Poster on Women and Power
To be a woman is a never ceasing struggle to live and be free.
Resurrecting the Goddess: Exploring Powerful (Re)presentations of Women’s Bodies
by Ava Vivan Gonzales 
The historic assigning of value to women’s bodies according to culturally imposed physical standards is an expression of power relations, with many of the traits seen across centuries as “beautiful” largely symbolising certain female behaviour that males deem desirable.
Cultural Inscriptions of a “Feminine Ideal”
One of the earliest examples of the above concept this is the tradition of foot-binding once done to Chinese women. Scholars are uncertain about the custom’s exact origins and are intrigued by the fact that it permeated so deeply into all social and economic classes of Chinese society, with only the Manchu conquerors, the Hakka Chinese migrant groups, and social outcasts avoiding it completely. During the one thousand years it was practiced, approximately one billion women had their feet bound (Crites, 1995). Foot-binding was usually done when Chinese girls were between the ages of four and seven. Girls from poor families had their feet bound when they were older because many lower-class families could not afford the loss of labour a daughter with bound feet would inflict on the family. Nevertheless, the girl’s feet were bound with the belief that it would help her marry into wealth.
Feet were bound in a way so that the women’s toes, with the exception of the big toe, were twisted permanently under the arches of their feet. The lotus-shaped feet considered attractive in Chinese women limited their movements, making them more docile and “doll-like.” Women with bound feet were believed to have walked in a way that strengthened the vagina and made it narrower, which was why Chinese men during that era simply would not marry women with unbound feet.
Sixteenth century European women, on the other hand, bound themselves with whalebone corsets that had a strip of metal or wood running down its front to flatten their breasts and abdomen. Although they could no longer bend or breathe, some women also took to using additional iron bands to attain the ideal waist measurement of 13 inches.
Such practices, aside from illustrating the demands placed on women to conform to ideals of beauty, also show how parts of the female body may be objectified. That the pursuit of feminine beauty involves varying degrees of bodily disfigurement, through rites of passage (female genital mutilation) or cosmetic surgical procedures (breast implants), suggests how, in Helene Cixous’ words (Cixous, 1986 as cited in Young, 1990), “the (political) economy of the masculine and of the feminine is organised by different requirements and constraints, which, when socialised and metaphorised, produce signs, relationships of power, relationships of production and reproduction, an entire immense system of cultural inscription readable as masculine and feminine.”
Humans have practised bodily beautification and adornment throughout the centuries regardless of their sex, race, social status, or creed. Although what is considered beautiful has been proven to vary across cultures and change over time, a dichotomy for women’s bodies, along with beauty standards which that rest on varying assumptions of “natural” womanhood on one hand and of moral “perversity” on the other, was somehow established. What this duality downplays is that precisely because Mary Magdalene shares enough in bodily appearance with Mary the Virgin, the “feminine” is doubly deceptive and dangerous. This essay attempts to (re)present ways the female body is (re)presented as both object and subject for the deployment of power in an effort to expand and explode the historical notion of beauty through (re)reading (re)presentations of the goddess. One thing that the notion of the “goddess” offers women is a potent image of beauty permitting uncorseted movement on unbound feet, empowering women to set and achieve unrestricted goals for themselves.
Ancient Representations of the Goddess(es)
Many beauty and modeling contests today worship the female body as a decorative object, perhaps in exchange for the recognition of women as human beings, a reversal of the way the female body was regarded in ancient times. The rituals for worship of goddesses in early Meso-Sumerian civilisations make explicit parallels between the female body and the earth. Much of the imagery contained in prayers to the Goddess Inanna/Ishtar in early Sumerian texts is directly sexual—of vulvas being plowed and breasts pouring out fields of grain. As the goddess representing the lust allowing sexual union, Inanna/Ishtar represents “the anatomical aspect of cosmic renewal.” Such fertility rituals and prayers, Tikva Frymer-Kensky (1992) writes, “decreased anxieties about harvests, motivated people for agricultural labor, and enabled them to express awe and gratification at the existence of a stable agricultural surplus and the benefits that it brought.” Far from being a passive decorative object, the female body was thus regarded as a powerful symbol necessary in restoring and maintaining cosmic order.
The ancient Greeks have repeatedly taken the motif of the battlefield to illustrate the unique ways women exercise power over men. In Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata,” the women of Greece unite in chastity against their husbands and lovers in order to end the Peloponnesian War. Sappho’s “Call to Aphrodite” invokes the goddess to come down to earth as she has in the past to transform the girl who flees into the one who pursues, she who receives gifts into the one who offers them. The women that Sappho celebrates with song are not the good wives or the pretty young objects of exchange. She did not write about women as fields to be plowed or tablets to be inscribed, but as persons with their own passions capable of pleasures of their own making. This assertion was in itself powerful, as literary critic Page Dubois (1991) writes:, “Setting themselves against the warrior culture of Homer, against the values of labor and reproduction emerging in the nascent city states of the Greek world, Sappho’s fragmentary, broken lines celebrate pleasure and women’s bodies…Sappho, the only woman whose poetry has come down to us from antiquity, sings not of work and war, not of the instrumentalising of the body, but of the individual and her subjective body, of ‘the most beautiful,’ of erotic desire, of yearning.”
Gloria Anzaldúa, meanwhile, sees the rediscovery of the goddess as central to the recovery of her own self as a mestiza woman poet. She traces the genealogy of Mexico’s patroness Virgin of Guadalupe to the Aztec goddess Coatlalopeuh, who descends, in turn, from Coatlicue or “serpent skirt” an even earlier Mesoamerican fertility goddess. Anzaldúa believes that the male-dominated Aztec culture that silenced Coatlalopeuh and negated Coatlicue enthroned in their place the deity Tonantsi or “good mother.” Today, the duality between the chaste protective mother and the serpentine sexually charged goddess continues to exist, with La Virgen de Guadalupe representing the former and Coatlicue, representing la puta. Giving voice to women for Gloria Anzaldúa entails erasing this dichotomy and resurrecting the goddess in her entirety. Anzaldúa (Anzaldúa, 1987 as cited in Hollock, 2002) writes: “I see oposicion e insurreccion. I see the crack growing on the rock. I see the fine frenzy building. I see the heat of anger or rebellion or hope split open that rock, releasing la Coatlicue. And someone in me takes matters into our own hands, and eventually, takes dominion over serpents—over my own body, my sexual activity, my soul, my mind, my weaknesses and strengths. Mine. Ours. Not the heterosexual white man’s or the colored man’s or the state’s or the culture’s or the religion’s or the parents’—just ours, mine…I will overcome the tradition of silence.”
Coatlicue, the Mistress of Life and Death, has black skin with disheveled, dirt-covered hair, and a body with an unearthly aroma. Her chest is a vest of flayed human skin, and a garland of human hands and hearts hangs about her neck. She wears a skirt of serpents. She is frighteningly beautiful and gave birth to 400 offspring who plotted to kill her, save for her daughter Coyolxauhqui. With cheeks the color of polished copper bells, Coyolxauhqui raced ahead of the army of her 400 siblings to warn her mother. She refused to take part in killing, destruction, and war. Her brother Huitzilopochtli, weapons in hand, eyes bright and far-seeing, saw the army of four hundred approaching. He saw his sister Coyolxauhqui at its head. When she stepped before him, hand raised in warning, cheeks shining like polished copper, he lifted his sword and sliced her neck. Her head fell, rolled across the ground, and blood mixed with dirt. When Huitzilopochtli learned of Coyolxauhqui’s true intentions, he threw his sister’s head high into the sky and Coyolxauhqui’s cheeks began to glow, turning into the moon that brightened the night.
One, however, does not need to be a poet, or even Mexican, to reclaim the power of these goddesses. Coyolxauhqui manifests herself in every woman who is willing to raise a hand in warning or her voice in dissent against war. Coatlicue is reclaimed by women beyond Mexico’s borders who “take matters into their own hands” and “take dominion over their bodies” to protest destructive practices that bring their communities closer to annihilation or at the center of nuclear hostilities. Coatlicue and Coyolxauhqui are invoked when women use their bodies as an expression of women’s implicit Otherness in order to articulate their resistance to warfare.
Modern Reincarnations of the Goddess
The goddess/(es) is/(are) everywhere. The beautiful dark-skinned women of the Niger Delta, were described as being “armed only with food and their voices.” They were protesting Chevron Texaco operations in their region. In July 2002, the women successfully halted Chevron Texaco operations in the Niger Delta for nearly two weeks. Their peaceful mass action began as a single demonstration by about 150 women from villages surrounding Chevron Texaco’s Escravos oil terminal, and grew to over 3,000 women joining in a non-violent direct occupation of four other Chevron Texaco facilities in the Delta. The women demanded jobs, education services, health services, and economic investment in their communities. Occupying the terminal for eleven days, they barricaded a storage depot, blocked docks, helicopter pads, and an airstrip, which were the facility’s only entry points. Their presence prevented 700 (largely male) employees from working, and they returned to work only when the company agreed to certain conditions. At the Escravos flow station alone, the company agreed to hire 25 villagers over five years and to help build clinics, schools, and fish and chicken farms. The women also non-violently occupied the Abiteye, Makaraba/Otunana, Dibi, and Olero Creek flow stations, costing Chevron Texaco an estimated 110,000 barrels per day of oil production. Josephine Ogoba, a 48-year-old mother of four, one of the leaders of the protesting women, voiced out:
“We are demonstrating here peacefully, not armed with anything, except leaves. We are peaceful. We are occupying this facility because we are angry. We are angry, because since 1970, when the company came here, we have nothing to show for the pollution of our rivers and creeks, destruction of our forests and mangroves, and the noise, and the gas flaring. We have complained and protested. All our complaints and protests fell on Chevron’s deaf ears. We have nothing to show for this. Look at my village from Warri to here, for an uninterrupted engine boat drive of about two hours, and we don’t have a clinic, no good drinking water, no road, no electricity and other necessities of life. Here, we have married women, unmarried women, and small girls. We have old women, young and small ones here demonstrating. Nobody mobilises us to do what we are doing. We are angry. We sleep here day and night. We are denied our rights as a people to employment, good environment, and so on. We will be here till Chevron answers our demands.”
