movement in the early 1980s.
This was sparked off by an incident where a 16-year-old girl was raped by the police while in custody, and the Supreme Court gave a judgement in favour of the police. Women's groups all over India fought to reverse this judgement, and sevaround this issue. The movement was succhanges in the rape law. But the main breakthrough of this movement was that it broke the age-old taboo of discussing issues like rape in public. Now questions such as rape and wife-beating are beginning to be seen as serious social problems and not simply "domestic" or private affairs. This campaign gave rise to the slogan, "The personal is political".
### Campaign around
Personal Laws
The second nationwide issue was the question of the Personal Laws. This came to light during the Shah Bano case.? Shah Bano was an elderly Muslim women who was divorced, and according to Muslim Personal Law she could not receive maintenance from her husband. A campaign around this was taken up all over the coun try, but it was a battle that was lost. However, this campaign helped clarify the
INDIA discussions in the women's movements on the relationship between women and religion, religion and the state, women and the state, and the increasing strength of fundamentalism.
The third national campaign was against injectable and long-acting contraceptives such as Depo Provera. This struggle is continuing, and it also focuses on broader questions of population control and governmental policies.
Today, the central national issue is around amniocentesis and tests for sexdetermination. November 24 last year was a national day of campaigning around these issues. The campaign has the support of radical health groups and lawyers alongside the women's groups.
Different forms of struggle have been used at various times by the women's movement. Most of the time traditional campaigning methods are used — publications, petitions, mobilizing for demonstrations, public and street meetings and so on. But some new forms of struggle were also created, such as the widely-used cultural forums and alternative media. This is done through street theatre using mime and songs. This is very effective, given that 75% of Indian women are illiterate. National and international coordination
Though there is no national women's organization, the coordination between different local or regional groups is common through regional seminars or meetings, national meetings on specific issues and a national conference every three or four years.3 The coordination between urban and rural groups is being strengthened, and this was evident at the last national conference in February 1988. Around half of the participants in this conference, attended by around 1,000 women from all over India, were from rural areas. And 12,000 rural women participated in the rally at the end
There is also some coordination at an international level with other feminist groups in Asia. One example is AWARN, the Asian Women's Action and Resource Network, which promotes research and activity on issues such as the impact of population control policies, violence against women, tourism and prostitution, problems of workers in free-trade zones, as well as organizing workshops and schools for women.
Another is the Feminist International Network Against Reproductive and Genetic Engineering. There are a number of others, including the Asian Women's Rights Committee and Women under Islam, which deals specifically with the problems of Muslim women. 2. For more details on the Shah Bano judgement and the personal laws, see /V 107, October 27, 1986. 3. On the 1985 national women's conference, see "Per- 23 spectives for the Indian women's movement", IV ibid.
Women and local government