E.+Women+in+India

"The position of Indian women today can be analyzed in terms both of varying social models (high caste/lowcaste; hierarchical/egalitarian) and of a history of varying movements in interaction with one another. In terms of the factors outlined above, (1) the nationalist and anti-caste social reform struggles have provided the greatest benefits to Indian women, overcoming many of the barriers of caste orthodoxy and providing tradition of leadership and participation; (2) that continuing patterns of lower-caste independence and some aspects of traditional culture also provide an important basis of support for liberationary themes; (3) that the greatest barriers to the full liberation of Indian women today lie not so much in the survivals of caste orthodoxy or patriarchalism as in the continuing socio-economic inequalities that make it impossible for lower-class women to capitalize on the democratizing gains of the nationalist period; and (4) that the impact of the West has been—at best—neutral" [|(Omvedt, 1975.)]

A Day in the Life of an Untouchable Sweeper: Woman
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Class, Caste and Gender – Women in Parliament in India
Women's representation in the parliament, while important on the grounds of social justice and legitimacy of the political system, does not easily translate into improved representation of women's various interests.

While the author of //Class, Caste and Gender – Women in Parliament in India// cannot //“//assume that more women in public offices would mean a better deal for women in general, there are important reasons for demanding greater representation of women in political life. First is the intuitive one: the greater the number of women in public office, articulating interests and seen to be wielding power, the more the gender hierarchy in public life could become disrupted. Without sufficiently visible, if not proportionate, presence in the political system – “threshold representation”– a group's ability to influence either policy-making, or indeed the political culture framing the representative system, is limited. This fact is confirmed by the various other contributions in this volume. Further, the fact that these women are largely elite women might mean that the impact that they have on public consciousness might be disproportionately large in relation to their numbers" [|(Rai, 2002).]

“Second and more important, we could explore the strategies that women employ to access the public sphere in the context of a patriarchal socio-political system. These women have been successful in subverting the boundaries of gender and in operating in a very aggressive male-dominated sphere. Could other women learn from this example? The problem here is, of course, precisely that these women are an elite. The class from which most of these women come is perhaps the most important factor in their successful inclusion into the political system. We can, however, examine whether socio-political movements provide opportunities for women to use certain strategies that might be able to subvert the gender hierarchy in politics. Finally, we can explore the dynamics between institutional and grass-roots politics. As this study demonstrates, the “politicization of gender” in the Indian political system is due largely to the success of the women's movement “[|(Rai, 2002).]

“Women representatives have thus benefited from this success of the women's movement. However, there has been limited interaction between women representatives and the women's movement – one of the important areas of weakness behind both the effectiveness of women MPs as well as that of the women's movement. This is, perhaps, the issue that the women's movement needs to address as part of its expanding agenda in the 21st century” [|(Rai, 2002).]

For the complete article: [|Class, Caste and Gender – Women in Parliament in India]

India: Forgotten Women
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More Informaiton
[|The Women's Movement in India: Action and Reflection] [|Unbeatable: I am a Middle Class Indian Women]