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Achieving Gender Equality-An Unfinished Agenda29 January 2006 Sudha SundararamanTHE last session of Parliament was witness, yet again, to the reluctance of themainstream political parties, barring the Left, to place and pass the Women'sReservation Bill. The BJP's contribution to the scuttling of the Bill was ashameful turnaround of its earlier endorsement, thereby emboldening other parties'withdrawal as well. Yet again, attempts at a 'consensus', that is, dilution andsubversion, about the Bill has become the slogan, in contravention of the factthat all bourgeois political parties had endorsed it in their election manifestosand electoral promises.Why this vacillation and prevarication? Though the arguments vary, essentially theopposition arises from social conservatism and a patriarchal ideology that refusesto accept women as sharers of political power. Even today, 56 years after theSovereign Democratic Republic was formed, the weakness of a democracy in which thehighest decision-making bodies have less than 10 per cent women is a reflection ofthe yawning gap between rhetoric and reality. Despite the Constitutionalguarantees to gender equality, in practice women continue to occupy a subordinateposition. The struggle for more equitable political representation for women isthus actually part of a larger struggle towards a true democratisation of theState and the social polity.This struggle requires that women entering the political representative systemmust not be co-opted into the prevailing system, but must rather question andchallenge the status quo. In panchayats where elected women have been mostsuccessful, they have changed behavioural norms, challenged fatwas, overcomefamily resistance and bureaucratic non-cooperation, and have succeeded in makingwater and sanitation facilities widely accessible. Of course, there are stillinnumerable instances of benami elected women, but with a little bit of supportand training, women are learning to get over the panchpati syndrome.Clearly, the space for political action, when utilized, also leads to an expansionin the social and public space occupied by women. It has been the Left's positionthat women's efforts to radicalize the Indian political space can only be givenadequate impetus by a Women's Reservation Bill that does not compromise with theforces of status quoism.Historically, what has been the experience of women in their struggles for socialjustice vis-a-vis the State? On what issues have activists come together to makecommon cause for the sake of women's rights. The principles of gender equality andjustice enshrined in the Constitution were achieved through struggle andsacrifice, and it was an entitlement gained by women through their extensiveparticipation in the Freedom Movement. In later years, however, this promise wasleft unfulfilled, and women's issues were marginalised by the state through awelfarist approach. The women who had taken to the streets with flags in theirhands, found themselves forced back into the household with belans and jhadhoosinstead, as the State connived with prevalent social conservatism to renege on thepromise of equality.As the Status of Women in India Report of 1975 demonstrated, in almost all walksof life education, health, employment, discrimination against women was rampant.From top-sided sex ratios at all stages of life (produced by the 'customs' ofdowry, polygamy and child marriage) to discriminatory legal frameworks and ageneral neglect of the economic and social contribution of women, the Reportunderlined how a fundamental inequality was rooted in social structures, and was

being exacerbated by the path of development being pursued. Ironically, the Reportwas published during a period in which the democratic aspirations of the peoplewere under direct assault, and Emergency was declared by a woman Prime Minister.The struggle against the Emergency was another instance of people uniting as awhole to fight for and reclaim the political space; women too played a role inthis resistance. The anti-Emergency movements saw the rise of many new women'sgroups, who not only protested against authoritarianism, but also mobilised womenagainst crimes against women, rape, dowry deaths, population control, State-sponsored violence, etc. bringing pressure upon the State, and making importantgains such as legal reforms in the rape law and the anti-dowry Act. In theseprocesses of mass organisation and struggle, women activists came to explore andmake significant socio-historical linkages about the source of women's oppression.No critique of dowry related violence, for example, could be complete withoutstudying the linkages between caste-related customs, denial of property rights,wider socio-economic changes, and increasing consumerism. Sex-selective abortionscannot be arrested without looking at the commercialisation of the medicalfraternity, the secondary economic status of women, the prevailing son preferencetraditions, the sharp increase in dowry and the perception of women as a burden,and the State-sponsored coercive population policy. These were lessons drawn fromwork on the ground.By the 1980s, many women's organisations started coming together to address macropolicies of the government from a perspective that integrated gender with classand caste. In this period, the women's movement exposed the character of gender-based exploitation - women's work was defined as light work, thereby beingaccorded a lower wage rate - and raised demands relating to the labour and landrights of agricultural women. Also, in this decade, the right to maintenance ofMuslim women proved to be a flash point, and the adoption of the retrograde MuslimWomen's Protection Act ushered in a new era of unprecedented mobilisation oncommunal issues.The communalisation of society, the riots targeting minority women, the lack ofsafety was addressed by the joint women's movement at a time when not even thegovernment came forward to protect the minorities. Although rosy ideas about'sisterhood' were challenged by evidence that women from majority communities wereguilty of fanaticism and communal hatred, the knowledge directly contributed to agreater politicisation of the movement. In particular, awareness of the specificnature of some forms of oppression led to a greater diversification of themovement and by the 1990s, issues confronting Dalit and tribal women, and womenfrom the minorities, were sought to be highlighted by the mainstream movement.While the struggle for an adequate response from the State to the demands ofIndian women, be it for reservation in Parliament, water, land, or againstviolence and discrimination' will go on, the women's movement is all too aware ofthe pervasive threat that neo-liberal globalisation poses for its aspirations,indeed for the very survival of democracy in developing countries. The assault ismulti-faceted. As inequality grows, women who are already amongst the marginalisedare further impoverished, leading to the feminisation of poverty. Women'semployment now lies mostly in the unorganized sector, and particularly in home-based work, which entails a greater work burden on women, for lower returns.Combined with anti-farmer policies in agriculture, neo liberal policies haveengineered an agrarian crisis of unimaginable proportions. Women in large numbersnow migrate in search of work, and are made more vulnerable to exploitation, asthe reported increase in the trafficking and sale of girls from poor rural areasdemonstrate. Even the apparent increase in employment in some sectors is offset by