Krishnaveni’s story

We are delighted to announce a collaboration between The Writing Caste blog and Prajnya that will include conducting and archiving interviews with women on the theme of caste and gender, occasional shared columns and a sharing of resources and ideas. If you would like to contribute to or participate in this collaboration too, send an email to find out how.

**************

Observations and notes from a visit to Nellai and Madurai districts in Tamil Nadu by a team – Ravichandran, Randeep Singh, Roshan Sharma and Malarvizhi Jayanth – in the second week of July 2011 with the purpose of making a documentary on the attack on panchayat president Krishnaveni, and the continued attacks on dalit panchayat presidents in Tamil Nadu.

This is the story of Krishnaveni – an Dalit woman of the Arunthathiyar caste who did not finish school, mother of two, who became Panchayat President. She decided to contest the elections as an independent in Thalaiyuthu Panchayat, Nellai district, when it was declared reserved for dalit woman candidates. She won by a margin of 700 votes. Some people did not like this. They thought it demeaning that they had to take orders from a dalit woman.

In five years, many people in her village warmed to her. They talk, with admiration and respect in their voices, about how she laid roads, built a library, created infrastructure with amazing speed, how she did not take bribes, how her honesty and straightforwardness kept getting her into trouble. She filed more than 15 complaints against people including the vice-president and ward members of the Panchayat. They were obstructing her work because she did not allow them to skim public money. They did not like the fact that a dalit woman was standing up to them. The district administration and the police did not care.

A few young men came to her house many times that day, June 13, 2011. They asked her children, ‘Where is your mother? Where is your father?’ She had worked a long day at the panchayat office. She took an auto home around 9 p.m. On the street next to her house, at the turning past Karuppansamy temple, they attacked her. Opposite the library she had built, upon the road she had laid, they stopped the auto. The auto driver leapt out and fled. They clamped her mouth and eyes shut. They had already broken the streetlight on the road to ensure perfect darkness. They pulled her head back by her braid. They cut off the braid. They cut off a ear. They hacked at her, all over her body.

In photographs, she stands bold, straight and beautiful, radiating confidence and strength. She receives awards for good governance, for excellence, for merit. A minister leans in to listen to a point she makes. MLAs, collectors, policemen, all the people she had petitioned for protection, all the people who did not come through for her, infest her albums. In every picture, she stands straight, shoulders square, her courage writ large upon her posture.

In hospital, she lies on a stretcher, both her arms and legs, her body covered in bandages. Her head shaved, the scar of the lost ear turning a sickly yellow, a blood stain on the bandage on the left hand, her sister holding up the bandaged right hand because it hurts too much to put it down. ‘I am afraid now‘ she says. Krishnaveni, the brave. Krishnaveni, the strong. Panchayat president Krishnaveni, the woman who was given the title of Veera Penmani (Heroic Woman) by the women of her village. Panchayat president Krishnaveni, first woman panchayat president in the state to be attacked with such cold-blooded brutality.

Her husband refuses to talk to the camera. ‘They transferred me, they accused me of corruption so that they could get back at her. I told her to never back down. We did what we had to, no regrets or fear,’ he says, later. The dean at the hospital refuses to allow filming. Filming the outcome of injustice could cause a law and order problem apparently.

The streetlight is back on that street corner. That dark corner, place of bloodshed, is now paved with golden light on a windy evening. The people are hesitant to speak. In front of Jaggamman temple, an old woman, eye-patch flapping in the wind, mouth rimmed with blood-red betelnut, eyes rimmed with rage, is willing to speak. ‘They want us to keep cleaning toilets,’ she says. ‘That’s why they hacked my daughter-in-law mercilessly. Jaggamma will exact our revenge..she will..she will,’ she flings a curse at the skies. The men around her are afraid to talk to the camera. The women, too. ‘We were not afraid earlier. We would walk around our village at any time. Now we are scared.’