There are many Goddesses, just as there is one Goddess. Women’s fight for political and economic justice has sparked the return of the notion of goddesses, as women struggling with today’s patriarchal institutions and individuals unearth and reinterpret images of women as restorers of social order, sometimes summoning centuries-old worship/awe of the female body to do so. The tension between male objectification and women’s resistance to it opens women’s anti-war struggles and peaceful mass actions to a variety of feminist readings, as in Alison Young’s analysis of the images that the press constructs of the women protesting the presence of US military bases at Greenham Common. At Greenham Common, women use their bodies to put an end “to a war not of their own making” with a strange Lysistratian twist: the women display, rather than deny, men the sight of their beautiful naked bodies.
The peace camp at Greenham Common outside the United States air base where 96 cruise missiles were sited was the aftermath of a 1981 peace march by a group of women, men, and children from South Wales. There were 250 women who first blockaded the base in 1982. When the women protestors blockaded the main gate of the base on August 9, 1984 in commemoration of Nagasaki Day, they stripped themselves naked and covered themselves with ash. Horrified at the sight/site, the (again, largely male) army personnel tasked with their removal donned protective clothing because they were reluctant to touch any of the women. Alison Young (1990) writes of the spectacle:
“The immediate, most obvious connection was with the victims and survivors of the bombing of Nagasaki, but the women were also presenting a challenge to the stereotype of the naked woman (that of pornography) in which the woman is conventionally attractive to men, disposable, and powerless. These horrifying yet naked and vulnerable women were stating a right to self-determination and self-definition at the same time as they demonstrated the effects of nuclear warfare…in their recuperation of their repressed body, and specifically, in their redefinition of the meaning of the female body, the Greenham protesters have found a form of political protest which is truly transformative.”
The corporeal beauty of the goddess is feared, and (male) authority is the social force used to tame, control and channel this pure female power. Whatever notion one considers the goddess to be—a living entity, a manifestation of an All, a psychological archetype, or model of feminine potential—is irrelevant. What matters is that women allow her to re-enter their lives, using her vitality, anger, power, sensuality, charisma, wisdom, and beauty to summon their own. Surely there is something about the Niger Delta women, armed with nothing but food and leaves, and the women of Greenham Common, naked and covered with ash—all are women capable of simultaneously assuring yet threatening the social order, modern-day Mistresses of Life and Death. It is women like them who succeed in effacing the duality between the chaste protective mother and sexually charged goddess, thereby reconstructing the cultural inscription of feminine beauty. They shine in the heat of their anger, rebellion, and hope, shine as brightly as Coyolxauhqui with a hand held up to avert war. Their demands for peace make them dangerous and fearsome, yet, at the same time, as appealing and attractive as goddesses of old.
References
Anzaldúa, Gloria as cited by Thomas Hollock in Patriarchy Meets the Man-Eating Goddess, downloaded from <http://www.womenwriters.net/summer2002/maneatinggoddess.html>
Cixous, Helene as cited by Alison Young in Feminity in Dissent, Routledge, 1990.
Coatlicue, Coyolxauhqui, Huitzilopochtli, and notions of the Goddess(es)downloaded from <http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/1582/goddesses.html>
Community Voices: Testimonies of Niger Delta Women Protesting ChevronTexaco Operations in Drillbits and Tailings Volume 7, Number 6, July 31, 2002 downloaded from <http://www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/drillbits/7_06/diary.html>
Community Voices: Women Occupy Chevron/Texaco Facilities in the Niger Delta in Drillbits and Tailings Volume 7, Number 6, July 31, 2002 downloaded from <http://www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/drillbits/7_06/diary.html>
Crites, James A. Chinese Foot Binding, downloaded from <http://www.angelfire.com/ca/beekeeper/foot.html>
Dubois, Page. “Introduction,” The Love Songs of Sappho, New York: Signet Classics, 1991.
Freedman, Rita. “The Myth in the Mirror,” in Women: Images and Realities. Mayfield Publishing Co., 1999.
Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth. The Free Press, 1992.
Hutchins, Candace. Chinese Foot Binding, downloaded from <http://www.ccds.charlotte.nc.us/History/China/04/hutchins/hutchins.htm>
Saltzberg, Elayne and Joan Chrisler. Beauty is the Beast: Psychological Effects of the Pursuit of the Perfect Female Body, downloaded from <http://www.dac.neu.edu/womens.studies/saltzberg.html>
Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1992.
Young, Alison. Femininity in Dissent. Routledge, 1990.
Why We Shouldn’t Become Assassins to Defend our Honor and Get Justice by Killing Bill
by Marianita "Girlie" Villariba
I am writing this article for women who want to experience power and live inspired lives. I share my reflections as a woman discovering the female body and meditation practices. I will not examine culturally composed images of women from political angles, but will touch on how the movie industry constructs perceptions of female bodies, and imposes values and standards, such as ofbeing attractive, ugly, beautiful, undesirable, or sexy.
This piece will end with a brief introduction to a spiritual practice for women and men, young and old. I will share a specific body and meditation practice that can ease the burden of women and help protect their integrity. Hopefully, I will take you to a less-traveled road to health and peace of mind, where power begins with mindful breathing and being fully alive.
Flashback to the Fifties
I was born in the fifties, right after World War II, and my parents were war survivors. My father and my mother were orphaned early and sought to build a big family. They produced 13 offsprings, and I am the eldest daughter. My father was sent to New York as a scholar at Columbia University to earn his doctorate in education in the fifties. When he came home with an American doctorate, our upbringing had begun to be partly influenced by American values and standards.
Very early, as a five-year-old, I watched Hollywood movies and amused myself with fantasy films. My first fascination was with stars like Doris Day, Rock Hudson, Audrey Hepburn, and Sandra Dee. I copied their fashion and attitude. My body image was based on what they wore and how they used it to marry their millionaire-husbands. Alas, I was Malay looking—petite, brown, with uneven teeth and pimples. Looking at the fashionable women featured in elite society pages, I felt downright homely. Nevertheless, I had a rich imagination and a determined attitude.
I made many friends and continued enriching my mind and body. I joined dance troupes and learned all the folk dances and latest dance craze. I could dance nimbly on a wooden bench and on clapping bamboo poles, and even do the limbo rock. I asked my mother if she could afford to send me to ballet school. But having 13 kids was a heavy responsibility, and ballet school for a small-town girl was out of the budget. So I just danced with my fantasies, inviting kids in my neighborhood to watch my dance improvisations.
School…and activism
At 16, I got accepted at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. My journey into body beautiful was difficult. I had gorgeous classmates, straight from elite finishing schools. The sorority girls were the creme de la creme. I wanted to belong, but I did not come from a buena familia—an old, rich and beautiful family. So I focused on psychology, and I discovered Filipino psychology. I no longer craved for a Hollywood image. I was mujer indigena! A native woman coming of age.
By the time I finished college in the early seventies, the peace movement and the hippie generation were on the rise. I plunged into youth activism and joined activist groups. The fashion image was simple—jeans and t-shirt. In fact, the more one looked like a peasant or worker, the better. No bourgeois look. No make-up. No perfume. No jewelry. Sandals or slippers were in. In the Philippines, this proletarian look was the dominant left image among intellectuals and activists. But during recruitment of students, the men still sought beautiful fair-skinned girls from exclusive Catholic schools. So I wondered why leftist men had rightist organs and preferred Hollywood trophy wives and lovers.
In the years of the dictatorship in the Philippines, 1972 to 1986, so many women were drawn to activism and became a force in the social movement. Within this period, I became a feminist, looking at myself as an advocate of humanist feminist philosophy that valued women for who they are and for why they are women. I discovered the babaylanes (women priests) and the heroic women of the colonial struggles. I debated with various groups of men and women, taking a pluralist democratic stance. I sought beautiful images, but the standards were based on indigenous and Asian norms. I went ethnic in dressing and was proud of my Malay bearings.
Sexy and Violent Power
In the course of combining my roles as woman, sister, lover, partner, and mother, I discovered various facets of my womanhood. I realised that to condemn class rule and dominance was relatively easier, as compared to the danger in challenging patriarchy. Even within the social movement, being a feminist was difficult.
Powerful men, both in the traditional and progressive circles, would praise women for expanding their circles of influence but would delegate repetitive and boring tasks to women whom they treated like servants. The women had to work doubly hard to break the glass ceiling. From the start, I saw men in the upper echelons marry trophy wives (fashionable, rich and intelligent). Unfortunately, these women became unhappy with their marriages, and many divorced their husbands. Some became feminist and sought to be free of the restrictions of their sex and class.
As I focused on being a Malay woman, I realised that image and power as mediated by media is the domain of struggle I wanted to study. Up to this age, we are still bombarded by beauty contests, formal and informal. At the age of two, my daughter started asking me how pretty she was, and she became more preoccupied with her image every year. The standards of beauty have been dominated by the West for centuries, and in the twenty-first century, it is still Hollywood that reigns.
