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Urban Women in Contemporary India, A Reader Editor: Rehana Ghadially Publisher: Sage Publications, 2007 Pp: 372, 595 INR

This is the second time that Rehana Ghadially has set out to do a comprehensive anthology on Indian women. The first, published in 1989, entitled Women in Indian Society, provided a much needed look at the concerns of Indian women in the post-independence era, when globalization and liberalization were unheard of, technology was limited, and writings about women, their lives and concerns, very few.

The current book is dictated by, and reflective of, the vast transformation that followed the liberalization and globalization of the Indian economy in 1991. It is located in a time period when, having unsuccessfully rallied against globalization and the market driven economy, Indian women’s movements were exploring ways in which women can respond to, adapt to, and survive in the “more complex, unmanageable, uncertain, dynamic circumstances” that the time offers in terms of cultural, economic, political and social opportunities and challenges. At the same time they continued to warn against its negative consequences including the feminization of poverty and increasing commoditization of women.

About the book The introduction by Ghadially is a sweeping yet fair analytical view of the urban woman in India today – Ghadially differentiates the lives of Indian women across two periods, with the Indian government’s structural tuning of the Indian economy in 1991 being the turning point.

The pre-liberalisation Indian women’s lives threw up issues of identity, gender stereo-typing, violence against women and their portrayal in the media; women’s movements were largely focused on strategies to achieve awareness building, improvement of women’s conditions and gender equality. The post-liberalisation phase, on the other hand, presented them with “forces way beyond their control, which would dramatically change the conditions of their struggle.”

According to Ghadially, four transforming events characterized this phase: structural adjustment of the Indian economy, economic and “cultural globalization”; increase in the number of NGOs that took over the role of the State in many cases and the trend towards professionalism and de-politicisation; impact of new media and information communication technologies on the lives and work of women, and its challenges for women workers in particular; and rising “Hindu or majoritarian fundamentalism” and the construction of the ‘new’ Indian woman by right-wing groups.

Ghadially identifies old issues that have confronted urban educated women in the past and now resurfaced in new garb – dowry harassment, domestic violence, rampant female foeticide; additionally, new forms of violence are also emerging – acid throwing, honour killings, sexual harassment at the workplace, stalking, national and transnational trafficking, and indecent portrayal of women in the new media, to mention just a few.

The book is divided into sections – Re-constructing Gender; Violence; Neo-liberal Globalisation; Information Communication Technologies; Politics and Political Participation – sections that, according to the editor, best reflect the burning issues that confront the contemporary urban Indian in the era of liberalization and high technology.

The essays are easy to read, yet sated with information, theoretical and rational analysis and research. They present a discrete picture of women in the urban Indian panorama; taken together they explode the myth of the contemporary urban Indian woman as liberated, economically, socially and politically empowered with access to resources and choices.

The authors are mostly professors and researchers of repute from India and abroad; two of the articles are authored by well known activist organizations. In summary, here is a good anthology that appropriately chronicles the forces that shape women’s identity in contemporary India.

The chapters Meenakshi Thapan discusses the question of identity as being the sum total of lived experiences – a social construction as well as emotional and personal perception. She points to the constant evolution of self-image as young women actively choose from global media images, family preferences and social expectations – the result is an identity that is critical and liberated in some situations, but limited and oppressive in other social contexts.

The same discussions are carried forward as Steve Derne and Lisa Jadwin explore Indian cinema halls as sites that illustrate the male privilege expressed in men being agents and women, the ‘legitimate’ objects of their gaze.

U. Vindhya examines the emerging vision of the “new Hindu woman” – educated, employed, yet the embodiment of ‘shakti’ – strong and powerful in the role of mother and wife, also chaste pure and loyal. She perceives, with some concern, the assertion and strength of women (feminist qualities?) located within a framework of defending the “Hindu nation” while steering clear of contemporary women’s agitation for gender rights and justice.

Jane Rudd argues that the phenomenon of domestic violence is an example of ways in which VAW is perpetuated on a global scale, and recommends that the efforts of the Indian women’s movement to combat violence should be universalized as a global model.