‘We don’t have toilets. The women can go behind the bushes, very early in the morning or late in the evening. Some men won’t let us do that even in peace. They will shine torches into the bushes when we are squatting there. They would call out vulgar things,’ they said. She tried petitioning the government for funds to build a toilet. There was no response. She went around the village, asking for money to build a toilet, she raised Rs. 1 lakh from the people who elected her. She asked for their opinions on where a toilet could be built. They chose a spot together. It was on poromboke land. A man from the dominant caste had encroached upon the land near the chosen spot. He didn’t want a toilet in that location. Most people are sure that he is responsible for the attack, that he is in cahoots with the vice-president.

If the president is dalit and the vice-president is not, it is obvious that there will be problems, say activists. Both of them have to sign cheques together. Witholding a signature will mean that panchayat workers won’t get paid, development projects will be stalled.

‘We can’t listen to just one person,’ says a bureaucrat with an oily manner. He received Krishnaveni’s petition for protection. He did nothing about it. As she lies in hospital, he says, ‘This was a clash between individuals. Caste? Caste is a set of imaginary lines we are imposing on the situation. Caste does not exist.’ Outside a friend from the Aathi Thamilar Peravai – which seeks to politically mobilize the Arunthathiyar – says, ‘Oh that man is dalit. That lady, his deputy seated next to him, is Thevar. He won’t take a stand on a caste issue in front of her.’

Many of the village’s non-dalit residents acknowledge that Krishnaveni worked without fear or favour, that she implemented schemes benefiting several communities, that she laid roads where none existed. The magnitude of her achievement shines in comparison with other villages where panchayat presidents had learnt to ‘adjust’ and ‘compromise’. Some of the other panchayat presidents have learnt the ‘ways of the world.’ They have learnt to skim funds top and bottom, keep the vice president and ward members happy, buy themselves a Sumo. ‘That is the mark of the corrupt president,’ the people say. ‘The ones that start driving around in Sumos months after getting their post. Did Krishnaveni drive around in a Sumo?’ they ask indignantly, ‘What crime did she do to deserve this?’

Some panchayat presidents are hapless rubber stamps. They told Thangavelu that his mother was ill, brought him back to his native village when it was declared reserved for dalit candidates. He left behind his daily wage labour in Mumbai and came. They made him stand for elections and made sure he won. They made him pay a bribe to his own vice-president to get his own government allotted house. His wife is not at home, when the team visits. She has gone to get her wages under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. He is at home. The president is not required to disburse funds, only his laboriously printed signature is needed. ‘They don’t tell me about anything,’ he says, ‘They only ask for my signature.’

Other ‘smart’ dalit panchayat presidents in the district have learnt to keep the dominant castes happy with judicious helpings of public funds. Caste draws lines across everything. How smart you can be. How much money you can spend on your village. How much courage you are allowed, how much pride, and how much dignity. The ‘smart’ ones say that she was too ‘stubborn’, that she didn’t know how to ‘compromise’, didn’t know how to ‘adjust’. Given her location on the hierarchy – the unsaid words imply – she should have compromised and adjusted much, much more.

Inside Thalaiyuthu, ‘We need to lose this generation for our people to find freedom,’ said a young woman. ‘We have been brought up to be slaves,’ says another young man. ‘We need to lose this generation. Death can come only once,’ said a young man, ‘What is the point of living like this? We need to arm ourselves,’ said another.

The stories about her courage are legion. The best is of the minister who walked into her office and tried to order her around to do a favour for members of the dominant castes. The minister then tried to sit in her chair. ‘Madam, this is my office,’ she told the minister. ‘This is my chair. Please don’t order me around.’ The minister backed down after that. In a world where Panchayat Presidents are not even allowed to sit in their chairs (because the dominant castes believe that dalits should not aspire to such things), such stories are nectar to the ears.

125 panchayats in Nellai are reserved. Forty dalit panchayat presidents have received threats to their lives. Nellai is proud runner-up in the game of ‘Which district has committed most atrocities against dalits?’ The collector received a petition signed by 40 dalit panchayat presidents saying their life is in danger. He saw Krishnaveni when these Panchayat Presidents came to submit this petition. He didn’t care.

Panchayat president Servaaran had come to see Krishnaveni. He had told her, ‘You are doing many brave things, I am afraid for my life.’ They killed him the next day. They killed him for the crime of being a dalit panchayat president.

