Rekha Chowdhary
On the occasion of ‘woman’s day’ and ‘woman’s week’ one may raise the question as to what is the significance of this day. Does it make any difference to the situation of women by celebrating this one day or one week of the year? Should every day not be the woman’s day and every week, the woman’s week?
Of course, every day and every week should belong to women since they are as much part of the society as men are. They should own as much resources; have as many opportunities and choices as men have – but unfortunately, that is not so. Women lag behind men and continue to remain disempowered in many ways. Of course, there are individual women who have made it to the top in various fields – be it economy, politics, culture, science and technology. But when it comes to the collective situation of women – there remains a huge – rather, a very huge gap between men and women. Most of the wealth and natural resources are controlled by men; most of positions of power are with men; much of world’s politics is in the hands of men. Women meanwhile form the largest number of the global poor and disempowered people. On the whole, they earn less than men in all sectors across all the occupations and are engaged in large part in unpaid; underpaid, informal and vulnerable sectors of economy. Though there have been few well known women political leaders who have held important political offices, but as per the general trend, they are still excluded from the political offices and form an insignificant part of the political decision makers. What is worse, women, face everyday prejudices and discrimination. Many of them do not have control over their lives and are subjected to various kinds of violence. In this general scenario, women are far from the ideal situation in which one can say that every day and every week belongs to women.
So can one day or one week compensate for all this exclusion and discrimination that women face on every day basis? Certainly not. However, bringing the question of woman to the centre, on this particular day or the particular week – serves an important purpose of problematising the given reality; of raising crucial questions; and of reminding ourselves as to how much remains unaccomplished when it comes to women’s empowerment. On the whole, it can be argued that annual ritual of celebrating the Women’s Day contributes to bringing gender to the centre of public discourse and in the process constructing a gender discourse around the existing and emerging issues related to women. This discourse is in itself important since it generates the conditions conducive for bringing about transformation in the situation in which women are placed.
The woman’s question seriously entered in the Indian public discourse in the decade of seventies following one of the most elaborated and in-depth report on the status of women in India titled ‘Towards Equality’. The report indicated in no uncertain terms that the direction of development followed by the Indian state did not have positive effects on women and that in all indices the women lagged behind men – whether it was the demographic trends and sex ratio; or the sectors of health, literacy, education, employment. One message that clearly came from the report that neither the constitutional nor the legal and administrative provisions and state policies are going to automatically make women partners in development unless the question of women is also separately raised and tackled.
While the Report shook the state out of its complacency towards the question of women; the concept of ‘gender’ entered the public discourse. In creating this discourse, the women’s studies programmes that were started in the Universities through the UGC fundings; the numerous research projects that were undertaken in Universities and research centres; the women-centric NGOs and the media played a major role. However, the most important was the role of women’s movements. The decade of 1970s and 1980s saw the emergence of multiple women’s movements in various parts of the country. One such movement that caught much attention of people in was organised around the issue of ‘dowry deaths’ and ‘domestic violence’. There were other movements that revolved around the issues of custodial rapes. There were also women’s movements within the ongoing peasant and workers movements. Besides these movements that were specifically organised around issues related to women, there were women’s movements that went beyond the gender questions. One such movement was the Right to information movement . This movement emanated from women’s politics in Rajasthan.
Gender discourse, that was initiated in the decade of 1970, has taken us much ahead. Not only a number of legislations (including the most important ones related to domestic violence, sexual abuse, property rights etc) have been passed but the state discourse has also been sensitised in gender-friendly manner. The state has taken the cognisance of the need of its intervention and bringing about change from above. The state policy frame now has many women-oriented programmes (the latest being ‘beti parhao beti bachao’).
The potency of gender-related issues making way for bigger politics could be seen around the gangrape case of December 2012. The spontaneous popular response around the rape and murder of ‘Nirbhaya’ was so overwhelming that it swept the whole country – across the regional, linguist, cultural and generational divide. While it was in itself important that there was the involvement of youth but more crucial was the involvement of young men along with women. That gender issue had gone beyond the barrier of women and was an important moment in the history of gender discourse.
However, notwithstanding the kind of centrality that woman’s question has come to acquire over the decades in public life, there is much that remains problematic. The crimes against women have increased tremendously; the sex ratio continues to raise our concerns regarding the societal response towards women and their rights; the honour crimes continue to occur; the discrimination and exclusion of women continues in significant spaces. Most importantly, the women’s representation in politics continues to be minimal. The prejudices of the male political class gets meanwhile reflected in its determination not to allow the 33% reservation for women in the state legislatures and the Parliament! The societal ‘mind set’ meanwhile continues to be dominated by patriarchal notions and it is very common to see ‘trivialisation’ of women’s roles and capacities; questioning of the ‘freedoms’ and imposition of moral or cultural codes; denial of opportunities and access to resources and their sexual objectification.
So if we come back to our original question, what conclusion can we reach about the women’s day/week. Certainly, the mere celebration does not make much difference. But surely, as we have argued in this article, the celebration of the day, even in its ritual form, contributes a lot in creating the discourse. Discourse has a power of its own since it lasts longer than the day and leaves an impact which makes way not only for gender sensitivities but also for new questions and ever new demands.
Going by the gender discourse as it has evolved over the years, one can see that the question of women’s empowerment has become much more complex today than what it was when it was raised in the 1970s. This complexity in itself is a step forward as there has evolved a deeper and subtle understanding about the gender related issues. It is, for instance, clear that the problem is not as simple as of creating gender equality just by a stroke of pen in the law and constitution. The problem is much deeper that lies at the root of patriarchy and till the time it is being reproduced in ever new and modern forms, mere legal-constitutional changes are not going to work. One needs to work deeper at the societal level. The change from above is to be corroborated with the change from below. Also there is no one kind of patriarchy and one kind of resolution of women’s problems – since there is the factor of class, caste, community that intersects with gender. There is a different set of problems for middle class women and absolutely different problems for poor women. For Dalit women, their issues emanate from a mix of caste, class and gender and are very specific to them.
It is in this context of greater subtlety and greater depth that the gender discourse has achieved gradually that celebrating the women’s day/week assumes importance. Gender equality and gender justice may no where be in sight, but certainly gender discourse would get strengthened and that itself is no mean achievement.
(Feedback welcome at rekchowdhary@gmail.com)
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel