UNIT III

RESISTANCE AND MOVEMENTS

PATRIARCHY
 Women have been treated as subordinates pan-culturally which was justified by their strong
connection to nature that needed to be controlled and regulated by men, who were seen as
more connected with culture (Ortner, 1972).
 Women have been seen as temptress, lacked self-control and intellect that needed men’s
regulation in patriarchal cultures.
 The control over women’s mobility and sexuality has been well studied by feminist scholars.
The control and regulation of one’s sexuality gets even more stronger when gender intersects
with race, caste, class and ethnicity. The works of Leela Dube and Uma Chakraborty are of
relevance to understand patriarchal control in Indian society.
 Patriarchy has called for resistance and movements by women for equal societies across the
globe.
 Christine de Pisan (d. 1430), a successful Italian-born female writer of the French royal court is now
often named as “the first proto modern woman”. For Christine, gender inequality was not on
account of any innate differences between men and women. Instead, she recognised the role of
education and opportunities as the main cause.
 She writes, “If it were the custom to send little girls to school and teach them all sorts of different
subjects there, as one does with little boys, they would grasp and learn the difficulties of all the arts
and sciences just as easily as the boys.”
 The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: The First Wave of Feminism called for
consideration of women for equally dignified citizenship. In A Room of One’s Own the British
author, Virginia Woolf , lamented the absence of female authors, the ‘empty spaces on bookshelves’
which were only filled by men writing, typically negatively, about Woman. “But whatever effect
discouragement and criticism had upon their writing –and I believe that they had a very great
effect– that was unimportant compared with the other difficulty which faced them … that is that
they had no tradition behind them, or one so short and partial that it was of little help. For we think
back through our mothers if we are women.”
 the key pioneers of ‘first wave feminism’ a
period in which women organised themselves into public and high
profile advocacy groups, campaigning for equality in property, economic and voting
rights. Beginning with New Zeal and in 1898, women were granted the Women's Women's
Suffrage and within half a century, enjoyed suffrage in a majority of countries across all
continents: the US in 1919 and the UnitedKingdom in 1928 (to all women over 21)
 The Second Wave
 The second-wave of feminists campaigning for gender equality targeted new objectives,
having achieved suffrage and equality in property rights, feminists after WWII broadened their
objectives to tackling discrimination in employment opportunities, pay and education,
reproductive rights and the role of women in the family and household. The slogan and battle
cry of the second wave was coined by Carol Hanisch: “The Personal is Political” The second
wave deconstructed and criticised for the first time power
relations between men and women in the realm of the personal as well as the public: culture, s
exuality, and political inequalities were intimately intertwined, subjecting women to
discrimination that only self-realization of these power relations could overcome. Key
feminists of this period include Germaine Greer and Betty Friedan . Their works explored the
origins and contours of women’s inequality, breaking the silence over the false myth of the
domestic and docile ‘bliss’ of housewives and breaking taboos over female sexuality.
 In the US: the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX and
the Women’s Educational Equity Act (1972 and 1975), Title X (1970, health and family
planning), the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (1974), the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of
1978, and landmark Supreme Court cases overturning anti-abortion legislation( Roe v Wade ,
1973).
 This period also saw international committees and conferences dedicated to promoting gender
equality. The United Nations established a Commission on the Status for Women in 1946
whose mission was -
 “to raise the status of women, irrespective of nationality, race, language or religion, to
equality with men in all fields of human enterprise, and to eliminate all discrimination against
women in the provisions of statutory law, in legal maxims or rules, or in interpretation of
customary law”
 In its first decade, the Commission passed the following conventions aimed at promoting
gender equality: Convention on the Political Rights of Women, adopted by the General
Assembly(1952); the Convention on the Nationality of Married Women, (1957), the
Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of
Marriages (1962); and the Recommendation on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for
Marriage and Registration of Marriages (1965).Under the auspices of the various UN agencies
responsible for gender equality, the first world conferences on women were held, first in
Mexico (1975), Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1985)and Fourth World Conference on Women .
In 1980, in the middle of the UN Decade for Women, the CEDAW came into force on 3
September 1981, signed initially by 64 countries
 Third Wave Feminism: diversifying the path to equality
 By the late 1980s, the campaign for gender equality entered the ‘third wave’. In response to what
was seen as the predominantly ‘white’ and middle class agenda of the second wave, feminists called
for greater awareness of the specific equality concerns of other female identities previously
marginalised in second wave discourses for gender equality: women from black and minority
backgrounds, bisexual, lesbian and transgender women, the ‘postcolonial’ voice and lower social
classes. The third wave criticises the second wave’s “conformism”.
 An important shift in the past two decades has occurred in the approach to gender equality issues.
Previously departmentalised as ‘women’s issues’ that were studied, analysed and of interest only to
women, issues such as equality in employment is now studied under the rubric ‘gender’. While
certain academics have criticised this shift as cosmetic, that is another way of referring to ‘women’
or an attempt to lend legitimacy to the study of women, the shift does have strong epistemological
justifications. As the feminist historian, Joan W. Scott described:
 “Gender as a substitute for ‘women’ is also used to suggest that information about women is
necessarily information about men, that one implies the study of the other. This usage insists that
the world of women is part of the world of men, created in and by it. This usage rejects the
interpretive utility of the idea of separate spheres, maintaining that to study women in
isolation perpetuates the fiction that one sphere, the experience of one sex, has little or nothing to
do with the other.”

FROM CHIPKO TO SATI-
THE CONTEMPORARY INDIAN WOMEN’S MOVEMENT
 After India’s independence in 1947, the Congress government of that time made promises to uplift the
position of women and thereby, declared equality of men and women in the constitution, by setting up many
administrative bodies and raised opportunities for women.
 The movements of 1950’s and 1960’s were very different from that of 1970’s as there was a serious upsurge of
feminist campaigning which grew out of the radical movements of that time. Most famous Feminist
movements were Shahada and anti-price agitations in Maharashtra and Self Employed women’s
association and Nav Nirman in Gujarat.
 The shahada movement was a Bhil Tribal landless laborer’s movements who were against the exploitative
and dominating non-tribal landowners. Poverty, because of drought and feminine. were the central problems
and on top of that these non-tribal landowners exploited them on
the basis of sharecropping, land alienation, money lending charges etc, this resulted in militancyamong the
bhils. It was more active in the early 1970s, where women took active participation in the militancy and issues
related to violence because of alcoholism. Women in groups began to go from village to village and destroyed
liquor dens and liquor pots, they supported each other and beat the husbands of those women who were
victims of violence.
 In Gujarat, the first women’s trade union(textile labor Association) formed in 1972 by Ella Bhatt, The self-
employment women’s association was an organization which worked collectively for women and fought
against the issues of low earnings, poor working conditions, harassment from those in authority etc. The aims
of the organization and association were to improve working conditions by providing technical aid, and
introducing the members to values of honesty, dignity, and simplicity, ideas reflecting Gandhian principles.
  Due to drought and Feminine, in the rural areas of Maharashtra in early 1970’s led to a sharp
rise in prices in the urban areas, which resulted in the formation of United women’s anti-
pricerise front. The protest included mostly women which campaigned against the inflation
and addressed the government to fix the prices. The protest was demonstrated by women by
the beating of thalis and lathis, approximately ten thousand to twenty
thousand women participated and marched towards the parliament, governments offices etc.

writing on
 This movement spread to Gujarat and was known as Nav Nirman movement, which was
students movement against black marketing, corruption, and soaring prices. The methods of
the protest were hunger strikes, Prabhat pheries, mock funerals celebrating the death of people
who died during the protest, over hundred people died during the protest. Many women joined
the Nav Nirman movement.
 During the same time, the first contemporary women’s feminist movement was formed in

