Women: Wrest Political Space First

 

LC Jain*

August 10, 2006

 

We are living in a fool’s paradise to believe that what the emancipation of women from centuries of discrimination and oppression requires is a benign smile from the State - some reservation in panchayats, jobs in government and a component of the budget.  After six decades of Independence, women are still in the grip of violence and discrimination.

 

However some clue, if not comfort, is offered in “Myth as a Shield Against the Reality” by Gurdman Schymen a Member of the Swedish Parliament, who shows how the even in Sweden  ranked as a country with the highest level of gender equality in the world, the situation is not much better . She says “We have progressed a lot in many areas. The achievements in some, like for example child care and parental insurance make women in other countries go green with envy”. But none of the rights have been "given" to women. Neither by the "left" nor by the "right". We had to seize power ourselves”, says Gurdman.

      She adds “But in relation to the goal - an equal society in reality - we still have a long way to go… the discrepancy between the political rhetoric and the practice is so huge. Everyday reality of women is not in accordance with the declarations we are so proud of –..neither in our parliament, nor in EU Parliament nor with the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. “

 

 “If the EU economic politics have as an idea
that the society should withdraw from the social responsibility of
offering welfare and social services, the responsibility will be shifted
back to the families, i.e. women. …women’s unpaid work will increase and in the families where the man can afford this, other women will "work as servants". 

 

Here is a message from Gurdman for us – men and women, in India. “Every unjust distribution of power results in violence as its extreme. That is why male violence against women is without doubt connected with this fundamental gender power order. In Sweden, Europe and the world anybody who thinks that it is just a coincidence that nine of ten cases of death caused by violence are committed by a man should seriously reconsider the matter once again”.

 

The lesson from Sweden is that the women’s movement in India should give primacy to annexing an equitable sharing of political power including in parties and legislatures. Even that may not help to get a slice of dignity or of the economic pie but without that political foothold, women’s liberation will remain elusive.  Nearly 40 percent of all agricultural workers in India are women.  80 percent of workers who do seed cleaning and sowing, reaping and harvesting are women.  They sweat under ill – treatment, unequal wages and without title to land they till. Prime Minister down-wards they all talk of upping agricultural growth rate by deversification from subsistence to cash crops, from malnutrited domestic stomachs to export markets.  Not once their eyes or allocations are diverted from agricultural product to agricultural labour which has a huge proportion of women.  Workers and women to them, count for nothing.

 

Women may have fought for freedom shoulder to shoulder with men. But men politicians cannot countenance reservation of seats in legislature for women.  Women’s very capability is in question..  Alas, women are preoccupied with pressing all power-holders on either side of Rajpath upto Yojana Bhawan for economic welfare. You can sprinkle women and child welfare schemes all you can, but women will remain suppressed, as they have, despite all the past plans put together. Women need to arise and occupy Janpath in Delhi, Chowpathy in Mumbai and the Maidan in Kolkatta – for wresting, first, political power.