Conflict And Resistances: Challenges Before The Women’s Movement

Conflict And Resistances: Challenges Before The Women’s Movement

Noorjehan Safia Niaz

Internationally 100 years have passed since the time women initiated the first revolt against injustice. Since then the women’s movement has achieved a lot and as it marches along in the 21^st century, newer challenges confront it.

While the movement is still struggling with domestic violence, lethargic implementation of laws for women, glass ceiling etc, it is also struggling to address concerns arising out of increasing deforestation, privatization of irrigable land, fierce onslaught of capitalist forces and increasing commodification of women’s bodies. Globalization, large scale displacement, dispossession and migration, criminalizations of politics, fundamentalism and communalism – all have had their impact on the status of women in our country.

Feminist analysis of women’s lives has been confined to a particular set of women. The leaders of the women’s movement in India too have been from the upper caste and class and because of that composition of the leadership certain kinds of experiences of a certain section of women have been left out. A big chunk of women from the dalit, muslim, tribal and other backward communities have been left out of the empowerment process. It is important to start where the women are stationed in their social political life. The movement needs to analyze where the woman is and what is she doing for her own empowerment. There is certain discomfort when we pick up theories and notions of women’ empowerment from a different socio-political, cultural context and apply them in a different one to see whether the women fits into that notion of empowerment. This fitting-in of women’s experiences with pre-established notions of empowerment belittles their huge efforts in entering the public domain despite their marginalization.

The movement has to some extent remained isolated and has not engaged with citizens groups, environmental groups and issue based groups for larger struggle for social justice, democracy and survival. The movement has not done enough to go to galli, mohallas and bastis to form decentralized women’s groups and equip them for their local struggles and also involve hem in highlighting state, national and international issues. Newer groups of women, those working in the retail sector, sex workers, bar women and girls and many more such disadvantaged groups need to be organized.

The larger challenge at the ideological level has been the movement’s definition of secularism and feminism. Does the movement feel the need to revisit their own notions of these terms? Does the term secularism mean absence of religion, does the movement think of believer to be a secular person? Can somebody be a feminist and yet be believing in the institution of marriage, family? Does one have to be anti-men to be a feminist? Can the women’s movement turn into a non-party political movement of all segments of women? These questions also indicate the probable reasons for the women’s movement failure to attract masses of women. These and allied questions are a challenge before the women’s movement.

Abstract for X111 Indian Association of Women’s Studies, National Conference, Wardha, 21-24 January 2011