But what is particularly dangerous—especially in this West-Hollywood reign—is the image of killer beauties being promoted, typified by the Kill Bill assassins, and the women agents like Sidney of Alias and Charlie’s Angels. This lethal combination of women who are sexy and who kill without compunction or remorse is being sold to young women all over the world. It is not enough to be a beauty queen. Since society is dominated by powerful males who prey on beautiful women, one has to be good at killing and getting retribution. That is the message of films, of cartoons, of fashion, of commerce: a culture of sexy evil.
To rob cultures of their heritage and disable anyone in competitive pursuit is Lara Croft of Tomb Raiders. To spy on any nation and assassinate leaders is Sidney’s task in Alias. To use the latest information technology is the Chinese path of revenge in So Close. Women assassins of Kill Bill I and II are the rage, with Uma Thurman and Lucy Lui exhibiting their samurai skills and acrobatic combat moves as champions of evil and good. These women are able to decapitate hundreds of Japanese men. Thurman is impressive in using kung fu to break through a coffin and rise from the grave.
I must admit that the image of women combining Eastern and Western ways of fighting can be fascinating. It takes revenge to a higher level, and women who have been violated or subjected to torture and rape can be drawn to these images of women power.
But is it not a culture of death that is being propagated in films, masquerading as entertainment? Examining all the images spawned by commercial movies, we see that most of the women characters are raped, and revenge is the solution. Law and order are no longer the source of resolution. Respect for institutions that honor life above all is eroded.
Indeed, there is greater danger in the violence advocated in women’s resolution of crisis. Any man who has wronged a woman will find his due karma, and the way for a woman to get revenge is to be as lethal as the man. In her film, Jennifer Lopez trained herself to fight so she could take on her abusive husband mano a mano. But the movie industry has also realised that films that use the formula of revenge appeal to the wallets of moviegoers. Hence, there is the frequency of films about women banding together to assassinate a serial rapist-killer or who interpret the law according to the harsh rules of the jungle.
But are we powerless as women, left with no choice but to accept the reality of violent resolution? How can we end abuse and murder?
Breathing and Loving
I have reflected on why I read novels and watch movies where women fight. I am drawn to the spirit of women who rise above suffering and whose strength and courage enable them to get justice. But in the course of studying violence, I have also come across spiritual practices that promote non-violence and overcome obstacles to “enlightenment.”
One such indigenous practice is the Eastern inner energy cultivation and therapy. It is a 500-year-old discipline developed by the Sufis and Islamic masters. One such school is the Tetada Kalimasada started in Surabaya, Indonesia. The Indonesians studied various meditation practices, martial arts and traditional healing. In all these, they realised how powerful the breath is when in harmony with a Higher Mind, and they sought to develop it. The inner power is called tenaga by the Indonesians, prana by the Indians, and chi by the Chinese.
In my meditation research, I have experienced the power of breathing during meditation, especially when infused with loving thoughts of God. The specific “triangular diaphragmatic breathing techniques” I learned in Tetada Kalimasada allow me to generate energy and direct it to any part of the body.
This power principle of using breath is dramatised in the fist technique that Thurman used in breaking the coffin and rising above the ground in Kill Bill. It is part of the five-finger-technique used in killing Bill in that film, who gets tapped in five points and dies of a heart attack after taking five steps. The fighting scenes in Kill Bill may be full of special effects and stunts, but the principle of chi is real. The intent to defend oneself from harm by using chi is a principal lesson. One must note, however, that the movie failed to show that the way to learn the art of fighting is not by becoming a slave to a master but in meditating actively to achieve harmony in life. You do not become a killing machine by employing kung fu. You become a student, a loving being, a person whose breath and spirit is in harmony with the Higher Being. By being in unity, the person becomes flowing energy and can accomplish one’s mission of healing people.
Women Masters
It is the image of spiritual women masters—powerful women whose mindful breath can lift objects, whose breath can heal wounds, whose breath can sense both positive and negative thoughts—that I am drawn to. There are such women, and they are very alive.
One example is Ibu Ida Surohadi, master and head of the international instruction of Tetada Kalimasada from Surabaya, Indonesia. I am in awe of this woman, a doctor and an expert of pencat silak, the Indonesian martial arts. She can match Lui’s skill for organising an army for she has a hundred thousand students all over the world. She can meditate in the North Pole without a coat, conduct jurus (synchronised movements) barefoot and in cotton attire without freezing. She can walk through a path of live coals under a canopy of fire and not get singed or burned. She can scan fruits being sliced 10 meters away. But most of all, she is a master in inner power cultivation and has sought to teach many how to achieve harmony in one’s life.
Ibu Ida is beautiful and kind. Her husband Pak Eddy Surohadi, grand master and founder of Tetada Kalimasada, recognises Ibu Ida as his equal. There is no contest between the two, and they have no need to use violence of any sort to resolve issues.
Another example is Chatsumarn Kabilsingh who embraced the Buddhist tradition and is serving as head of the Buddhist bikkunis (nuns) in Thailand. I met her as a sociologist in 1995 in the University of Thailand. Chatsumarn studied the Buddhist religion and its precepts, and undertook the research in places where the Buddha lived and taught. She introduced me to Buddhism and taught me active meditation. At the peak of her professional career as a sociologist, she dedicated her life to becoming a Buddhist bikkuni and spiritual leader. She divorced her husband and gave her children their legacy. Her life is one of unconditional love for being and in the service of dharma precepts. It is her daily meditations that enrich the lives of people in her temple and those who reach out to her.
Spiritual Practices: Breathing and Meditations
If I were to recast the women in Kill Bill, I would choose Lui first and portray her as overcoming her trauma (in the movie, she witnessed the rape and murder of her mother) by choosing the path of courage and not of criminality (she later became a gangster in the movie). I would put her under the care of women like Chatsumarn and Ibu Ida to learn the discipline of developing inner strength and energy. She will practise daily to wield her breath like a samurai sword and cut through the layers of ignorance and deceptions. She will develop her courage, and take a stand against injustice and oppression by living according to the precepts of a loving, peaceful, life-honoring community.
The most important element in our daily lives is cultivating the breath and directing it to keep us inspired. Breathing is drawing hard and soft energy to create a force inside and around us that makes action in synch with everything. To energise oneself is a powerful antidote to disease and a guaranteed protection from harm.
In my daily practice of Tetada Kalimasada, I start the process by acknowledging there is a powerful source of life. I call this “God” and I offer every breath I take from God. As I do my breathing, it is organised into inhaling for 15 dzikir, pressing and holding my breath in the abdomen for 33 dzikir and exhaling for 15 dzikir. Dzikir is Indonesian term for remembering God. This practice is the triangular diaphragmatic breathing, and it activates the human bio-electric generator. Such breathing increases the hemoglobin level, reduces the destruction of cells, massages the abdominal cavity, and activates the parasympathetic nervous system.
This breathing technique is combined with alpha concentration (where the brain is relaxed with 7 to 14 hertz) and can do wonders to one’s consciousness. I stress that the whole practice is a package, complete with synchronised movements and progressive relaxation, but I will not write here about the full discipline. It is sufficient to say that there are cultures in the East that have created ways of being, using peaceful and loving disciplines that enable women to gain power over violence and suffering.
Breathing and Achieving Ease of Living
I underscore breathing because it is key to achieving and sustaining good health in daily life. It is free and does not need any equipment except your body. It is awesome when flowing and can be a healing force. I myself have healed many aches by directing my breath to painful muscles and nerves.
When I started the meditation practice called duduk nafas ( breathing while seated similar to yoga), I was surprised to learn afterwards that I could feel my breath in my hands, in my legs or in any part of my body. It was like touching a warm water balloon, or like a rubber ball that expands like a band as you gain more breath. When we were told to use it to charge a light bulb so it will not break, I was delighted to see how an inanimate object could absorb my energy and then bounce like a ball.
The most immediate effect of a regular practice of kalimasada is ease of living and mindfulness. I am menopausal and was about to end my fertile days of ovulating. But now I am still a regularly menstruating 54-year-old woman. Gone are my hot flushes, the rheumatism in my knees, my fatigue and emotional rollercoaster episodes. I am as organised, creative, compassionate and inspired as I was 36 years ago when I embarked on my journey as a young woman in love.
Speaking of partnerships in life, my husband Ed and I practise kalimasada together. The effect of practicing kalimasada together is increased energies for us for working as a team and in renewed vigour for loving and expressing it. We both draw delight in being overtly affectionate and are both comfortable with our maturing sex lives.
As a special tribute, let me express my gratitude in this article for my teacher Mars Robosa, called a pelatih in the tetada kalimasada institute, who can do wonders with his breathing energy by pressing and holding it in his abdominal cavity. He can find lost objects. He can heal by remote sensing. He can shield himself from harm and can lasso with his breath any one snatching his mobile phone. His patience is praiseworthy, and his discipline in teaching is full of loving kindness. There are many things he can do by “intent”—as we call it in directing the breath. I often ask him why and how that is possible. The answers will be in another story, and, hopefully, the readers of Isis will want to learn more about inner energy cultivation as a paradigm and a path to achieving personal and social power.
Let me close this article with our opening and closing greeting at our tetada kalimasada sessions: Salam. Peace. Hope.
(Note: The basic body and meditation practice described in this article is learned through demonstration and guided practice of at least 10 sessions.)
Politics and Power: A Gendered Perspective from South Asia
by Farida Shaheed
A basic dilemma in discussing politics and power from a gendered perspective arises from the traditional concept and definition of politics, and of what is included and what is excluded from this purview. The dictionary definitions of politics focus on government: “art and science of government”; “public life and affairs involving authority and government”; “activities concerning the acquisition or exercise of authority or government.” In the dominant (male) discourse, these definitions translate into the process of accessing and influencing state power. This narrow focus ignores the fact that the exercise of authority permeates all spheres of life, extending well beyond the processes of government, at whatever level. Since women have traditionally been (and continue to be) largely denied formal office and power, such definitions exclude much of the daily concerns and struggles of women.
Yet if politics is about acquiring or exercising authority, then it necessarily encompasses contestations over authority and the power bases used for such contestations that, in turn, relate to influencing decisions, challenging ideas, and mobilising support for one’s opinions and actions, either to maintain or to change the status quo. In this broader understanding, engagement in politics is an everyday occurrence practised by all, male or female. It starts at home in interpersonal relations and continues to the international level. When a girl wants to carry on with her studies but fears opposition from her father, she could identify and mobilise one or more allies—be it her mother, aunt, brother, or someone else to intervene on her behalf. This is a political act and one that, indeed, relates to power. The nuclear and/or extended family, the neighbourhood or village, and the broader community are all sites for the negotiation of rights and space, where power is flexed subtly or brutally, authority is exercised and challenged, and the game of politics is played out, even though we are not used to thinking of these as a continuum of the political process. Yet when a few thousand girls mobilise support to pursue their education, these individual acts and negotiations are transformed, in our imagination, to a movement to which we then assign both social and political significance.
At each juncture, from the individual/local to the international, the interplay of power may involve overlapping and conflicting power bases and contestations for both supremacy and popular adherence/loyalty. Allies at one level or on a particular issue may become opponents at another level for another issue.
Women engage in these processes in different capacities: as “women,” of course, but also, and not infrequently, primarily as members of other collectivities and identities, including class, ethnic, religious and professional ones. Indeed, “group membership and the categorical definition by gender, nationality, religion, ethnicity, ‘race’, ability, age or lifecycle stage …determine [women’s] access to entitlements and their capacity to exercise independent agency” (Yuval-Davis and Werbner, 1999). The framework within which women engage in processes of negotiation as individuals or as collectivities can thus differ radically, depending on their social, economic and cultural locations within a state, but, equally, according to the issue at hand.
It is not possible to cover in a short paper, let alone do justice, to the wide-ranging ways and various levels at which women engage in, or are affected by, the politics of power. Given the current worldwide emphasis on women’s access to formal state power and decision-making, this paper, while mindful of the complexities involved, will focus on women’s interaction with, and access to, power and politics in the more formalised political process, directly relating to states and governments in South Asia. It raises some of the issues concerned with the various spaces available to women at different moments, the strategies used by women activists to increase these spaces, and some of the more disconcerting contradictions.
The Framework of Nation-States
No state or society is gender-neutral. In order to attain, assert and access rights, women have to draw upon inventiveness as well as determination to find or create ways of influencing processes that affect their personal and collective lives in an obstacle-ridden playing field. The many forms of women’s activism are played out at multiple levels. The unceasing deployment of survival strategies by individual women in their everyday lives is complemented by more collective forms of resistance and assertion aimed at institutionalising sustainable and structural change. Intervening at the community, national and international arenas, women’s strategies range from using personal relations and connections so as to access and exercise state power, to public protest and taking up arms.
But despite all the struggle and activism, the worldwide paucity of women in authoritative positions and decision-making bodies—as we enter the twenty-first century—is a disturbing reflection of how little power women still exercise in arenas where public policy is made and economic decisions are taken. This dysymmetry led participants of the “Fourth World Conference on Women” to demand, through the “Beijing Platform for Action,” “measures to ensure women’s equal access to, and full participation in, power structures and decision-making.” Recognising that exceptional women who make it into the higher echelons of power have not broken the glass ceiling for women but rather have risen through the seams, a global consensus is emerging on the need for women to constitute at least one-third of decision-makers in all structures of power. It is hoped that once this critical mass of women decision-makers is in place, women would be in a better position to transform the body politic into a vehicle that is responsive to their needs and desires.
In every state, it is worth remembering that sex and other factors like class, race, age, and ethnicity continue to be the basis of differentiated entitlements and treatment. Not too long ago, states unapologetically conferred citizenship status and associated rights to select and specified male groups, and denied these to all women and various religious, ethnic or racial groups (Evans, 1977; Callamard, 1997; Shaheed 1997; Yuval-Davis and Werbner, 1999). To obtain recognition as (equal) citizens of the nation-state, women and other excluded groups have had to engage in a continuous struggle. As the privileged and legitimised framework for negotiating the responsibilities and rights of a group or collectivity, and a sharing of power in the context of nation-states, the formal political process is, indeed, important. This process is not limited to the electoral process, and includes all formalised channels of state-citizen interaction. Opening up discourses and debates, conferring or challenging authority, the political process is also the site of ideological contests between competing constructions of a collective self that inevitably includes constructs of gender. Thus, even when women themselves are not principal actors, these dynamics have an impact on their lives, making it imperative for women to find/or create the means to intervene, either directly or indirectly. Women’s ability to do so, of course, depends on the existing framework for intervention: the structure of the state, the availability and nature of the formal political electoral process, the historical specificities that shape a particular society and state, and the openings and opportunities that these provide.
The South Asian Context
South Asia is second only to Scandinavia in having had more women heads of government than any other region in the world. It presents an interesting case study of formal state power and women’s strategies, of the disjuncture between local realities and national policies, and of the striking involvement of women in a wide range of social and political movements, including several that are ideologically conservative, militant, and diametrically opposed to the concept of universal rights .
In many ex-colonial states, pre-existing forms of self-governance dominated by the local elite, for example, the panchayat, jirga, salish, or other forms of informal self-governance, have not only survived in the modern nation-states but, in some instances, seem to be enjoying a revival. These power structures were only partly dismantled, integrated into, or replaced by, the modern states’ alternatives, mostly in urban centres. In the predominantly agrarian societies of South Asia, even today, the power structures continue to be major determinants of people’s lives. In many ways, these non-state institutions mediate interaction between people/citizens and the distant, if modern, state. Hence, for many citizens of South Asia, the immediate community retains its primordial place in people’s lives, where favours or privileges are sought and allegiance owed; where access to power is determined, contested, gained, denied, or lost.
In the absence of a widespread consciousness, much less an implementation of the concept of entitlement to rights as citizens, there has been a large-scale appropriation of the modern state’s mechanisms by the traditional power elite (ASMITA, 1999), who are then able to simultaneously perpetuate local power structures and mould the “new” state institutions to their purpose. Frequently, this situation happens when those who head traditional structures are elected and hold office in formal state structures while still exercising decision-making in the non-formal structures. The set-up has two consequences for women’s access to power: 1. women are rarely able to access any power through the informal governance mechanisms (jirga, panchayat, salish) because they are usually excluded from these structures; and 2.because these non-formal forums exercise a more immediate control over women’s everyday lives than do the formal institutions of the state, they also obstruct women’s access to openings to power and participation provided for in the new structures of the state by enforcing cultural notions of limited female roles and activities. Examples of these cultural notions are exclusion of women from decision-making about the family and community, limited work for women outside their homes, limited female mobility, among other notions.
In several South Asian states, military and/or authoritarian rule has impeded the emergence of a democratic ethos that would open up some channels for the empowerment of discriminated groups, including women. Even where democratic rule has prevailed mostly uninterrupted, as in India, the concept of democracy has been almost entirely reduced to an electoral process devoid of mechanisms that would ensure that elected representatives are made effectively accountable to their constituents.
While formal, de-personalised structures of state and politics do exist, the dynamics of real power in South Asia remain intricately linked to family and personal connections, as epitomised by the Gandhi dynasty in India’s politics, and also evident in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The issue goes far beyond leadership. Formal channels and structures of political power in the region are seriously threatened by the politics of informal power brokerage, and systems of patronage overshadow the formal systems of governance. Consequently, the exercise of real power is often indirect and, as philosopher John Stuart Mill had postulated, being divorced from accountability and responsibility, it is essentially irresponsible. The disruptive potential of indirect and irresponsible power is amply demonstrated in Pakistan by the influence wielded by politico-religious parties that, until recently, have never won any significant number of seats in parliament yet exercise tremendous political leverage. A similar situation seems to be emerging in Bangladesh. The exercise of indirect power is, nevertheless, based on providing tangible proof of power, often by creating law-and-order situations and/or disrupting the normal flow of things. By comparison, women’s capacity to demonstrate such power is marginal.
For many people in South Asia, the political process has come to be seen less as a means of pursuing an ideological vision and social justice than as a means of achieving power, accumulating wealth and distributing state benefits to specific groups of citizens. Many states have what is known in Bangladesh as “montri polli” or “minister’s ghetto,” that is, “a culture of loyalty and class interest in which power is exercised through a wide network and political nexus to enhance the interests and influence of the elite across divisions of ideology and principle” (Mannan, 1992). Government instability bolsters this syndrome. As one frank politician explained, “We know our representative posts may be called off at any time. So what we do during our tenure is to maximise our profits and our wealth.” (Mannan, 1992).
A regional study on women, state, and governance confirmed that women share this perception and believe that many politicians use their political power to amass personal fortunes and power (Tambiah). In one Pakistani village, women who had denied any interest in politics but who said they discussed developments in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and elsewhere explained that, for them, “politics” was a question of who competed for and won political office. It was not a process they were interested in, since who won or lost made no difference to their lives (Shirkat Gah, 1999). The reorientation of the political process from the pursuit of an ideal to a process for attaining tangible material benefits is being further accelerated by the principles and values promoted by the “New World Order.”