They killed panchayat president Jaggaiyan on a main road at dawn, beating him with the head of an earth-breaking spade. Lives were broken, democracy was murdered, caste was kept alive.

Three dalit panchayat presidents – all Arunthathiyar – have been attacked in Nellai. Servaaran and Jaggaiyan died. Krishnaveni battles for life.

Somewhere in Nellai, verdant fields unroll till a horizon crowned with blue mountains. The wind sculpts fields into long rippling waves of tender green. There is a smell of rain in the air. What looks like a roadside shrine turns out to house statues of the Thevar, a dominant caste in the region. Two blood-red sickles with red drops dripping off their sharp tips are painted on one white wall. ‘Ekkulamum vaazhanum, mukkulathor aalanum,’ says the caption. Threat and benevolence woven deftly into one sentence. ‘All communities should live, the mukkulathor should rule.’ And if they don’t…the sickles are wordless threats. The aruvaal – the sickle – is a weapon of harvest. Used frequently and often to harvest each fresh crop of bloody caste privilege. A tool of agriculture synonymous with murder – but only in the hands of the dominant castes.

After the attack on Krishnaveni, the women are afraid. ‘Is there anyone else who can be a model of governance like her? Only Krishnaveni can be that model,’ says Muthumari, friend of panchayat presidents across the district. Her questions to them are warm with affection and knowledge of their lives. Muthumari helps panchayat presidents get training that is due to them from the government, she helps mobilise Arunthathiyar women. ‘My brother is the only Arunthathiyar to own a shop on this street,’ she says, pointing at a shop in the bustling heart of Nellai town. Gleaming glass frontage, ice cream parlours, grocery stores and caste line the street.

Our commerce, our rulers, our food, clothes, roads, houses, languages, lives – all produced by caste. A caste economy which regulates who should be alive and who should not, who should be allowed to sit on the Panchayat president’s chair and who should not, who should chop off whose head, who should sell their labour and who need not, who can eat off that labour and who cannot, who should be touched and who should not.

Servaaran’s widow weeps, remembering the 65-year-old man who was cut down for standing up to the dominant castes. The Thevar, each time she mentions the caste name, she lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. Her daughter scolds her in the Telugu of the Arunthathiyar people. ‘Why won’t you talk openly about it? If we don’t talk about it, who will? Tell them that the Thevar did it. What have we got to lose now?’

(The communities associated with scavenging in several states do not speak the dominant language among themselves, they are usually considered ‘outsiders’. Then what does that mean for linguistic nationalism? asks Ravichandran, the research scholar in the team.)

Everywhere, people are afraid to talk about caste. Muthumari does not give an interview at home, because it is a ‘non-dalit area.’ Jaggamma’s devotees in Thalaiyuthu won’t talk because ‘what if they cut us down like Krishnaveni?’ Inside their ‘own area’, in their street, they are loud in anger and grief.

Mallika touches the arm of the strange woman from the city and jumps back, ready to run if admonished. Her eyes are wonder-struck when no whack follows. ‘See, I can touch her,’ she tells her friends, who frisk about while the widow of Servaaran – the murdered dalit panchayat president – weeps at the camera. Mallika prods the arm of the strange woman again and jumps back again. Then she holds out her arm. ‘Will you touch me?’ she asks.

‘Do you speak our language?’ asks Mallika of the strange woman. ‘No? But you will talk to me, right?’ she asks. They play the game of ‘one for amma, one for appa, grandma, brother and sister,’ folding little fingers into a clenched fist. Then ‘here comes the crab, here comes the fox, here comes the crab, here comes the fox,’ and tickle, tickle, tickle. Mallika dissolves into giggles, her sunny smile the only warmth in a world where dignity, democracy and the right to life splutter and go out in the wind.