d the way they were treated. Later, under

Hyderabad, which included the women from Maoist movement, who raised the issue of
gender oppression. Because of sudden rise women’s movements, the United Nations declared
1975 as the International women’s year March 8, international women’s day was celebrated
for the first time in India.
 Feminists began writing on Dalit women’s position in the Hindu society explained their isolation and
the way they were treated. Later, under the leadership of Jyotiba Phule, certain reforms were made
such as widow remarriage, right to education etc.
 In 1975, there was the declaration of Emergency by the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, which
interrupted many women’s movement and feminists, as many of them were arrested and those who
were liberated and set free focussed on civil rights such as freedom of speech , right to action, right to
protest , rights of political prisoners etc. The lifting of Emergency in 1977 brought the renewal of
many early women’s movement.
 The three features of the new Feminists campaign include(1) many feminists were from the left,(2)
autonomous groups(3)ideological difference. The role of the feminist groups was to raise feminist
issues with mass organizations such as trade unions, Kisan Samiti etc. In the late 1970’s many loosely
organized groups were formed, the only party based organization was Mahila Dakshata Samiti
(women’s self development organization) founded in 1977 by the socialist women in the coalition
of Janata Party. Many Dowry related cases were found in and around Delhi, dowry related crimes and
murder of women because of dowry, increased in the country. women’s death by the fire were
regarded as suicide and police refused to lodge the complaint because of the personal matter.
 Feminists spread the awareness through campaigns, teacher associations, trade unions,
street plays, magazines etc. In 1980, a year after antidowry agitation, the government passed a lawaga
inst dowry-related crimes and made mandatory for police investigation on those suicides within five
years of marriage.
AGAINST RAPE
 Just after the few months of the anti-dowry campaign and dowry-related crimes, the campaigns against rape started
with campaigns against police. The rapes of groups of women by the groups of policemen as a result of retaliation
against the subaltern movements. Rape case of Rameeza bee, Mathura rape case were raped which involved
policemen. Several rape campaigns marked anew development of feminism in India, the government passes a bill
defining custodial rape and mandatory punishment. Later with more such rape cases, the government took
more stands related to the definition of rapes, molestation and eve teasing.
 Later in 1980, these centres also organised with workshops which initiated several activities andhad sessions on
drama, singing , painting etc. Short stories, myths, folktales, songs, street playswere used to depict the position of
women from past to present.Feminists also emphasized the role of women in the movements which depicted
socialtransformation, one such movement was
 Chipko movement - a movement against deforestationand to preserve forest from destruction from timber
contractors. women played an important role in this mass movement. Feminists began to celebrate this as a mass
women’s movement andtheories began to inculcate in women’s special relation to the environment. Feminists work
began writings on, literature, academia, medicine, gender studies, women’s health, pregnancy,
 There were several challenges which were related to the issue of religion and interfered with
the personal. For example, A woman married under Muslim or Hindu law cannot take divorce
under secular law, several hardships were paid during the time, later British colonial
government passed (section 125) that a divorced woman is destitute with maintenance by her
husband. shah bano a 75-year-old woman, who was abandoned by her husband had filed for
maintenance, under section 125 but with the interference of the religion and unjust judgment
by government ,the case was stretched for a long period of time, whereby she gave up the right
on which she fought for.
 Another case of the practice of sati, Roop kanwar -a girl who was married and few months
laterher husband died, and her marital family decided that she would become sati, the event
wasannounced and her natal family was not informed, she was immolated, the pyre was lit by
her brother in law. There were several agitations towards the sati, but immediately after the
immolation, the site became a pilgrimage spot, where it was seen from Hindu (religion point
of view). Feminists were opposed by mainly Hindu reformist, Arya Samaj etc. There were
many challenges associated towards the movements
 Types and causes of resistance
 Individual leveland Organisational level
 There is a broad range of manifestations of resistance:1) Passive resistance: unconscious or
deliberate non-reaction or slowing down of a processes as well as active resistance, e.g.
ridiculing, open boycott or even attacks on individuals representing change.
 Hidden resistance: objections that are uttered in a factual and reasonable way– but which, in
reality, are forms of hidden resistance (i.e. verbally showing openness to gender
mainstreaming but not acting accordingly). On the other hand, there are objections that are
substantiated and are helpful in critically reflecting a process of institutional transformation.2)
Forms of passive and hidden resistance are more difficult to deal with because they cannot be
directly addressed and discussed.