The failure of the state to deliver the services and benefits promised by sovereign status, to dispense impartial entitlements to its citizens, and to evolve integrated nations has resulted in the very concept of nationhood becoming one of the most volatile political issues of South Asia. The region has witnessed a growing legitimacy of essentialist or ”exclusivist” politics of identity, both ethnic and religious. Though, in some cases, this form of politics seriously challenges the very existence of the state, such as in Sri Lanka, it often initially inspires allegiance and support as a vehicle for demanding a better deal for a selected group within the state. Of immediate importance to women are the tensions and contradictions that are played out between “the constructs of citizenship and nationalism,” between the “will to be modern” and the “demand to exist and have a name” that characterise much of South Asian politics. Cast in the role of the cultural bearers and reproducers of the chosen community/nation, through their embodiment of the construction of gender, women’s lives and struggles are often situated at the crossroads of the conflict between the modern state’s impulse to homogenise its citizens albeit in the mould of dominating state structures emphasising rationality, individuality, and the rule of law, on the one hand, and the constructs of nationalism(s) that evoke emotional ties of soil and blood, and demand primordial loyalty, on the other (Yuval-Davis and Werbner, 1999).
Women’s Activism
Women have adopted a wide range of strategies for accessing power and intervening in the realm of politics: inserting their agendas into the existing discourses, or leading their own movements, forging alliances, negotiating rights, and creating their own strategies and organisations. Autonomous women’s organisations were an important vehicle for self-expression in South Asian nations even before their independence. Women have been part of trade unions and student unions, and have been active in human rights, advocacy and development non-government organisations (NGOs). They have been important players in social movements concerning issues that affect them directly as women and, equally, their families and/or community members. Some campaigns, like the anti-alcohol campaigns, have been women-specific. Throughout South Asia, women have participated in legislative processes and in political parties, and also as activists of political groups and movements outside the electoral process.
Substantial systemic and structural constraints notwithstanding, women have managed to broaden their access to power and influence in the formal political process. By their interventions, women have transformed their own lives and, by their actions, have expanded the space available to other women, at least of women in their own “group” however that is defined. (Admittedly, this has sometimes been at the expense of the rights and spaces available to another set of women.) They have used opportunities and openings strategically, often consciously, but sometimes unconsciously. Success has depended on the particular circumstances and configurations of power as well as on the inherent strength of the group/individuals involved and the actions and strategies employed. Backlashes and reversals have been part of the process.
Political upheavals and intense political mobilisation have provided women with unmatched opportunities on more than one occasion. In what constitutes contemporary India, despite attempts of women to gain voting rights, both the 1909 Indian Councils Act and the 1919 Government of India Act excluded women. Women were finally included in the Government of India Act, 1935, thanks to the support of Indian men who forged an alliance with Indian women in opposition to the colonial power. Yet women’s demands “to be returned to power by the open door of competition” so as to avoid perpetuating the belief of inferiority was rejected (EKATRA, 1999). Indian women gained the right to be participants in their country’s affairs only as marginal players.
Nevertheless, if mobilising women by lending support to women-specific demands was merely good strategy on the part of male leaders, there is no doubt that nationalist movements provided women unprecedented opportunities. In a pattern common to many colonised societies, nationalist movements became the principal framework for much of women’s civil and political rights initiatives (Jayawardene,1986; Badran, 1995). Women harnessed the energies released by intense political activism and the power of their own participation to modify their own lives “to an extent hardly credible,” as one contemporary described it (Cousins, 1941). Another woman activist of the time recalls that by bringing “women into the forefront of public life…the political struggle had somehow generated such enthusiasm that all prejudices and taboos seemed to have been swept away” (Ikramullah, 1963).
Women who joined the anti-colonial nationalist movements in the belief that this would simultaneously be the vehicle for emancipation and for universal citizenship wereto be disappointed, however. Though independence brought women de jure rights as citizens, it simultaneously eroded and reined in the space for radically altering gender equations while providing few women public office and power. Having depended on the support of indigenous men in an alliance directed against an “alien other,” women would have to learn how to effectively lobby with, and organise in opposition to, indigenous male power after independence.
Many decades later, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the popular uprising initially led by students that resulted in the overthrow of the military rule of Ayub Khan in Pakistan (and what is today Bangladesh) provided a similar opening. The subsequent political mobilisation towards elections in 1970 included women in numbers that had not been seen since the nationalist movements. Women were involved in electoral parties as well as in political movements not interested in contesting elections. In West Pakistan, the mobilisation led to the creation of numerous women’s rights groups, many with political undercurrents. In East Pakistan, mobilised women joined the Bangladesh independence movement, sparked off by army action after elections. Despite the brutality, including gender-specific violence of horrific proportions, and possibly because the violence so fundamentally disrupted all social norms, activists expanded their space and agency not just as Bengali nationalists but as women as well.
In Sri Lanka, against the backdrop of a country devastated by ethnic conflict and reprisals by the State, the Mother’s Front (a grassroots women’s group) was created in July 1990 by women of the Sinhala majority ethnic community. The women had the fairly simple objective of protesting the “disappearance” of some 60,000 young and middle-aged men. The Front managed to break the immobility of a society that seemed paralysed by a stranglehold of terror. At its peak, this group had mobilised a membership estimated to be over 25,000 women. The idiom of motherhood used by the Mother’s Front was non-threatening both to the State and to the women who joined the group, and, being so, created the space to intervene in difficult circumstances. The fact that the Front consisted of Sinhala women, and made little attempt to link up with minorities, probably accounts for its ability to intervene without facing reprisals that may have been directed against women with a similar purpose from another ethnic background. In fact, the Sinhala Mother’s Front overshadowed and blocked the actions of mothers of Tamil (minority) women, who had earlier started a similar initiative.
The importance of this short-lived, if large, group of women related less to its specific activities and direct achievements than to the impact it had on the general political space at a particular historical juncture. By counterpoising motherhood to politics, while intervening in the political process, the Mother’s Front focused attention on , and brought into the national agenda, a vital issue that other groups had failed to bring into the open. The Front repeatedly asserted that it was neither political nor anti-government but, at the same time, identified State actors as perpetrators of the “disappearances,” and made the head of State , the President, its key target. By its actions, the Front “opened up the space in which a much larger, non-racist and more radical protest movement could be launched” and simultaneously “gendered the discourses of human rights and dissent” (de Alwis, 1998).
In Pakistan, women’s rights activists consciously used the difference between what is popularly conceived of, or defined as, “political” and what is excluded from this, in their struggle under the military dictatorship of Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s. At the time, political parties and all forms of political manifestations were banned while women’s rights were being rescinded at an alarming rate, and the contours of womanhood were being redefined by the State’s aggressive media campaigns, policy statements and directives. The Women’s Action Forum (WAF), a platform created in 1981 to bring together a wide range of activists and actors who had led the women’s rights movement for a decade, evolved a number of creative responses in the face of adverse circumstances (see Mumtaz and Shaheed, 1987). One strategy was to declare itself non-political. It was not that leading activists saw a disjuncture between politics and women’s rights. This conscious decision was taken with two aims in mind: First, there seemed little point in inviting the military to ban the group before it had even started functioning. Second, the label reassured many women who were mobilised on the women’s rights platform but were wary of “politics.” WAF then exploited and pushed to the limits the narrow space provided by the ambiguities in public perception of what is defined as “politics” (as in attempting to gain State power or overthrow the incumbent rulers) and “women’s rights activities.” The latter were forwarded as a continuum unrelated to who was in power at a given moment, and divorced from the struggle for political power. Notwithstanding demonstrations, pickets, and pamphleteering—all of which were technically banned—WAF maintained the stance of being non-political in all interactions with the authorities and in its statements. This, even while lashing out at each discriminatory policy, directive, and law suggested or promulgated by those in State power. After the return of democratic processes, it modified its stance to one of being politically non-aligned.
A considerable proportion, possibly the vast majority, of women’s “civic participation,” whether in South Asia or elsewhere, has been local. Though this local activism is often a major factor in shaping women’s political consciousness at a wider level (Werbner, 1999), such actions have mostly gone undocumented. Understanding women’s local activism and how this does or does not link to national initiatives may be the key to understanding how best to bring about a synergetic relationship in women’s activism at all levels.
In South Asia, a striking and documented example of local activism is the anti-liquor campaigns undertaken by women in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. The anti-alcohol campaign of Andhra Pradesh, for one, illustrates women’s ability to successfully intervene in the political process on “non-political” platforms, and to challenge the local power structures. It also underlines the fact that local initiatives often do not start from the theoretical premise of expanding women’s rights and power, even though this may be an end result. (See box.)
The Anti-Liquor Campaigns by Indian Women in Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh
Starting in the Nellore district in 1990, the Indian women’s anti-alcohol campaign was spearheaded by poor agricultural labourers of dalit households and supported by voluntary organisations. The campaign focused on the cycle of violence perpetuated by alcoholic men. Many of the dalit women were breadwinners for the family. The women, in addition to suffering the injuries of violence, saw their hard-earned cash being poured down their men’s throats. Undoubtedly, the women’s earning capacity was itself a source of power that emboldened them to assert themselves. But the women enhanced this power by appealing to and enlisting the independent power base of religion, in the shape of priests and the temple. Women pressured men into taking an oath of abstinence at the temples, and they got the temples involved in monitoring alcohol abuse. Simultaneously, women organised themselves to take on those elements involved in the sale of liquor and promotion of the trade. Pooling their own energies, women intervened physically to prevent their menfolk from going to liquor dens. They stopped sale by destroying shops and dens; countered the joint attacks of drunken men, police and thugs; and demanded an end to the practice of paying male labour in the form of liquor.