In 1997, a murderous gang hacked off panchayat president Murugesan’s head in Melavalavu, near Madurai. The head went thudding down the steps of the bus he had been sitting in. One of the murderers picked it up and ran away. Now, Samathuvan describes how the massacre at Melavalavu happened. Along the road that makes its way through fields, he points out the place where the bus was stopped. Where panchayat president Murugesan’s head was hacked off, where dominant caste murderers ripped open dalit bodies and garlanded themselves with the intestines. The dalit people had bought some land in a temple auction, that was intolerable to the dominant castes. ‘How can Dalits be allowed to own land? they thought. That led to the violence,’ he says. In Melavalavu now, there is a memorial built with the free labour of the dalit people of the area – one of the very few in the country to the victims of caste violence – to the memory of those six people and two more who were murdered. One for participating in a roadblock to protest the murders and another for playing an Ambedkar song. There are no photographs of these men, only paintings, rough approximations of the faces of those who could not afford photography in real life, but have been memorialised in death. ‘The Melavalavu dalits are hated in this region,’ says a young man. ‘They think we are the reason for the rising dalit assertion, for the improved reach of the Dalit Panthers. The police slap cases against us for no reason. We don’t get work easily.’ The violence never ends.

These are the lessons from Krishnaveni’s story:

Political work is valuable, is empowering, is the only hope of the marginalised. We have been socialised into leading cossetted middle-class lives by our caste-ist families and by our overwhelmingly upper-caste media, into believing that politics is a bad word, that politicians are evil, that the practice of politics is hopelessly corrupt. The practice of caste is the most evil, corrupt thing in this country. We practice it shamelessly and blame ‘politics’ for evil and corruption.

The memorial at Melavalavu to those murdered by caste is an exception. We usually don’t acknowledge how caste enables murder. Caste is our own private holocaust – the one we don’t want the UN to acknowledge – where people are outright murdered with the connivance of the state, denied the right to work, to food, to health, to life, to education, to dream, to political representation, slowly starved, worked to the bone, and cast off – and no memorials mark their passing. Only the privileged lead more privileged lives, the roads grow wider, the buildings in the cities taller. This is a country that is built, fed and watered by Dalit blood and sweat. ‘We don’t practice caste anymore,’ some posh city dwellers claim. Sure, we don’t practice caste anymore, we can afford not to, now that we are perched prettily and corruptly on top of a pyramid of caste privilege. Since the harvest of privilege is officially ours, others can carry the aruvaals and do the actual murders for us now.

That’s all.

***
Links to more material on the theme of discrimination and violence against dalit panchayat presidents is available at
http://writingcaste.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/90-days-of-writing-caste/

“Talking gender”: Madhuri Shekar writes about the scriptwriting workshop

Workshop participant Madhuri Shekar has an article in today’s Hindu about the scriptwriting workshop organized by Prajnya and the InKo Centre as part of the Samsung Women’s International Film Festival this month.

***

Madhuri Shekar, Talking Gender, NxG, The Hindu, July 21, 2011. 

Cinema is a highly influential medium; and when that very medium portrays women in poor light, some ideological changes are in order…

Recently, the Prajnya and InKo Centre hosted a two-day scriptwriting workshop — “Writing Gender, Talking Ideas”, as a part of the Fourth Samsung Women’s International Film Festival. Workshop participants took part in a unique opportunity to not only understand the basics of scriptwriting, and what it takes to convert a story from a basic idea to a full-fledged script, but also on how to do so while being sensitive to issues of gender, inequality and power.

Poor portrayal

Indian cinema has often been criticised for its poor handling of gender issues.

Women in films are often relegated to second tier status, with poor characterisation, and tend to function as no more than one-dimensional catalysts for the hero’s journey.

It’s common to see heroes bullying or harassing the heroines as a form of courtship, and issues such as sexual assault and rape being treated in a cavalier manner, or portrayed gratuitously on screen. This is to say nothing of the frequently insensitive and ignorant depictions of transgenders and homosexuals.

The workshop co-ordinators Dr. Uma Vangal and Naga, both stalwarts in the Tamil film and TV industries, first held a discussion on gender issues, and illustrated examples of inappropriate portrayals of female characters from popular Tamil and Hindi movies. The participants discussed and provided ideas on how these issues and characters could have been better depicted on screen.

