5.8 Summary and conclusion

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Contemporary India

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The University of Melbourne

Contemporary India

29 ratings

This course presents some important vignettes of a complex, highly diverse India that is also witnessing unprecedented changes since its formal independence in 1947 from Great Britain. The lectures revolve around social dimensions of change, the continuing influence of ancient texts on contemporary India, political democracy, economic transition from the state to the market, gender relations, India's economic globalisation and changing world view. While one of the objectives is to capture the multifaceted process of change, the course also critically examines some of the tensions inherent in these changes. For example, how does gender inequality play itself out in a changing Indian society, how do the modernist conceptions of art entailing market valuation challenge the more socio-centric values found in South India, what are the politics linguistic identities, and how might India address its myriad development challenges such as poverty and unemployment. No specific prior knowledge is required. However, it would be helpful if students are aware of the socio political dynamics at play in contemporary India and keep themselves abreast with current affairs and debates in the country to fully appreciate the various dimensions and contours if the subject matter in the course. This course is taught in English. View the MOOC promotional video here: http://tinyurl.com/hx8mhxb

From the lesson

Women, gender and feminist struggles in India

This week you will be introduced to some of the concerns related to women and the politics of gender in contemporary India. The section will also focus on some of the key issues related to feminist struggle over the last three decades. Not only will it touch upon the achievements of these struggles but also deal with issues related to missing women, low sex-ratio of women compared to men in India, violence against women, the demand for representation in legislative bodes and the struggle for the rights of sexual minorities. The theme of gender justice and how it is articulated in various forums will also form an important part of this section.

5.0 Overview: women, gender and feminist struggles in India3:35

5.1 Change: the success story12:09

5.2 Continuities and paradoxes19:27

5.3 Violence against women21:43

5.4 Poor women11:15

5.5 Muslim women. The Shah Bano case9:09

5.6 Sexual minorities10:10

5.7 Sex workers7:23

5.8 Summary and conclusion6:49

Meet the Instructors

Anthony D'Costa
Professor
School of Social and Political Sciences

So to summarise and conclude what I have tried to communicate very

briefly in this session around women in contemporary India is

first the idea that women are not a homogenous group.

We've looked at several different categories of women, and

the kinds of contests that each of them have been subjected to.

We've looked, for instance, at Muslim women and the

kind of issues around

the personal laws affecting Muslim women.

We've looked at poor women.

We've looked at sex workers.

And we've looked at lesbian women, as part of the LGBT movement.

Now each of these groups of women have issues and

concerns that are specific to their

subject positions and what we then have to

consider is the fact that gender is not simply about men and

women, but men and women in particular situated

within particular relationships of power.

And this is important.

And that those relationships

of power may be distributed across other dimensions of identity as well,

so across the dimension of class, if we're talking about women or

across the dimension of religion if we're talking about Muslim women,

across the dimension of caste if we're talking about scheduled caste women or

scheduled tribe women.

And this is significant for

how we we might think about strategies or

interventions to improve or advance the position of women.

So, feminist movements within the Indian context have had to grapple with

the implications of the instability of gender as a signifier.

Yeah, so it doesn’t, gender doesn't just mean one thing.

It means different things in

relation to different categories of women.

Gender's also an unstable signifier

especially when we're talking about sexuality or

sexual minority groups or sex workers.

And thinking about how these groups,

sexual minorities or sex workers, offer a challenge to

heteropatriarchal constructs that are still quite deeply

embedded within Indian social norms and values

is an important task, an important task for

not just the movement but also a part of thinking of

how society changes over time.

And then we've also looked at the role of the state in various ways.

We've looked at how this state simultaneously invoked as a protector

of women's rights as the agency or the institution

that will advance the position and condition of women,

particularly through legislation, but

we've also looked at the ways in which the state can and

does sometimes act in regressive ways and perpetuates inequality.

So for instance when we looked at the kinds of reversals

of judgements that the courts have been involved with

many of the key judgments that I talked about,

or in terms of the every day gender bias of the institutions

of the state, whether we're talking about the police, the judiciary

or even other institutions such as the educational institutions.

So the State is important, but it's role is ambivalent in that

it or let's say that it's, mixed it can be both

positive and it can also be, it can also be negative.

And in the context of thinking about the state

we have to also recognise

that while it plays an important role in

advancing the rights of women

through for an instance, say equality provisions,

a point that was made by the report of the Committee on the Status of Women in 1974,

the report towards equality, which is that the application of

the theoretical principals of equality in the context of unequal situations

only intensifies inequality because equality, in such situations, merely

means privileges for those who have them already, and not for those who need them.

This is important to bear in mind, in the Indian context.

Because what we're seeing is

the continued tension on the issue of equality, and

I started this session talking about the constitutional

equality that's enshrined in our Constitution.

But pointing out also the provision that allows the state to make special

considerations for women and other disadvantaged groups.

Now, maintaining a balance between these two opposing sort of tensions

has been and will continue to be key to the

ways in which women's rights get articulated within the Indian context.

In some cases we see that the articulation of equality does sometimes,

equality provisions do sometimes intensify the inequalities.

Whereas in other cases we're seeing that

we do need to make those special provisions for women.

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