Search All

This paper is based on a three‐year research project entitled Minority Women Negotiating Citizenship. Conceived of in the aftermath of Gujarat 2002, the project studied 75 life‐history narratives of Muslim women survivors of communal violence in Gujarat, Hyderabad and Mumbai, in order to map their everyday experiences of negotiating survival, marginalisation and exclusion. While analysing our material we found that our preliminary organising or analytic categories – victim, agent, Muslim, woman, class, location – could not contain the negotiations and fluid ‘subjects’ of the narratives. The most useful analytic concepts and tools were those being used by the women themselves in their narratives, such as bahar nikalna and sambhalna. …

The paper will examine some of the critical issues raised by the women's movement in India on the violence experienced by women both within the family and through modes of development initiated by the state in India and the manner in which the state has sought to both counter feminist critiques as well as co-opt them through state initiated policies. It will particularly examine literacy and micro-credit programmes to argue that the rhetoric of empowerment functions as a new 'mantra' which does little to even dent the violence of women's everyday lives especially when they are poor and located on the social margins. …

This paper deals with two related themes: bodily integrity and women’s empowerment in the Indian context. Delving into both the politics of gendered culture and sexual politics (the politics of the body) it argues that the dichotomy between the woman’s body and the mind is a synthetic one and socially constructed. The identification of women with their physical bodies is the root cause of their oppression in a patriarchal culture and society like India. Most often women are denied the rights to emotional, mental, psychological and physical spaces. …

In this chapter, Sharma writes about a workshop programme by her organisation, Nirantar, aimed at building perspectives on sexuality in a manner that was both positive and political. The programme constitutes one of the first efforts in the Indian context to do this, with women from rural, poor communities as well as the organisations that work with them, in an intensive manner. …

This chapter aims to critically understand the ‘positionality’ of Elected Women Representatives (EWRs) in India and more specifically in the state of Rajasthan at multiple levels - political, social, economic and personal with the aim of analysing factors enabling and constraining women’s political pathways through the intersections of gender, caste, class and ethnicity. …

This seminar held in Dhaka on 21 January 2008, brought together work and discussions around concepts of empowerment, among academics, practitioners and activists, both within and outside the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment RPC. There were researchers and activists from Sierra Leone, Ghana, Palestine, Egypt, and Brazil present. The day’s programme was arranged around three themes: livelihoods and labour, political spaces and institutions, and civil society discourses. The discussions addressed common questions and the presenters applied them to their individual experiences. …

This article introduces an issue of writing on the ways in which religion enters cultural and social life. The papers in this issue concentrate on the way that Islam impacts on the everyday aspects of the lives of people in Muslim societies or communities where Islam plays a part. This issue emerged from a panel presentation on ‘Women Negotiating Islam’, about how women cope with the ways that religion enters their lives, and brings out the cultural aspects behind women’s negotiations of the positions made available to them and their struggle to carve their own spaces. The issue aims to show how women, culture and religion form a difficult and complex terrain in which our political and social lives are lived. …

Stigma and legal sanctions against homosexuality, as well as gender norms among men who have sex with men, lead to an emphasis on aggression, power play and penetration in male-to-male sex in India. This in turn contributes to low levels of condom use among men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender people, and increases the risk of HIV and ill-health. This article explores the potential for promotion of more sensuous, pleasurable, and communicative sex which could also be safer. The article draws on the author’s research as well as on his personal experience working as a masseur in Kolkata Massage parlours which provide commercial sexual services to male clients. …

Meena Seshu as guest editor of this issue of Contestations suggests that by viewing 'sex work' through the framework of patriarchy and the objectification of women's bodies, feminists foreclose any discussion over whether women can actively choose sex work as a livelihood option. It is this narrow approach linking sex work with violence against women, she argues, that leads many feminists to the assumption that all sex workers are victims who need 'rescuing', which is not always the case. Seshu contends that a far better lens is the rights-based approach which recognises sex workers' rights as human beings and allows them to break out of the victim mode. …

This chapter challenges the assumption that sex workers get no pleasure from their work, citing research in several locations including India, China, Spain and Finland. This research demonstrates that placing sex workers’ experience of pleasure at the forefront can provide a fresh angle on familiar arguments. This is particularly important in the study of sex work, where ideological conflict and political necessity have tended to harden into fixed positions and inflexible ways of thinking. This chapter follows the lead provided by sex workers themselves in taking pleasure seriously. …

The South Asia Hub of the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment research consortium held an inception workshop based on scoping papers on the themes of ‘voice’, ‘work’, and ‘body’. The purpose of the research is to seek to identify discourses and interventions that have led to the greater empowerment of women, based on these three themes. The papers in this book are culled from that inception workshop and give an idea of the mosaic that forms the lives of women in the heartland of South Asia. Three main arenas of activism and interventions emerge from the papers. …

This book attempts to synthesize the experiences of organizing hard-to-teach working women in the informal economy and draw out their lessons. The chapters deal with examples of organisations that are working with this category of women workers in order to draw out both common patterns and unique responses to particular circumstances, and thus deepen our understanding of some of the collective pathways to change that might be relevant for different groups of working women in different sectors of the economy. In this introduction, the authors draw out some key themes from the chapters in order to address some key questions. What gave these precarious workers the impetus and courage to organize? What were the main obstacles faced by their organisations in efforts to address what Nancy Fraser calls the injustices of redistribution, recognition and representation? These relate to the unfairness of the economic system and the exploitative relations of work that it generates; the denial of respect and dignity to certain groups of workers on the basis of their identity and the work they do; and the absence of an organized voice that can articulate their needs and rights as women, as workers and as citizens. …

This book is about taking an upside down approach to women’s political empowerment. Its starting point is that the academic and policy focus on getting the electoral system right in order to narrow the gender gap in representation needs to be complemented with a bottom up approach that examines women’s pathways of political engagement. …

India’s economic growth will accelerate more rapidly, democratically and effectively if India invests in people and their economic potential. Investing in people, especially women and their living and working environments, is imperative for nation-building. In this chapter, Bhatt looks at SEWA and its involvement in the process of organizing poor working women since 1972, its successes and its struggles. …

This book explores the role that religion, culture and society play in the social and political positioning of women. The collection of essays in the book aims to capture the variety of policies, discourses, debates and interventions that have influenced the lives of women in South Asia and to identify those that have led to greater empowerment of women. The contributors assess the current situation and provide a rallying call for progressive politics that is committed to universal values. The essays also review as well as show us the new directions that are opening up new pathways for women to traverse. …