On the second day, the participants brought in story ideas that they wished to convert into a short-film script. The stories were diverse in nature and reflected the overall themes of the workshop- an educational film about sexual education for young girls, a spoof of modern day arranged marriages, a supernatural story about loss and acceptance, a man’s complicated relationship with cricket and how it affects his family, and a full-length historical feature about the ‘other’ Coleridge, Samuel Coleridge’s brother, who served in the British army in India.

Each of these story ideas was developed, challenged and enhanced through group discussion to the point where the participants would be ready to start crafting their scripts.

Taking it forward

Two of these scriptwriters, selected by the workshop leaders, will get a chance to pitch their script to an expert panel at the Samsung Women’s International Film Festival at the end of July.

This panel will consist of prominent film-makers, directors and scriptwriters of Indian cinema. The panellists will share feedback, advice and suggestions on marketing, production and ways to translate the script onto the screen.

Niharika Mallimadugula, one of the participants, said of her experience, “The workshop gave us an insight into the treatment of gender in cinema and the politics of representation. It combined the nuances of scriptwriting with a larger, deeply contested issue and that made it unique.”

Moushumi Ghosh saw the workshop as a great starting point to future sessions and projects. “‘What I liked most about the workshop was that it pushed me out of my comfort zone and made me think about the characters and situations. I would have liked a few more cinematic concepts discussed and substantiated with examples from World cinema. That could be a great excuse to have another workshop.”

Equal Pay American Style

This is Amy Shamroe’s first guest post for our blog. We hope it will be the first of many ‘letters from America.’

***********

I live in America where women have the luxury of debating whether or not they consider themselves feminists. Women can vote, drive a car, accuse attackers without fear, and have a voice in their own future. Many women take these rights for granted. Some women also believe because we have those rights, and many others, women are equal and feminism is dead.

Men have granted us the right to vote. Men have allowed us into the workplace. The hard truth is that they still do not regard us as equals and this is evident in nearly every American woman’s paycheck.

I am a member of the American Association of University Women (AAUW). For 130 years, AAUW has fought for equality. Much of the current research about the gender pay gap and issues of women’s equality- from politics to science labs- in the United States has been funded, at least in part, by our organization.

Women in America make, on average,$.77 on the dollar compared to men in the same position.  When President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act of 1963, women were making $.59 on the dollar.  In nearly 50 years, women in America have only seen a $.14 close in the gap.

Over the last couple years, there has been much debate about the Paycheck Fairness Act. The PFA seeks to expand EPA ’63 and the Fair Labor Standards Act. It would allow women more avenues for perusing possible pay discrimination by making it illegal to bar employees from discussing salaries, protect the jobs of women who do pursue the issue at their workplace, and provide funding for further research into pay disparity. All these steps seem logical ways to correct the problem, right?

Christina Hoff Summers, a crusading anti-feminist, voiced the opinion of many who oppose the Act, “[the]bill would set women against men, empower trial lawyers and activists, perpetuate falsehoods about the status of women in the workplace and create havoc in a precarious job market.”

My favorite part of the quote was the idea that women not being treated equally in the workplace is a “falsehood”. Even if she ignores the studies showing the pay gap, there are other numbers that indicate pay disparity.

Only twenty-six of the top one thousand corporations have female CEOs according to 2011 Fortune 1000 list. That is 2.6%. This is indicative of the corporate world. The higher up the ladder, the fewer women you find.

It is still a male dominated world. Here in the US we may have all many freedoms on paper and certainly have better opportunities to exercise those freedoms than women elsewhere, but we are still kept down. In March of this year, President Obama revived discussion of the Paycheck Fairness Act, saying he is committed to passing it during his time in office. The current vicious political discord in American makes me hope rather than believe that he will honor that commitment. In the meantime, women (and men) in organizations like AAUW continue to raise our voices and fight for fairness.

“Talking Ideas,” Samsung Women’s International Film Festival, July 16, 2011

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Today, two of the participants at the gender sensitization and scriptwriting workshop got to present their scripts to senior film professionals, K. Hariharan, Director, LV Prasad Academy and RV Ramani, documentary film-maker. Dr. Uma Vangal from Prajnya (and the Prasad Academy) and film-maker Naga, who led the workshop, were also present.

