1. In India today, womens growing assertion and enhanced aspirations for equality, challenging entrenched patriarchy, can be seen and felt in virtually every sphere. In glaring contrast to this assertion and growing public participation of women, we in India are simultaneously witnessing unabated and intensified sexual and patriarchal violence on women; open and organized patriarchal offensives (both physical and ideological) on womens hard-won rights and freedoms; and the worst instances of womens malnutrition, hunger, and maternal mortality in the world. This contradiction or paradox has emerged as a defining characteristic of modern India.
2. It is true that capital, and state-institutions like panchayats, and a network of NGOs closely linked to both global capital and the Indian state, have increased their penetration in rural areas, bringing a sizeable section of women out of their homes, into the workforce, and into the political arena. But forces of class, caste and gender domination are coming together to arrest this assertion, using all, including the most barbaric, means; even as the state and capital, in the course of drawing women into the labour force, actually exploit, strengthen, and perpetuate existing patriarchal structures and ideologies responsible for womens sexual and domestic servitude and social subordination. Indian women thus face the worst of both worlds feudal oppression as well as modern capitalist exploitation and dehumanisation, especially because the neoliberal model of growth preserves, profits from and in some cases reproduces in modified forms many vestiges of feudalism in socio-economic structures, customs and value systems.
3. Even in the face of feudal-patriarchal opposition, women are trying to utilise the new opportunities school education, various job openings and the provision of 50% reservation in panchayati raj institutions for example for playing more active social and political roles. The new opportunities and experiences are equipping women with greater self confidence and a keener political awareness. Womens increased mobility and public role (in employment as well as political life) are also destabilising traditional patriarchal arrangements and attitudes within households and society, resulting in progressive changes in gender roles and ideology, but also in fresh patriarchal anxieties, tensions, and violence.
4. In the face of these changes, the forces of traditional caste patriarchy are asserting themselves with renewed aggression, seeking to retain control over womens sexuality, mobility, and reproductive power, and to defend patriarchal and feudal arrangements of land and property that are threatened by womens new-found rights and assertion. These forces are not just a throwback to a feudal past: they are refashioning themselves in modern times, often with political patronage across the spectrum of ruling class parties. It is notable that these forces of patriarchal reaction have found their most organized and aggressive expression in some of the regions where the Green Revolution and capitalist development in agriculture have been most pronounced: Punjab, Haryana, and Western UP.
5. It must also be noted that patriarchal tendencies, often accompanied by caste and communal revivalism, are strong even in the urban context, including among the professional middle class. An outright patriarchal backlash to womens assertion can also be seen in the Save Family type of organizations that target the laws against violence on women. Such widespread and virulent patriarchal assertion in urban centres, among the professional middle class, cannot be hidden by the superficial gloss of modernity.
6. Womens assertion and resistance to patriarchy as it manifests itself within the family, household, community, public institutions and the State is a key arena for the battle for democracy and revolutionary social transformation in India today, and must be grasped as a key revolutionary task for the communist movement as a whole.
Violence Against Women
7. Violence against women has emerged as a central issue across the country, most notably in states such as UP, Bihar, Haryana, West Bengal, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Assam. National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data shows that incidents of rape in the country have increased by 791% since 1971, while conviction rates for rape dipped from 41% in 1971 to 27% in 2010.
8. Long-term campaigns by the womens movement have forced the Government to draft and enact new laws relating to violence on women. Domestic violence and sexual harassment are receiving legal recognition, and amendments in rape laws are expanding the definition of sexual violence to cover wider forms of sexual assault. However, many of these laws continue to retain patriarchal assumptions. The Draft Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Bill 2011 specifically excludes marital rape from its purview, and fails to specifically address rapes occurring during organised communal and caste violence and in custody of the Army, though it does recognise and provide for more stringent punishment for custodial rape by police officers, public servants, management or staff of jails, hospitals, remand homes; and gang sexual assault. The Bill relating to Sexual Harassment of Women at the Workplace seeks to punish women for false complaints a measure that will deter women from filing complaints; and this Bill is yet to ensure coverage for all women at workplaces including students, women in the Armed Forces, and agricultural workers. The Government is yet to back up the Domestic Violence law with effective shelters for women facing violence. Moreover, Governments have shown their willingness to capitulate to pressure from organised anti-women forces in many instances. For example, currently the Central Government is responding to the orchestrated campaign against the dowry laws by proposing amendment to Section 498-A (relating to severe domestic violence and dowry-related torture).