Vimochana, a women’s organization based in the south Indian state of Karnataka, shares insights, setbacks and challenges drawn from their experiences as they work to assist victims of domestic violence. The story of violence leading to the death of one of their own activists leaves the reader with a sense of deja vu and reminds of a statement in an earlier chapter, stating that - “the postcolonial other that recolonises our bodies and identities is not a distant other who seeks to oppress us, but thoughts, perceptions and ideas that have become our own over a period of time...”

Veronica Magar documents the use of mahila panchayat, or women’s courts as a transformative model that addresses gender based violence by focusing on gender based inequalities.

Vibhuti Patel writes on sexual harassment at the workplace, and recommends a two pronged strategy: gender sensitization of decision makers on SHW and prompt punishment to offenders. At the same time, she lauds efforts of organizations including those like Men against Violence and Abuse that conduct gender sensitization programmes and self-defence classes.

The dialectic between modernity and tradition and the ways in which they strengthen patriarchy is brought out extremely well in the section on media. Mallika Das, Srividya Ramasubramanian and Mary Beth Oliver, and the Centre for Advocacy Research address these and related aspects by studying the representation of women in Indian advertisements in magazines, films and television serials.

Rashmi Luthra examines press coverage of the campaign against female foeticide, and discovers that while the “politically sophisticated and well-orchestrated campaign” provides openings for social change in the more public arenas of the press and legislature, there was not adequate representation of ordinary women’s voices, agency and resistance indicating possibilities for social change at personal and social levels.

The section on globalization begins with Rupal Oza’s examination of the debate around the Miss World pageant hosted by India in 1996. The tension between women’s apparent liberation seen in the exercise of choice in the beauty pageant and the victimization or exploitation inherent in the culture of beauty propagated through a willing media to an equally willing and eager audience, as well as the multiple ‘missions’ and dimensions – political, social, economic and geographic - around actions and protests related to the beauty pageant – all of these are excellently documented and analysed.

Sharmila Rege discusses the theoretical origins of three debates on globalization, and highlights distinctive feminist contributions to these debates. She argues for the integration of feminist analyses in the dominant globalization discourse as these are voices that have sought to bridge gaps between academic research, policy discourse and advocacy efforts; they have linked localized questions of experience, culture, history and identity to the larger global contexts. Further, they have also highlighted subsistence, unpaid work, domestic work and voluntary work – all critical aspects of the gendered nature of production.

Gabrielle Dietrich studies the impact of globalization on women from the perspective of the women’s movement and its intersections with slum dwellers, workers in the unorganized sector including construction workers, vendors, fishing communities and environment movements. She documents ongoing struggles like the Narmada Bachao Aandolan, and elaborates on the impact of market dominance on agriculture, labour, food security, health and also increasing violence against women.

Rina Bhattacharya researches the claim that the number of women workers has increased due to globalization, and concludes that employment opportunities for women are in fact increasingly fraught with insecurity, low wages and hazardous working conditions.

The two sections dealing with Information & Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Political Participation deal with two most compelling questions that confront the women’s movement today and hold the potential to increase women's visibility, participation and access.

Vasanthi Raman focuses on the articulation of the women’s question in Indian politics from the 70s, spotlighting the Uniform Civil Code, the Mandal controversy and the Women’s reservation bill. She posits that “it would be erroneous to assume that the principal site of patriarchal oppression is the family” and shows how the state, with its symbiotic relationship with dominant groups and its biases would be extremely important in forming the parameters that define patriarchy.

Sikata Banarjee looks at the ways in which women’s participation in the Hindu nation state is permitted and encouraged – “as warriors and mothers in the masculinist political landscape – where the nation is imagined as a woman and national honour is located in women’s bodies.”

Leela Kasturi examines the trajectory of the Womens’ Reservation Bill, looking at the gains from the 73rd amendment in local self government bodies. She observes that the women’s movement has laid out a vast agenda for itself – citizen’s rights, democracy, social values, social transformation, a more just economic order, eradication of violence, crime, fundamentalism, and politics of identity and so on. Their success will depend on whether reservation remains just a temporary corrective measure, whether it will give way to further divisive politics towards a quota for every marginalized group or whether it will lead to further corrective measures such as widespread electoral reforms for inexpensive and violence-free elections, internal reform in political parties, and large scale recruitment of women at all levels in the parties.