July 9, 2011 Roundtable: Dr. Padmini Swaminathan, “Women and Work: An Indian Saga”

Photos from the July 9, 2011 Roundtable. Report will be posted soon!

  

REPORT

 

WOMEN’S HISTORIES ROUNDTABLE SERIES, 2011

 

Women and Work: An Indian Saga

 

Dr. Padmini Swaminathan

Rapporteur: Reva Yunus

 

---

 

9^th July 2011

 

Knowledge House, 6, Kasturi Rangan Street, Chennai

 

Dr Padmini Swamnathan is one ofIndia’s leading gender economists, and a hard-core industrial economist turned gender economist at that. She retired as Professor from the Madras Institute of Development Studies; and has worked and written extensively on industrial organization, labour and employment, occupational health, and education & skill development, all from a gender perspective. (See http://www.mids.ac.in/padminis.htm, for more information)

 

She obtained her doctorate in Industrial Economics from theBombayUniversity; her journey into a gendered perspective on economics is also a comment on Indian higher education in Economics. The perspectives given prominence in higher education here are Western, not Asian – American systems and economic perspectives are taught instead of, say Japanese, which though not completely like Indian, can be a educationally more useful in the Indian context. As latter parts of her narrative underscored, policies and problem definition have also been regularly borrowed from the West, instead of promoting research in the Indian context and basing policy prescriptions on that research. In the same context it is also important to remember that mostly doctoral studies do not allow students much freedom to focus on what really interests them or seems important to them.

 

After obtaining her PhD, Prof Padmini’s first research study involved looking at the patterns of shareholding and inheritance in the two-wheeler manufacturing giant, TVS inIndia. What she found was that shares could only be inherited by sons – males of the male line, not even males of the female line. And further, that if sons broke away from social conventions too they stood to lose their shares – so gender was not the only stratification which was important and formed the basis of discrimination– categories of caste and religion were also important. For example, one son was disinherited when he married a Christian girl.

 

She went on to stress that gender issues and inequality have mostly been treated as if they have nothing to do with economics – and are instead purely social or family issues. Even the Companies Act, 1956 was amended more to keep the money in the family than out of any concern for gender equality or daughters’ rights.

 

Incidentally, this Act which discusses/defines various types of wages for the Indian work force– is premised on recognition of only a particular kind of family structure and gender relations; the family where the male is the primary earner and the woman only supplements this income of the male earner. These assumptions were never tested against reality, no empirical evidence was sought to prove/disprove that only such gender/family-relationships and structures existed – only age-old conceptions which did not take into account changes in household structures, national economy, etc. If such conception of job trends and home-economics was borrowed from the West, so was the solution – namely, ratifying and adopting the Equal Remuneration Convention of the ILO. The concept was not the problem, but the assumption that it alone would be sufficient to ensure income-equality for women, ignoring social structures and prevalent gender ideology were definitely problematic. Prof Padmini points out – that inequality was now maintained albeit through a very different mechanism – invoking written and unwritten laws distributing jobs more or less rigidly among men and women.

 

There was also the Science and Technology Report which ostensibly sought to protect the ‘woman’s womb’ clearly prioritizing women’s reproductive role in society and family above her own financial independence and economic contribution to the family. But there are two questions – one was it scientifically verified that certain jobs did affect women’s reproductive health and more importantly, why wasn’t it ever considered necessary to worry about what jobs affected, say, the semen count in men?

 

Next she talked about the question of minimum wages; when we ask for these to be paid what is our basis for assuming that it is indeed sufficient? To underscore the importance of this question she pointed out a very powerful but mostly unnoticed fact – that though the prevalence of unemployment is lowered, that of poverty isn’t! How come people have jobs and are still poor? Shouldn’t we also be asking if the minimum wages would actually push people above the poverty line??