9. As pervasive as gender violence itself is the widespread tendency, not just by private individuals and groups but by public figures police, politicians, judiciary to justify such violence by blaming the victim, invoking patriarchal codes of dress, behaviour, and family values. Challenging such patriarchal common sense should be a key concern in resisting violence on women.
10. Sexual violence also continues to be a tool of state repression and reactionary assault on peoples movements. The custodial rape and sexual torture of the adivasi schoolteacher Soni Sori in Chhattisgarh, the rape and murder of women by armed forces in the North East and Kashmir, and rape and murder of women like Tapasi Malik who resist corporate land grab, have emerged as rallying points of struggle for the womens movement today. Especially inspiring have been the militant participation of hundreds of women in struggles against state repression on the streets of Kashmir in 2010, and the anti-AFSPA protest by Manipuri women in 2004.
11. Sexual violence remains a central part of communal and caste atrocities. Sexual violence during the massacres in Gujarat in 2002, Kandhamal in 2008, and Khairlanji in 2006 are prominent instances. The social and political assertion of Dalits and backward castes is being met with violent feudal reaction all over the country. Women from these oppressed communities, in particular, bear the brunt of instances of public humiliation and sexual violence by feudal forces. The sexual exploitation and abuse of women inside religious institutions or by so-called god-men is also a common phenomenon.
12. The assertion of women, especially young women, for education, jobs, share in property, and greater autonomy in their private lives, including choice of partners, threatens the caste order and patriarchal norms of transfer of property, and is being met with open patriarchal offensives. In several cases, this offensive takes the form of a benign display of patriarchal and familial authority, which appeals to filial loyalty on the part of women, and to the sacred duties and virtues of Indian mothers and wives. In other cases it takes the form of honour crimes within the family. And increasingly, honour crimes and moral policing are taking on an organized socio-political form, with Sangh Parivar outfits, khap panchayats, and other reactionary outfits of all religions unleashing organized attacks to enforce casteist, communal, and patriarchal diktats.
13. Governments show little will to fight such organized forces indulging in moral policing and honour crimes, rather there is a high degree of collusion on part of political forces and state machinery. In many instances of honour crimes, it is the dominant castes that unleash violence on women from their own caste, as well as oppressed castes, for breaching caste boundaries in marriage. But honour crimes are not the exclusive preserve of dominant castes. The oppressed castes and adivasi communities, branded as undeserving of honour by the dominant castes, have also begun to lay a claim to patriarchal honour by controlling the sexuality and freedom of women within their own communities.
14. Domestic violence against women is rampant across castes and classes. It is a brutal indicator of the fundamental lack of democracy and inequality that underwrites relationships between men and women and the institution of marriage and family in patriarchal society. Insecure jobs and lack of employment for women make women in abusive marriages all the more vulnerable.
15. Sex-selective abortion and female infanticide continue to flourish both in rural areas and in urban areas, especially among the well-off that have greater access to technologies of pre-natal sex-determination. The latest census figures show that the number of girls in the 0-6 age-group has fallen to the lowest level since Independence a mere 914 girls for every 1000 boys. Governments at the State and Centre have been deliberately lax in implementation of the PC & PNDT Act (Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994), allowing the unethical medical industry of pre-natal sex-determination and sex-selective abortions to flourish unchecked. Along with the implementation of the PC&PNDT Act, it is clear that son-preference and sex-selective abortions can be resisted only in tandem with a whole host of other measures that confront patriarchy and enhance the worth and dignity of women in society.
