Another International Women’s Day approaches, this time in the aftermath of the Gujarat carnage. It is time to take note of these developments and ensure that the language and demands of the women’s movements are alive and vibrant and not misappropriated. Democracy in the family, democracy in nations, democracy in international relations must all be there if women are to get their true place under the sun.
Albertina Almeida
Third World Network Features
The Women’s Empowerment Year is just over. Empowerment seems to have been reduced to an empty buzzword. Real empowerment calls for encouraging women to think critically and for equipping women with the ability to collectively foster a breakthrough in the system that makes exploitation and oppression of women possible. There was no visible attempt in this direction. By and large, the women were bamboozled by the State with technocratically designed information about schemes and laws which the women could not use.
The language of recognising the diversity of peoples that constitutes the nation and, facilitating the women in that context to assert their own identities beginning from their milieus, was never part of the strategy of the Government’s empowerment programmes. It never could be because it suits the State not to cater to the interests of certain sections of society. And what better way than to assume that women everywhere are a monolithic identity and work out schemes and programmes that in effect benefit at best only a select few?
Women’s rights groups in India and the world over have been fighting against violence in the family and seeking democracy in the family. This is because, violence and democracy are determined and influenced both by the family and world politics. When different ways of functioning and different ways existing are not respected, the traits of intolerance and monolithism can be found both in the smallest arena of politics, i.e., the family, and in the largest arena, i.e., global politics.
Locally, nationally, internationally, the year has seen many things that the women’s movements have been talking about being usurped and used to serve purposes exactly contrary to what the movements set out to achieve. The women’s movements talked of a ‘just’ society and the forces of power are talking of a ‘just’ war. There is a sentiment created, with the able assistance of the media, that taking lives is an appropriate way—a just way of settling scores. Whatever happened to the rhetoric of the civilised that “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, was the preserve of the barbarians”?
September 11 in the US, the attack on Parliament House closer home and the more recent burning of karsewaks at Godhra, all of which deserve condemnation have nonetheless become excuses for massive selective carnage of innocent human beings with the assistance of the State. So many people including women and children have been killed in these wars and riots. So many women have been rendered homeless. Women always bear the double brunt in these wars and riots.
The women’s movements speak of equality—today the forces of power are talking of equality as well. When the women’s movements talked of equality, there was always a qualification appended to the word equality—that it must be in context. Obviously people with a headstart in life cannot be provided the same opportunities as those with a handicap, in the name of equality. Also, equality does not mean a bland uniformity, which is what the slogan of Uniform Civil Code, hitherto a slogan of the womens movement, has been reduced to. It has been reduced to trying to spell out a monolithic identity which today’s woman should have. Beauty contests which enjoy State patronage are reinforcing this monolithic identity robbing women of their moorings, of their sense of self-worth.
The women’s movements speak of dignity and the forces of power are now talking of dignity too. Dignity for women is in the context of a setting where women are denied basic human rights and discriminated against. The US used the terminology of ‘moral dignity’ to justify the war that brought with it nothing but a trail of death and destruction.
Strangely however a US functionary was quoted as saying “The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women”. All of a sudden, the US is talking about freeing Afghan women from oppression, even as its rigid anti-abortion stands continue to haunt and taunt the lives of many women. Maybe with the media bombardment about the denial of women’s rights in Afghanistan the interventions of the US and other Western powers which caused the poverty and the vicious rule of the tyrants and the warlords, has now gained legitimacy.
If the US is really concerned about women’s rights, it would not be giving the title of ‘double veterans’ to American soldiers who raped civilian women before murdering them in the Vietnam War. If the US is concerned about women’s rights, why did it court the Taliban regime which is equally repressive and oppressive?
The use of women’s rights movement as a cover for unjust war or to obtain control on the oil route cannot be sustained as those very wars and controls will ultimately undo all temporary gains. Similarly, there cannot be a justification for introducing draconian laws in the name of curbing terrorism, when the State itself targets and terrorises the lives and property of citizens.
As yet another International Women’s Day approaches, this time in the aftermath of the Gujarat carnage, it is time to take note of these developments and ensure that the language and demands of the women’s movements remain vibrant and are not misappropriated. Democracy in the family, democracy in nations, democracy in international relations must all be there if women are to get their true place under the sun.
There are numerous initiatives all over the globe to reemphasize the value of peaceful and harmonious relations between peoples including between men and women. There are demands that military spending should be reduced and economic concern given more attention—this will ensure an atmosphere conducive to women’s rights.
There are demands that the pivotal (not to be read as biological) role that women have played in sustaining nature, as subsistence crop producers, care-givers and as users, should be acknowledged. Consultative processes with women must take place so that development projects and proposals for ensuring judicious use of nature’s resources like water, are informed by the traditional knowledge and experience, in the use, conservation and management of the resources. Consultative processes with women must also take place for proposals to change such laws or to enact new laws. These are the voices emerging from women across the planet. They need to be heard loud and clear. They need to permeate into the citadels of power. For the personal is indeed political. —Third World Network Features.
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About the author: Albertina Almeida is a practising lawyer and activist of Bailancho Saad, a Goa-based women’s collective. She may be contacted at:
alal@goatelecom.com *****
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