 

She also pointed out the fallacy in the commonly accepted/offered argument – that, we have good policy but bad implementation. But there are questions we should ask before we subscribe to this explanation of what’s wrong in the social-political-economic situation inIndia. How much are our policies based on what research tells us? And, can a policy which doesn’t have means and imperatives for effective implementation built into it, be called ‘good policy’ in the first place? E.g. – those subsectors of the unorganized sector which are categorized under the Factories Act, were found to be violating the provisions of the Act in Tamil Nadu as there weren’t enough Deputy Factory Inspectors to ensure regular inspections and implementation of the Act! Another barrier to faulty formulation & implementation of policy is the complexity of our bureaucracy, and the compartmentalization of responsibility – for ex look at the MDMS -

 

Accepting that an economist is not a public administrator, she argued that it is nevertheless of utmost importance they too know all aspects of the issue at hand and policy-implementation, and understand how policy is practiced.

 

Moving on to the impact of assumptions underlying definitions of data to be collected, and of the data itself on policy-making, she discussed the example of data regarding women and work done by them. 54% of women report being housewives – but that does not mean that they are not doing anything to augment/generate income for the family. It is only now that the National Sample Survey and the Census of India are beginning to collect data on such done by girls and women; for example, regarding household utilities like firewood, water, and so on. Then there is the category of what economists call ‘unpaid productive work’, for example, pottery – women end up doing most of the work before and after a piece is actually created on the potter’s wheel. However, the most disturbing fact about this unpaid productive work is that the number of women occupied in this work and the number of hrs they devote to it, have actually gone up in the last decade! In the face of all the talk about gender-just policies, women’s empowerment, increasing enrolment of girl in school, and so on.

 

What we urgently need is to focus on acknowledging the need for research – both in terms of actual numbers and in terms of facts of the everyday realities of different groups of women. Whether policy prescriptions actually take into account their real problems and constraints and attempt to address attitudes and practices; as well as whether measures taken in the name of development and empowerment have desired effects or not. Much that is being done under the current development paradigm is actually further weakening women’s positions and adding to their burden if we look at women in the most marginalized sections of society.

 

In fact, she argues that the no of people being covered by legislation to protect their incomes, job security/dignity are actually going down.

 

Discussion, Q & A

 

1. One participant remarked that the session had made her realize that she had always equated ‘work’ with ‘employment’ in her head – but they really may not be the same always, and it was such a significant difference!
2. Vocabulary is such an important aspect of public life – so it was that we did not just accept some terms and meanings as existing in public domain, but try and understand where they originated and what interests they serve or oppose.

 

Prof. Padmini replies that in deciphering data interrogating definitions and assumptions, is necessary, e.g., infrastructure in the context of SEZs only includes benefits for employers, like built land, subsidized electricity or water, not employee benefits like canteens or a creche.

 

Equally important are the social-political perspectives of those doing the deciphering – who and what they question, hold responsible, what do they prioritize? For example, if 84% of eligible women do not access benefits under Maternity Welfare schemes, is it something in the Act (provision or implementation) that makes it inaccessible or is the women who for some reason not choosing to access it?

 

1. Another participant wanted to know more about the kinds of Maternity benefits available to women in various kinds of jobs.
2. Third question was whether it safety of female employees was held as the company’s responsibility, particularly, if women choose to work night shifts etc?

 

Employers inIndiaare not held responsible, generally not even prosecuted as there is not proper definition of responsibility, no standard provisions, procedures etc. companies might be getting female employees to sign contracts which absolve the employers of all responsibility in this regard, but there is not legislative measure against it.

 

Then there was some discussion on women’s struggle to be allowed to work night shifts – either out of need or due to its relation to chances of promotions, etc.; also on the various forms of exploitation and discrimination encountered on jobs. For example, in the new textile units, a large no of employees are local girls and women in Tamil Nadu, but they get only a part of their wages and the rest is kept (as leverage against their quitting) to be given when they get married! Another experience of a young girl working with mercury (hazardous substance, used in clinical thermometers) was even worse –as there are generally no women guards and supervisors for women working night shifts, girls find it difficult to approach guards etc with personal or health problems – this girl’s periods (what term do we use in this report??) began after she came on duty but she didn’t fancy going to the male guard asking for help, and instead chose to use the cotton cap given to protect their heads from the mercury dust, as an impromptu sanitary napkin – leading, understandably, to all manner of health problems!