16. A powerful, multi-layered resistance to violence must be built, encompassing campaigns for pro-women legislation; protests against governments and political forces that fail to defend womens rights and safety; and social initiatives such as womens neighbourhood watches, creative campaigns against victim-blaming, son-preference, domestic violence, honour crimes and in support of womens right to make independent decisions in all spheres of life including education, love, marriage, clothes and life-style.
Women, Work, and Patriarchy
17. Economic liberalization has resulted in women being drawn into work in larger numbers but in the more vulnerable and insecure sectors. The exploitation in these sectors is seldom purely economic gender is a crucial tool in this exploitation. For instance, young women textile workers in TN are made to work in highly undemocratic and exploitative conditions but it is made possible under the Sumangali scheme, which is promoted in the name of young women earning their dowry, and which taps into the widespread anxiety in society about dowry and marriage of young women. The central Governments ASHA, mid-day meals (at schools) and anganwadi schemes, too, exploit the patriarchal notion of womens selfless and unpaid service to family and society, in order to justify paying the workers a mere honorarium instead of the full pay and benefits due to government servants.
18. As women enter the workforce, they are confronted by gender discrimination at the workplace. Women continue to be paid less than men for the same work. They are also subjected to discriminatory regulations (such as imposition of dress codes, sexist norms regarding appearance, and so on). Even in prestigious and upscale jobs, gender discrimination is rampant. Women cabin crew in Air India have recently won a long legal battle for the right to be appointed In-Flight Supervisors; and in the Army, women are denied the right to be appointed officers, on the grounds that jawans cannot be expected to take orders from women. Oppressive norms about female appearance not only discriminate against women in general, but also specifically against Dalit and adivasi women. Not long ago, adivasi women trained as cabin crew in Maharashtra were rejected jobs in the aviation industry because they were deemed physically unattractive.
19. Womens labour inside the home and family continues to be kept invisible. Its character as labour is cloaked in ideological disguises, as the natural or primary role of women. Even the Census survey deems women involved with “cooking, cleaning of utensils, looking after children, fetching water, collecting firewood” to be unproductive “non-workers”. At the same time, terming womens labour inside the home to be their primary function in society is often an excuse to pay women less at the workplace, on the pretext that their work is merely supplementary to the income earned by men. Neoliberal policies and the resulting withdrawal of the State from social responsibilities, such as the provision of education, healthcare and sanitation has increased womens burden of unpaid work in households and communities.
20. In the wake of Supreme Courts criticism over classification of housework as non-work, the Ministry of Women and Child Development has proposed an honorarium to be paid by husbands to housewives, based on governments calculations of the economic value of housework. This proposal is highly misplaced and flawed. The fact is that womens unpaid work in the home subsidises capitalism by helping to depress the wages of workers. There is no point in payment by husbands for housework, because such payment does not add to the overall income of the household. Moreover, there is the danger that such payment by the husband would in fact legitimise the sexual division of labour and absolve the husband of the obligation to share household work. It could also legitimise unequal control over finances within the household, by negating the right of women to have an equal control over household finances as a whole and instead implying that women will only have a right over the honorarium. The recognition of the social and economic contribution of womens domestic labour within the household can be meaningful only if it facilitates womens freedom from the stultifying drudgery of housework. And this can happen only if the State provides free care for children and the elderly; free health care; and other forms of social support along with jobs for women.
21. There has been much hype about the feminisation of labour thanks to globalization. But it is significant that a recent international study ranks India at 131st place among 134 countries, on the question of womens economic participation and opportunity. Only 35% of women in the country above the age of 15 participate in economic activity (i.e either work or seek work), compared to 85% of men. Unemployment rates are very high for women in some cases, even higher than that for men. For instance, according to the NSSO 61st round, the unemployment rate (of those seeking but not getting work) in 2004-05 in the 20-24 age-group was 12% for rural men and 15% for rural women; while it was 16% for urban men and 27% for urban women.