Attesting to its success, the movement forced the Andhra State government to ban the sale of arrack (liquor) in October 1993. However, the women were up against a strong political nexus between the liquor trade and politics, and the collusion of the State institutions of the police and administration. These networks minimised the ultimate impact of the women’s movement, first through strong-arm tactics and, subsequently, through administrative measures. In Maharashtra, for example, the government responded to the movement by saying that liquor would be banned in a given area, provided that half the women in the gram sabha (local government) so voted. In theory, this may seem reasonable. In practice, however, this condition greatly dilutes the provision. The conservative social environment prevents women from attending meetings and/or does not allow them an effective voice, when present. In urban areas, this provision becomes meaningless because ward meetings are simply not held. Another insidious measure is making revenue from alcohol a source of funding for the rehabilitation of the victims of alcohol-induced violence. In effect, this means that such programmes can only increase their budgets by increasing the source of the problem, that is, the sale of alcohol (Ramesh and Narayanan, 1988).
Evidently, even though women’s anti-liquor campaigns made an important impact on the local situation and, undoubtedly, empowered the women involved, something more is required to ensure that women’s efforts transcend the local arena. The experience also shows that local initiatives need to be linked to measures and support mechanisms that will allow them to resist and, where necessary, take on the male-dominated political and administrative set-ups. One possible way to make this happen is through inducting a larger number of women in the political set-up.
Women and the Electoral Process
In South Asia, a few exceptional women have always managed to hold key positions of power, and women have been heads of state and leaders of the opposition in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Nonetheless, thereis the low number of women contesting elections and in leadership positions of political parties; women represent no more than five percent to 10 percent of the central legislatures; and far fewer women than men formally join political parties. Women’s political experience of participation is largely confined to casting their votes. Surprisinglyfew women—estimated at two percent in Pakistan (Shirkat Gah, 1999)—have any experience of attending meetings and political events, even when they keep themselves informed of political developments. Improved social indicators for women do not automatically open the doors to political power. Representation and participation remain low even in Sri Lanka where the social indicators of health and education are exceptionally high, and labour force participation rates significantly higher as compared to other South Asian countries.
On the whole, fairly rigid structures of patriarchal control limit women’s agency and mobility. Self-serving notions of male honour and of female shame systematically obstruct women’s access to public spaces, simultaneously blocking access to basic amenities such as health facilities, education and employment, and, equally, to the political process. Notions of honour are justified by reference to culture and/or religion, with the latter being used by those in and out of power to promote, justify and mobilise support for their political not religious agendas. Furthermore, as noted in Nepal, “public mobility emanating from cultural values or from economic survival strategy” does not necessarily translate into public activism in the political or “modern” arena (Shtrii Shakti, 1999). In communities where women have traditionally enjoyed more mobility, they may be excluded for reasons that relate to their community rather than to their gender. In Nepal, the modernisation agenda has focused on promoting women who have traditionally not had mobility while those with traditional mobility lag far behind in the formal political process.
Differentiated access to resources and the varied spaces available to women from different classes, cultures, and regions within countries and across the region modulate the varying scope for women’s public political activism. As a class, women’s access to power is curtailed. Women were never part of the traditional structures of local power that have functioned as the springboard for much of the national level political leadership in, for instance, tribal and feudal contexts. They have also not played a significant role in local dispute resolutions or mediation that could also be the basis of public influence. Finally, women’s lack of autonomous financial resources has always been an impediment. But in today’s political scenario, where the expenses involved preclude the participation of even middle-class men, lack of finances has become an almost insurmountable obstacle to women’s entry into national (and provincial/State) politics (Shirkat Gah, 1999). Consequently, the opportunities for women to break into politics independent of family connections are few and far between.
Women who gain prominence in the political arena frequently inherit their power base from male relatives. This is a syndrome that, such as in the violence-prone politics of Sri Lanka, has led to the label of “over-his-dead-body” politicians. Though male opponents tend to disparage and attack such women as mere male surrogates, it should be remembered that inheriting political power is equally true of most male politicians. Rather than an indication of female corruption or incompetence, this indicates the lack of institutionalisation in the political process and in the functioning of political parties.
In assessing the impact of women politicians, it is important to remember that “women enter politics within highly patriarchal structures of society and operate within those self-same limitations” (ICES, 1999). Obliged to work in an environment dominated and shaped by men (who have also devised the rules of the game), the success of women politicians depends on their ability to adapt to that environment and to play by the rules set. That most abide by these rules is evident in their willingness to participate in the seedier side of political manipulations, and, even more sadly, when they become party to the perpetuation of violence in politics, as it happened in Sri Lanka in the January 1999 elections (ibid).
In any case, activism should not be equated with human rights agendas, or women politicians with feminists. The political parties joined by women are not feminist, and even the most progressive have limited agendas on women. Most women politicians adhere to their party’s political agenda, which may be antithetical to women’s rights in general or to the rights of particular classes or groups of women. There is no reason to expect successful women political leaders to champion the cause of women as a class. In fact, whether in South Asia or elsewhere, “the more women establish themselves, the more they also participate in the dominant value system, which excludes women and men from discriminated-against groups” (Rommelspacher, 1999).
Even presuming good intentions and perspective, women face considerable obstacles within political parties that provide far greater opportunities for upward mobility to men than to women. Where they exist, women’s wings of political parties are rarely integrated into the central power structure of the parties. Functioning mostly as mechanisms for mobilising support for specific parties, these wings may actually further marginalise women by limiting their presence and activism to this auxiliary role, bereft of any real political power. But whether women’s wings exist or not, few women are part of the executive decision-making bodies of any political party. The difficulties of making headway in political parties is such that some women believe that advances can only be accomplished with the patronage of a male political leader. Faced with disparaging attitudes and the vulgar behaviour and language of male politicians and colleagues, only the most determined or committed women accept the challenge of asserting themselves in this atmosphere, whether at the local or national level.
Women politicians are also unlikely to challenge the structures that have brought them to power, even if to help pave the way for other women who, in any case, may be perceived as current or potential rivals. Attesting to a certain political sophistication, South Asian women themselves rarely view women politicians as champions of women, especially when the latter win in open contest with men. In the pursuit of power, it is not uncommon to find women politicians distancing themselves from women as a class, and to championing causes and issues defined by or related to the general welfare of the “community” or class (for example, peasants, workers). Obviously, basic amenities like water and the rights of peasants and workers are as relevant to women as they are to men. But the lack of attention paid to women’s issues and the absence of a gender perspective indicate the adoption of a male-determined perspective of priorities and political issues, and a belief that women as a class are powerless. Women in politics can thus reinforce the concept of women being adjunct constituents rather than being a political force needing to be addressed or mobilised.
Though the presence of women and their issues in parliament and policymaking is marginal, women are recognised as vote banks, and politicians, both male and female, increasingly address issues of concern to women during election campaigns. Unfortunately, the attention to women’s issues rarely survives beyond the electoral campaigns. Of course, this can be said of many electoral campaign issues and party manifesto declarations. However, commitment to women’s rights is especially fragile, inevitably the first to be sacrificed in any political negotiations and maneuvering that take place during or after elections (Zia, 1999).
It is not self-evident that women exercise their right to vote autonomously. Studies indicate that the family is primarily responsible for the political socialisation of women. Though they acknowledge their family’s influence, only a minority classifies this as “undue pressure.” Given unequal power and decision-making within the family, “voting according to family patterns and traditional family affiliation” effectively means that men often determine how women use their vote (EKATRA, 1999; Shtrii Shakti, 1999; Shirkat Gah, 1999). Voting by men and women is also subject to the control and pressure from locally influential persons who, especially in rural areas, continue to exercise largely unchecked, and sometimes absolute, power at the community level.
Given that South Asia remains predominantly rural, a basic question is thus raised about the effectiveness of the electoral process as a means of democratic governance in the absence of measures that would break the hold of the local elites. In Pakistan, frequent disruptions of the democratic process have undermined the participation and representation of any political actor, whether male or female. In Nepal, the democratic process was only revived in the last 10 years and is again facing challenges. But even in other states where the electoral process has remained largely uninterrupted, women’s intervention or influence in mainstream politics is marginal.
Happily, there seems to be a growing consensus among women from all classes and cultures in the region that they should participate in the political process, even though they do not necessarily expect this increased participation to significantly improve the process as it exists today. Nor does this general support for women’s inclusion translate into an active desire for personal engagement in the political process. Interestingly, women place the lack of (sufficient) education, mobility, and resources at the top of the list of impediments to their self-actualisation and participation in politics. Yet in South Asia, it is precisely the highly educated and mobile women of the urban middle-class, with relatively greater resources, who are least willing to engage in the political process. In some ways, women’s access to political power may be plagued by their internalisation of the limited housebound roles for women defined by their society.