 

---

 

 

 

 

 

Progress of the World’s Women: New UN Women report

Cross-posts from other blogs:

Swarna Rajagopalan, Progress of the World’s Women: UN Women’s first report, Asian Security Initiative Blog, MacArthur Foundation, July 8, 2011.

UN Women, which came into existence just last March, has released its first report, the Progress of the World’s Women. Acknowledging a century of progress, from 1911 when only two countries granted women the right to vote, the report focuses on women’s legal and political rights and their ability to access justice.

The report marks a return to thinking about institutional arrangements rather than civil society or market-led initiatives. It culminates with a set of recommendations “to make justice systems work for women” based on successful initiatives across the world. Repeatedly, the report makes the case for law as a vehicle of social change and demonstrates the positive impact that including more women in the decision-making process can have.

This remarkable report deserves to be read because it actually serves well as a brief history of the struggle for women’s rights across the world. For instance, it includes a section describing landmark court judgments in this struggle. It works not just as a policy brief but also as a secondary text to a class on global feminism or social change.

The report may be accessed at
http://progress.unwomen.org/
The website is also set up in a very user-friendly manner to allow parts of the report to be accessed and used individually.

****

Swarna Rajagopalan, The good news about post-conflict societies, Asian Security Initiative Blog, MacArthur Foundation, July 8, 2011.

Tucked away in the 2011-2012 Progress of the World’s Women report is some good news about how changing values are changing the prospects for women in societies that are crawling out of conflict into post-conflict transitions.

The impact of conflict on women is now well-documented. First, the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war cuts across time, place and culture. Second, women disproportionately shoulder the burden of displacements and other breakdown of normal life. This makes them more vulnerable to domestic violence, sexual violence outside the home, trafficking and other exploitation.

This report points to and maps the evolution of thinking about this question in international law and it reflects that thinking.

Unanimity seems to have emerged that sexual violence as a part of conflict is unacceptable. The 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court recognizes rape, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy and other forms of sexual violence as crimes against humanity. The five United Nations Security Council Resolutions that deal with women in conflict echo this thinking. 1325 mandates including women in peace processes and transitional arrangements. 1820 calls for prevention of sexual violence and an end to impunity for sexual crimes. 1888, 1889 and 1960 reinforce these two, calling for measures and precautions to be undertaken by conflict parties, governments and international organizations.

The 2011-2012 Progress of the World’s Women report points to some good tidings. First, this changing international legal environment means that sexual crimes have been prosecuted and convictions have followed in post-conflict trials in at least three contexts, Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone. It is still a challenge to get women to testify and many obstacles remain from logistical issues like childcare and financial assistance for legal counsel to having more women judges preside in such courts.

Second, as women have been mandatorily included in peace processes, a variety of arrangements have emerged that address their concerns, take cognizance of their conflict experiences and provide for their presence in the politics of post-conflict societies. The report points out (page 100) that where on an average women made up 14% of parliamentary membership in non post-conflict settings, in post-conflict settings they make up 27%. Indeed, the country with the largest percentage of women in Parliament (51%) is Rwanda. Correspondingly, the report shows that 93% of post-conflict constitutions include anti-discrimination causes (as opposed to 61% non post-conflict) and 21% mention violence against women (as opposed to 10%).

As the report states:

“The post-conflict moment opens up the possibility of reframing the political and civic leadership, with women at the centre. Women’s participation in the design of all post-conflict justice mechanisms, in peace processes and in political decision-making is essential for ensuring the post-conflict State advances women’s rights and justice for all.” (page 101)

*****

Finally, from our sister-blog: Law, justice, gender violence: New UN report, GRIT@Prajnya Blog, July 8, 2011.

Photos: “Writing Gender, Talking Ideas”, July 1-2, 2011

A two-day gender sensitisation and scriptwriting workshop was held on July 1-2, 2011, as a satellite event of the fourth Samsung Women’s International Film Festival.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Most photos in this slideshow are by Vel of the InKo Centre. Thank you!