According to feminist activist Kamla Bhasin “…women's presence in politics can make a difference only if it is a feminist presence. In other words, for many of us the issue is not just to place women where men are, but to bring feminism where there is patriarchy; equality where there is hierarchy; sanity where their is insanity; and honesty where there is corruption – to focus on real priorities of communities where priorities are currently lopsided.”

The section on Gender and ICTs is especially important in a context where women’s movement is largely preoccupied with issues relating to women’s safety, survival, food security, livelihood and education.

Ashima Goyal’s article looks at the potential of ICTs in helping women to leapfrog over some of the traditional disadvantages where, to compete with men on an equal footing, they had to negate their other roles and be ‘like men’.

Today the internet, by its very nature, offers ways for women to ‘work from home’ or work flexible hours, thus enabling access to access various opportunities for tele-working, self employment and entrepreneurship, e-learning etc. Goyal highlights the potential of ICTs to provide options for women that are more aligned with their traditional gender roles as home-makers, arguing that this can also increase social acceptance for technology in women’s lives.

Anikar Haseloff and Rehana Ghadially’s study on the use of Cybercafes in the south Indian city of Bangalore shows that in the middle and upper classes, both women and men use cybercafes almost equally, although the patterns of usage do vary. Females use cybercafes more for computer training and educational purposes, whereas men use them for business-related, games and recreational activities. Access to internet is still very limited for women in lower classes, where multiple barriers of education, language, role in society etc. are operative.

Shoba Arun, Richard Heeks and Sharon Morgan present a comparative study of two possible approaches to women in ICTs and their impact on women’s employment, income, social roles and relations in the workplace and community. The study concludes that ICT initiatives, pursued in the context of a neo-liberal agenda reinforce gender inequalities, whereas gender-focused initiatives involving state intervention brings in positive changes for women.

Conclusion The strength of this collection lies in the fact that put together; the articles present a view of the Indian women’s movement – both past and present – situated as it is in the flux of colonial, post-colonial and in the pre and post-liberalization eras. They provide conceptual clarity on a range of issues that confront urban Indian women on a daily basis. They successfully attempt to examine both the gains as well as the losses from the various influences on the lives of urban Indian women and provide suggestions in terms of strategies, recommendations, suggestions for future research and possible ways forward.

What the collection does not set out to do, and therefore does not address, is the question of ‘Gender’ as opposed to ‘Women’. A comprehensive debate on the women’s question must necessarily throw up related and relevant questions for the urban Indian male as well. The women’s movement, while it is positioned against forces of communalism, party politics, globalization, corruption, can certainly create or find allies from amongst male colleagues, fathers, brothers, husbands, friends and citizens and this is something that needs to be documented more, encouraged and leveraged.

Another question that has not really been addressed is the question of sexuality and its manifestations in the lives, images and work of the average, urban Indian woman. This is another important area that needs attention, especially because of the increasingly contradictory forces that impinge on women’s lives and choices relating to profession, life partners, childbirth and child rearing, and cultural, social, religious efforts to suppress their sexuality or use it.

The book is of great relevance to those in the fields of women’s studies, politics, sociology, psychology, information and communication technologies and media studies and development activism. Activists are likely to find the book useful, in terms of rationale and analysis that can form a blueprint for application in a rural setting and context, a set of questions that they can take back into the rural settings, and in terms of interactions between rural traditions and modern globalizing markets and lifestyles that must be taken into account when considering women’s lives.

About the Editor Rehana Ghadially is professor of psychology at the department of humanities and social sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai. She is the author of Women in Indian Society: A Reader (Sage Publications, 1989) and has published several papers in national and international journals on the Daudi Bohra sect of Indian Muslims. She is the recipient of many international fellowships. Her current research interest focuses on women, gender and information communication technologies.