22. In certain sectors, however, womens labour is, indeed, preferred because they are viewed as supplementary workers who can be paid less than men, and because of patriarchal ideas which view women as more suited to certain kinds of work. Women are therefore, disproportionately represented in the informal sector, in what are called the 3D (dirty, dangerous, demeaning) jobs. Women are also sometimes preferred because they are perceived as less likely to unionise or engage in struggles, (despite the many examples to the contrary) and more vulnerable to coercion as a result of unequal gender relations.
23. SHGs are peddled as the main vehicles for womens empowerment by the Government. But microfinance institutions too exploit and reinforce patriarchal structures: women are seen as better borrowers because they are less mobile and more vulnerable to social coercion. MFIs have, far from empowering women, drawn them into a debt trap. Exploitative interest rates of MFIs and humiliation at non-payment pushed women to prostitution to repay debts, and forced more than 50 women to suicide, in Andhra Pradesh recently. Women have less access to bank loans and institutional credit than men. Instead of increasing this access, governments focus only on microcredit for women. But microcredit does not free women from exploitative money-lenders etc; in many cases, women are forced to take loans from moneylenders in order to repay the loans provided through MFIs. Increasingly too, banks and corporates are using MFI networks to draw rural poor women into global circuits of exploitation and profit.
24. The global economic crisis has had an especially negative impact on womens employment and lives in developing Asian countries like India. This is because women have a large share of jobs in the sectors that are worst hit by the crisis: textiles, garments, footwear and leather, electronics, hotels and restaurants, and construction. When the global crisis happened in 2008, 700,000 clothing and textile workers in India lost their jobs, most of them women.
25. The entry of corporate retail has also hit womens employment. Women who fail to find jobs in other sectors have usually found refuge in petty retail trade (i.e small shops or street vending). But womens share of employment in this sector has fallen sharply with the entry of big corporate players, and urban development policies of evicting informal vendors. With FDI in multi-brand retail, no doubt women in this sector will be hit even harder.
26. With globalization, women in India have become even more vulnerable to sex trafficking. Luring and trafficking of women both within the country and abroad, under the ruse of love or offer of jobs has become rampant. A large number of sex workers in India are brought into sex work by force, kidnapping and violence. Women of some oppressed castes are also forced into sex work as a form of bondage; in the case of the devadasi system, this kind of sexual bondage is promoted by religious institutions. Also, many women are compelled to opt for sex work as a means of survival in the absence of secure and properly paid work. As long as poor women remain deprived of secure, properly paid employment, many of them will be forced to seek refuge in exploitative and dangerous sex work. We must struggle for an end to trafficking and sexual bondage in the name of caste and religious traditions; measures to protect sex workers from coercion, exploitation, violence, and harassment; social services and fullest citizenship rights for sex workers and their dependants; as well as secure, dignified employment for women to safeguard women from being compelled by circumstance to enter sex work.
Discrimination in the Political Sphere
27. Women continue to be abysmally under-represented in the Parliament and Assemblies. Fanning up a phobia against womens freedom and assertion is increasingly coming into its own as a means of reaping political capital. The case of 33% reservation for women is telling. The opposition to the bill claimed to rest on the demand for reservation for OBC women. But increasingly, that demand has taken a back seat and opponents of the bill are openly indulging in gender-biased rhetoric against womens entry into Parliament! And the ruling coalitions of UPA (and earlier NDA), have shown their true colours by allowing such openly gender biased forces to carry the day and prevent the passage of the bill. The demand for a quota for OBCs and minorities must not become a pretext to stall or dilute the Bill, and can be incorporated within the ambit of 33% seats for women, as long as the Bill is passed without further delay.
28. In panchayats, 50% of the seats are reserved for women, and elected women representatives are challenging patriarchal forces. However, discrimination against elected women representatives, continues for instance, in the panch pati syndrome where the husband acts on behalf of the elected woman, and in various forms of caste and gender discrimination. Women in politics and public life at all levels from panchayats to Parliament to peoples movements face sexist and gendered abuse by opponents.
29. Vibrant and powerful womens participation and assertion in the political arena beyond parliament and panchayats is essential to take reservation beyond tokenism, and to create a political and socio-cultural climate in favour of womens needs and concerns.