It is also important to remember that not all women’s political participation is positive or even desirable. Not only have women leaders shown their willingness to participate in the seedier side of politics, with its manipulations and violence, but an increasing number of women also seem to be attracted to political parties and groups whose agendas appear antithetical both to democracy and to women’s empowerment at any level. In Pakistan, at least two of the more important religiously defined political parties have not only a surprising number of women workers but committed women activists who participate enthusiastically in meetings, rallies and public demonstrations. These women are active proponents of a particular point of view on gender, and strongly oppose the agenda of women’s rights activists. Their presence on the political scene encourages decision-makers to sideline, water down or ignore the demands articulated in the more democratically inclined, pro-human rights agenda of other women. One of the attractions that such groups hold for women is that they allow for an expanded space for women’s agency within “protected boundaries”. They also offer “some valuable resources for women integrated with the family and community...[they] help women’s transition from a domesticated to a more public domain, with the support and consent of the family and with the comforts of the old, inherited, safe and uncontested values intact” (Sarkar, 1999; Shaheed and Mumtaz, 1990).
Affirmative Actions
Given the severe constraints in women’s access to power and political processes, affirmative actions, such as reserved seats for women in parliament and quotas in government service, have been long-standing demands of women. Except for Sri Lanka (where a bill in under consideration), all South Asian states have initiated affirmative action for women at different levels of government. Several states have measures reserving quotas for candidacy (like Nepal) or reserved parliamentary seats (like Bangladesh and Pakistan). Male-dominated structures have never willingly shared power with women. The very fact that affirmative actions have been introduced, and that more are under consideration, attests to the ability of women to intervene in the political field and exercise some influence, both inside and outside the formal political process. On policy matters, at least, it seems that women have developed the ability to devise effective intervention strategies. Not all affirmative actions have been equally effective, however.
Opinion is divided on the effectiveness of reserving candidacy, seats, or membership of political parties. In Pakistan, for instance, reserved seats for women were introduced in its Constitution of 1956, and women were granted a double vote: one, for a general candidate, and another, for a women (irene—farida typed here: “woman’s” pero parang it doesn’t make sense, so I changed it to “women’s” na parang the constituency refers to the women—cecile) constituency-based candidate . The 1965 Constitution changed the modality: women’s reserved seats were no longer filled through direct elections but by an electoral college of assembly members. The loss of direct elections and the de-linking from a constituency reduced women on these seats to mere tokens, bereft of real political power. This modality suits male-dominated political parties since it provides them with an opportunity to increase their share of assembly seats without, in any way, obliging them to commit themselves to women’s issues. (The electoral college was maintained in the 1973 Constitution that provided for reserved seats until 1988. Despite women’s protests, the indirect mode has been revived with the new reservation of women’s seats in 2002 in far larger numbers in the national and provincial assemblies and, for the first time, in the senate, the upper house of parliament.)
By themselves, these measures do not significantly promote the acceptance of women as political leaders. In Nepal, for example, none of the major parties nominated women candidates in excess of the minimum number stipulated in its Constitution (five percent). Nor has the Nepali Congress party been able to fulfil its constitutional provision of having women fill 10 percent of committee positions at all levels of the party. In Bangladesh and Pakistan, the provision of reserved seats has discouraged women from contesting open seats. Few of the women have entered the assemblies through the hard route of political campaigns and constituency-based work. Male-dominated political parties deny women the opportunity to contest general seats. They say that since women can always be accommodated on reserved seats, it is only fair to give men the maximum opportunities in open contest. Even if many women are themselves inclined to take this “easier” option of entering politics, in many ways, indirectly elected reserved seats for women undermine women’s political participation. They do not provide women with a training ground for learning the rules and gaining political experience vital to the growth of women’s political leadership and power. They make women entirely dependent on, and accountable to, the male-dominated assembly members. They leave women voters unrepresented in the legislatures while allowing policymakers to say that they have met the demand for women’s representation. Finally, they reinforce the general impression that women are only adjuncts to the political process, and not main players.
Yet with all these failings, and despite some soul-searching and criticism from women’s groups, most women agree that reserving seats and candidacy has, at least, ensured the physical presence of some women in legislatures and political parties. And despite their lack of real power, women on reserved seats in Pakistan, at least, have actually spoken up on women’s issues, and used some of the parliamentary procedures to draw attention to these (Mumtaz, 1998). If the need for reservation measures is generally accepted, the debates usually focus on the modalities and percentage shares of stipulated seats. Many South Asian women activists favour the panchayati raj institution of India as the most effective model to-date.
In panchayati raj, a rotating 33 percent of all local government constituencies are reserved for women. Only women can contest, and both men and women elect them. This provision brought in a staggering one million women representatives in the three specified tiers of local government in India, through electoral processes involving five million women contestants (EKATRA, 1999:10). Affirmative action measures for local government in Bangladesh have also inducted large numbers of women into the process, but the modalities adopted represent a less radical re-orientation of the political scenario.
The panchayati raj experience of India is encouraging.. The concept was first launched in India’s Karnataka State in 1983, reserving one-quarter of the seats for women, an experiment that strengthened the status of local government. The 1987 State elections held under the new provision had political parties scrambling to find 14,000 women candidates. Not surprisingly, female relatives of male politicians formed the bulk of women candidates. Even now, in many States, women elected to the panchayat are “proxy candidates” put up by their male relatives. Yet for many women, the experience of being public representatives has changed their own perceptions about politics and about themselves. After coming into the panchayat, an encouraging number of women began to actively participate in the proceedings and learn the ropes (Ramesh and Narayanan, 1998; Kaushik). Women’s participation still faces obstacles. In many places, women have faced resistance and hostility from political parties. A number have had to face a backlash, including efforts to unseat and harass them. Some, especially women from the lower castes, have been the victims of violence against themselves and their properties. In 2000, Pakistan introduced similar measures (reserving 33 percent of seats in the lowest tier), bringing in some 36,000 women into the three tiers of local government.There, too, women have faced violence, including rape.
The local configuration of power and the cultural environment dictate the extent to which this measure has been an effective means for women’s entry into politics. The panchayati system is less effective in the more tradition-bound and conservative Indian states, where women function as male proxies, never attending meetings and only putting their thumbprints where instructed by the men. Nor has the system given the most marginalised groups of women access to power. Most of the women elected, especially the sarpanch, still belong to the better-off local families. This trend is reinforced by the propensity of the electorate to vote for educated candidates (Kaushik). Nevertheless, the changes brought about by panchayati raj are significant, especially in view of the obstacles faced by women.
The problems enumerated by women members and candidates include illiteracy, lack of economic resources, an unfriendly social environment, and a disabling purdah system. In the process of electioneering, women candidates say the pressures of household and family responsibilities handicap them. Rampant corruption, abusive language, violence, and underhanded tactics and strategies that mark the general political scene also permeate panchayat-level politics. A consistent complaint voiced in South Asia by women representatives at all levels is the unco-operative attitude they face from both the male-dominated bureaucracy and male politicians who try to dismiss or marginalise both women’s participation and their agendas. Men try to actively dissuade women from even attending meetings, let alone assuming the responsibilities of elected representatives. When women do participate, they find little support for their programmes, and even less funding. A major part of a politician’s work in South Asia consists of intervening to ensure that state institutions are delivering services or responding to the needs of constituents. This process handicaps women in all tiers of political office, as they find the state’s institutions far less responsive to women than to men in equivalent situations (Shirkat Gah, 1999; Kaushik).
Women panchayat members themselves express the need for increased formal education as well as training in political and administrative procedures. Even at the higher levels of governance, it is clear that women politicians have insufficient knowledge of the political system and lack lobbying techniques. Power needs to be further decentralised and local government strengthened so as to strengthen affirmative action at the local level of government. . Specific funds allocated for women would greatly enhance the effectiveness and, therefore, power of women representatives, enabling them, in turn, to empower other women.
While some women have adopted the style of male politics, a greater number seem to adhere to the idea of a representative and responsible democracy. Through their actions, a sizeable number of women are attempting to build a new culture of political activism (Kaushik:31). The extent to which this exciting experiment will be able to transform the dominant political processes remains to be seen. Certainly, it has already enabled a new class of women to enter formal politics; few of whom would have been able to do so otherwise. Moreover, the number of women that has entered formal politics at this tier is sufficient to mount a challenge to the dominant political culture.
NGOs, Development and Policies
Women have also accessed state power as part of the bureaucracy and have intervened in the public arena as women’s organisations working for, with, and on behalf of women. The strategies adopted by organisations and individual activists are as varied as the organisations themselves. Some have used the courts to institute legal change, while others have functioned as lobbies and think-tanks. Many have provided women services, plugging the gaps in the state’s services, especially in health and education. Those who identify themselves as part of the women’s movement have often been at the forefront of demands for commissions to look into the problems facing women, and in formulating recommendations for change.
Unfortunately, development interventions commonly adopt a truncated view of women’s lives, focusing on only one aspect while ignoring the many interstices that determine people’s lives. Consequently, social and economic gains rarely convert into women’s access to power in formal political processes. Not even the active participation of women in their tens of thousands in organisational enterprises, such as the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India, and the Grameen Bank and BRAC initiatives in Bangladesh, has been able to translate economic empowerment into sustained political power. These efforts have, of course, empowered many individual women. But the challenge lies in converting such individual empowerment and self-confidence into a collective intervention that will re-fashion the rules and re-shape the spaces available to women.
For several decades, many women’s advocacy organisations focused on instituting legal reforms. More recently, a significant number of them have started working at the grassroots to build capacity in a variety of ways and fields. These ways include: micro-credit schemes for economic empowerment; legal consciousness (literacy/awareness and legal aid) to build capacity for rights and advocacy; and community development programmes to build leadership and self-reliance. Some initiatives have emphasised sensitising state institutions and making them more receptive to women and their needs, with special attention on law-enforcing agencies and the judiciary. Recognizing the need to enhance women’s decision-making powers in the political field, and by the general focus on good governance, a few organisations have started political education and training for women who desire to enter, or are already involved in, politics.