Womens Movement and Liberalisation: Some Concerns
30. Liberalisation has posed new challenges for the womens movement, and has also led to some disturbing trends in the womens movement. The widespread NGO-isation of womens groups, and a spurt in funding for such groups by government and funding agencies has seriously crippled the autonomy of the womens movement. Governments have, in many cases, succeeded in securing legitimacy by outsourcing their responsibilities to NGOs. NGO involvement in formulation and implementation of policies is peddled as participatory development. Project-based funding has led to fragmentation of the womens organisation in the name of single-issue organisations, and has allowed funders to set the agenda for the groups they fund. Funding and NGO-isation effectively restricts and discourages the ability of womens groups to confront the State and the neoliberal economic policies.
Womens Rights as Rights of Free Citizens
31. The Indian State tends to frame women, not as citizens in their own right, but in terms of their familial and reproductive roles. It has tended to adopt a paternalistic attitude towards women, rather than recognize its obligation to safeguard womens inalienable rights. This tendency can be seen when state governments conduct group marriages or marriage schemes for girls. With such schemes, the state sees marriage of women as a parental responsibility, negating womens right to make their own choices in matters of marriage. Instead of adopting policies that enable women to achieve social and economic autonomy, such schemes instead project marriage, as arranged by the state on behalf of parents or community, as sufficient to ensure security and welfare of women. Other examples are schemes (like the Delhi Governments Ladli scheme) ostensibly meant to protect the girl child, by promising a certain cash amount when the girl attains maturity. By providing the amount when the girl attains marriageable age, the government is actually subsidizing dowry in a disguised way!
32. Women have to struggle for a range of rights as citizens: for PDS rations, for health, and for education. Even though womens rights to ancestral property have been legally recognized, women are seldom able to claim their rightful share without prolonged legal battles, which few women can afford. Women are especially active in struggles for homestead plots in rural areas, since they are the worst affected by the semi-bondage of living on land belonging to employers. Women are also very active in struggles for urban housing; against eviction and corporate land grab; against price rise; and against nuclear and other environmentally destructive projects. While strengthening womens participation in all these struggles, we must also lay greater emphasis on mobilizing young women around the whole set of demands that are central for women to secure guaranteed access to education, employment, and healthcare (for example, hostels for women students and working women; crèche facilities for women in organized and unorganized sectors; free education for schoolgirls as well as aids to education like books, laptops and bicycles; and longer maternity leave, functional and properly equipped primary health centres with specialized medical care for women, and district and subdivisional level hospitals with womens wards with adequate seats).
33. Women have also been at the forefront of anti-liquor struggles in many states (most notably Andhra Pradesh and Uttarakhand, and quite recently, Bihar). Alcoholism in men has a grievous impact on the lives of poor women: causing scarce income to be squandered on liquor; deaths due to toxic illegal liquor; and contributing to domestic violence against women and children. In such movements, women have targeted the governments policy of promoting alcohol out of consideration for revenues, at the cost of the well-being of women and their families.
34. One international study shows that when it comes to womens health and survival, Indias performance is at rock-bottom (at 134th place among 135 countries). India has one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the world. 57.9% pregnant women and 56.2% married women suffer from anaemia: clearly pointing to poverty, chronic malnutrition, and gender biases that affect the vast majority of Indian women.
35. In the name of family planning, sterilisation campaigns, often funded by foreign institutions, target women and put their bodies at risk. Recently there have been multiple instances of hasty sterilisation operations performed under insanitary conditions against womens will in Bihar, funded by the UKs DFID, resulting in a large number of deaths and mutilation of women.
36. The Government and pharmaceutical companies promote dubious and dangerous injectable contraceptives like Depo-Provera and Net-en, playing with womens health in the process. Indias poor women are used as guinea pigs for a variety of pharmaceutical experiments, and women, especially those from vulnerable poor and dalit/adivasi backgrounds, are being subjected to vaccine research and clinical trials without informed consent. For instance, recently, in Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat, 7 adivasi girls between 10-14 years old, died after being injected with the trial vaccine for Human Papilloma Virus (HPV).
37. Alarmingly, India has emerged as a destination for commercial surrogate motherhood whereby poor Indian women rent out their wombs to rich Indian and foreign parents for payment. Commissioning parents often demand surrogate mothers of fair skin and high caste. The surrogate mothers in question, at present, find their lives and health at great risk, in service of an industry that exploits their poverty and desperation. Rather than putting a stop to this practice until a wider debate on the ethical dimensions of surrogacy can be conducted with the participation of womens groups, the Indian Government is promoting the practice and has proposed a Bill to legalise and regulate it.
38. Struggles of homosexuals, hijras, and sexual minorities for rights and dignity and against discrimination, have asserted themselves in recent times. In spite of a landmark verdict by the Delhi High Court in 2009 decriminalising homosexuality, the Government has yet to take any steps to do away with Section 377 that discriminates against same-sex relationships. Scrapping of Section 377 will open the avenues for these groups (such as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and including hijras) to demand greater protection, rights, and dignity.
39. Womens Commissions in states as well as the National Womens Commission have come into being thanks to womens struggles. But, stacked with political appointees and strapped for funds, hands, and powers, they are far from fulfilling their purpose. It is urgent that the NCW and State Womens Commissions be given statutory powers, and heads and members of womens commissions be selected based on their experience in the womens movement, and in consultation with womens organisations, rather than based on political patronage. Womens commissions should also be made accountable to the womens movement: they should be obligated to hold regular consultative meetings with womens organisations.
Initiatives of the Party and the Womens Organisation
40. Historically, struggle against oppression, discrimination and humiliation, for equality, freedom and dignity has been the main plank of our party and our womens organisation, with its main base among rural and urban poor. This movement has mobilised thousands of poor peasant and labouring women (overwhelmingly from the oppressed castes) in militant struggles against feudal oppression and exploitation and raised this struggle to the level of a political movement, dealing body blows to structures of feudal-kulak power both as part of revolutionary peasant movement and in its own right as communist womens movement. This remains its great distinctive feature among womens organizations in India and we must maintain and further develop this emphasis.
41. Today, too, struggles of rural and urban peasant and working class women against all kinds of violence and exploitation remains the mainstay of AIPWAs work. It has also been active in struggles against state repression and custodial violence, especially against AFSPA and Operation Green Hunt, and has spearheaded struggles for womens equal wages and rights, mobilizing women MNREGA workers and agricultural labourers.
42. In several recent instances, AIPWAs intervention has proved to be politically crucial. One significant instance was the Rupam Pathak case in Bihar, where the JD(U)-BJP Government, the ruling class Opposition and the media had initially united in virulent patriarchal denunciation of the schoolteacher accused of killing a BJP MLA. AIPWAs bold and timely intervention exposed the fact that Rupam had filed charges of sexual assault against the MLA and his PA, which the police had failed to act upon. Very soon, AIPWA turned the tide of public opinion in favour of a struggle for justice for Rupam Pathak and against the patriarchal pronouncements of senior Bihar Government leaders, defending the tainted MLA. The jail sentence for Rupam Pathak has exposed the patriarchal biases of the CBI and the judiciary, and the womens movement for justice for Rupam Pathak continues. More recently, a popular struggle led by the party and AIPWA against the gang-rape of a schoolgirl by feudal lumpens in Gaya (Bihar) was met with police firing and severe repression. This struggle was among the major incidents that sparked off a state-wide bandh in which state repression and sexual violence were major issues.
43. Women factory workers, plantation labourers, construction workers, bidi workers, bank and office employees etc constitute an important segment of our general TU base. Wherever possible the womens organisation should work regularly among them so as to develop an important auxiliary base. Such work can only be carried on in cooperation with the concerned TUs, just as the work among the rural poor is conducted in coordination with local units of AIALA and AIKM.
44. But there are areas where the AIPWA itself takes a direct role in organising labouring women: those resid