The most important collective impact of these organisations has been to articulate women’s perspectives and to place women and their issues on the national agenda of both state institutions and political parties. They have also managed to ensure that policy documents address women’s needs, and include women. Throughout South Asia, between the 1970s and 1980s, all major development plans started to address women. Some improvements have also been achieved in legal reforms. Translating policy into practice and legal provisions into de facto rights is, however, another matter altogether.
Organisations have been aided by allies in the state structures (often women) and by the growing acceptance of NGOs as legitimate players in policymaking. This is part of a global trend in which the legitimacy of NGOs as players has been facilitated by the growing visibility and acceptance of their role in the UN system. In the process, local organisations have been able to establish links, and they work with organisations in other countries and with international networks. With respect to women, this has been particularly evident in the “International Conference on Population and Development” (1994) and the “Fourth World Conference on Women” (1995) or the Beijing process. Some of the gains made by the international women’s movement have been translated into donor policies, obliging states that rely on international financial assistance to pay attention to women. External compulsions and internal lobbying have, therefore, worked together to place women on the national agendas of all South Asian states.
But an entirely different type of access to political influence is exemplified by the measure of success that South Asian women have enjoyed in exercising their negotiating abilities throughout the Beijing process. (See box.)
Women’s Work in the Beijing Process
The South Asian women’s success in employing their negotiating abilities in the Beijing process (“Fourth World Conference on Women,” 1995) is an entirely different type of access to political influence.
In Pakistan, for example, the Beijing process catalysed the first effective working relationship between women activists and the government. The occasion was provided by the invitation of the incumbent government (during Benazir Bhutto’s second term of office) to review the draft of the national report prepared by the government in March 1995. Women activists considered the hastily compiled draft to be extremely problematic, and urged the government to withhold its circulation. Departing from previous practice, the government took the advice, and then invited the non-government organisations (NGOs) to help draft a consensus report. Women activists—who had assiduously kept out of the mainstream electoral process, jealously guarded their autonomy and learned oppositional tactics under military rule— entered this process with caution.
Co-operation in preparing the national report was a positive experience for both sides and, as a result, half the official Pakistan delegation to Beijing consisted of non-government women. This encouraged women to engage more frequently with the government and bureaucracy on policy matters relating to women. A major achievement of this interaction has been the elaboration of a “National Plan of Action” to follow up on commitments made in Beijing. The collaboration was interrupted but survived a change of government, and it was the subsequent Nawaz Sharif government that launched in 1998 this official policy document that provides the framework for women’s empowerment in all 12 areas of concern defined at the “Beijing Platform for Action.” Obviously, the elaboration of a policy document is only a first and insufficient step to effectuate change. Nevertheless, the “National Plan of Action” is an official Pakistan government policy document. Therefore, it provides women, inside and outside government, an official reference point for lobbying.
In fact, the Beijing conference and its follow-up have ensured that national action plans be elaborated throughout South Asia (and elsewhere), and that national machineries for following up on commitments made in Beijing be strengthened. The challenge now is to ensure that policy statements are converted into action that does, indeed, empower women.
Questions and Challenges
In each state, the specific configuration and dynamics of power set the parameters within which change can be instituted. To access power at any level, women need to first understand how power and influence operate in that environment—be it the family or the state—and then identify the most effective channels and vehicles available to them.
The essentialist/exclusivist politics ascendant in South Asia may provide individual women increased personal space and more power but pose a major challenge to women’s collective access to power. Moreover, the nature of essentialist politics is that it feeds on itself, so that the rise of identity politics and the increasing acceptance of violence in the pursuit of such agendas have immediate implications for neighbouring states and people. Events in one country, themselves frequently linked internationally, have ramifications across South Asian borders. For instance, the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque in India provoked senseless violence against buildings identified as Hindu in Pakistan, even when the people affected were, in fact, Muslims. Events in one part of the country that pit, or appear to pit, one “collective” against another will reverberate elsewhere, commonly catalysing similar or retaliatory actions and sentiments. This pushes minority communities into organising for self-protection, often resulting in a ghetto mentality, and majority communities into aggressive exclusivist actions and policies.
Sri Lanka has been embroiled in a civil war for decades, a war in which both ethnic and religious identities have divided the populace into ever more isolated and watertight segments. In Pakistan and Bangladesh, increasingly militant politico-religious parties that present undemocratic and misogynistic political agendas in a religious idiom have grown spectacularly. In some ways, they have overcome their lack of popular support, thanks to the constant concessions made to the demands and pressures by the more popular “non-religiously defined” political parties and governments (Rashid, 1996). Even where politico-religious parties do not enjoy direct power and have consistently been routed at the polls, the level of indirect influence exercised by such groups has grown to a point that is alarming.
In Pakistan, the prominent place of religious identity in the State’s creation has helped legitimise the frequent and facile recourse made to religion by diverse political actors in pursuit of political power. This is not the case for India, which has maintained a secular framework. It is all the more disconcerting, therefore, that a secular framework and a fairly regular electoral process have failed to prevent the rise of communal violence, where the victims have been the minority communities—Muslims, Sikhs and Christians. Of concern, likewise, has been the electoral success of the rightwing, essentially the Hinduvta-oriented Bharatiya Janata Party. These tendencies penetrate various State institutions as well, most importantly the courts and law-enforcing agencies, which impact on the lives of a wide cross-section of society.
Several factors may contribute to the resurgent appeal of the primordial religious or ethnic identity sweeping the region. As said earlier, while the localised forms of self-adjudication and governance were neither replaced nor fully integrated into the modern state apparatus, economic policies have distributed state opportunities and benefits unequally. Far from being individuated, the state’s citizens are treated, and consider themselves, as part of smaller collectivities; rather than abating, it seems that differentiations between categories of citizens have taken root. In the process, even well-meaning policies, such as reservations of jobs for disadvantaged castes or provincial regions, may have helped bolster the idea of smaller collective identities being not only a legitimate basis for deriving more benefits from the state, but possibly the most effective one. That women themselves buy into this philosophy is evident in the disturbing number of women joining and actively participating in such initiatives.
More generally, the onslaught of modernity and technological revolutions has failed to displace religion as an essential reference point for the majority of South Asia’s people. The sense of alienation and injustice produced by the policies of the “New World Order” and the neo-liberal policies of globalization may contribute to a renewed assertion of a collectivity in terms that are meaningful to the average citizen, even at the cost of giving up individual agency.
The presence and nature of institutions of civil society in South Asia are pivotal to re-negotiations of the state-citizen relationship. When the state does not provide its citizens equal access to resources and benefits, it increases the importance of intermediary institutions as citizens’ negotiators. In the absence of effective alternate means for self-expression and collective intervention, religious, cultural and/or ethnically defined institutions continue to play a major role in mediating between the state and its citizens. The strength of such institutions seems to rise and fall, depending on the presence and strength of alternative forums to take their place. Long periods of martial law in Pakistan have systematically undermined existing institutions and stunted the growth of strong, democratically inclined institutions of civil society. Elsewhere, too, such civil society institutions are only relatively stronger. Since women’s rights flourish under democratic dispensations and weaken under authoritarian ones, it is vital that democratically inclined civil society institutions be strengthened as negotiators for women as a whole.
Linked to issues of local power and control, cultural norms commonly impede women’s entry into, and full participation in, public arenas. Hence, it is just as important to modify existing cultural norms, including those shaped by religion, since these often exercise a more important control mechanism than formal law. This is particularly true in societies such as in South Asia, where people seldom govern personal matters by reference to, let alone in accordance with, formal state laws, of which they are overwhelmingly ignorant. To maintain their own influence and power as the sole mediators and adjudicators in their locality, the local elite (whether religious or secular) may actively block the entry of the state’s institutions. Not coincidentally, this includes the formal state law, and its various forums and channels for participation and decision-making.
It is against this rather complex background that women seek to increase their power and influence. To alter the existing dynamics of power, therefore, requires effective interventions and linkages at many levels. Though activism takes many forms and produces multiple initiatives, each seeking to empower women, poor linkages among political actors, women in government and independent advocacy groups reduce the effectiveness of each type of activism.
In Pakistan, the disaffection between women’s rights activists and politicians is historical. Democratic dispensations have rarely stayed long enough to create an environment in which politicians and rights advocates can find the trust and build the mechanisms needed to co-operate on women’s issues. This lack of co-ordination is apparent in other states as well. In Nepal, for instance, despite specific legal provision for collaboration between local government and organisations of civil society, there is hardly any evidence of joint efforts by government and NGOs (Shtrii Shakti, 1999:27). By themselves, women’s rights activists cannot hope to create such an environment. They do, however, need to be alert to, and identify and create, the opportunities for dialogue and long-term interaction, both among themselves, and among women activists and other actors, especially political and social forces.
Creating linkages is not always an easy task. The many women’s groups do not necessarily share perceptions or priorities, and effective co-ordination amongst the various groups has been a long-standing issue. Today, the divisiveness of identity politics makes it even more important to maintain – where needed to create - strong linkages across various non-gender-based distinctions among women. For some women, participation in identity-based initiatives may appear to be the safest, sometimes the only, route to personal empowerment. In the short term, some empowerment may even be possible, but until women have the power to define the content and contours of collective identity, long-term gains are unlikely.
More on Questions and Challenges: Identity-based Politics
There is increasing concern among South Asian women in the apparent ease and visible success with which identity-based politics have mobilised a sizeable number of women. There is also alarm at the disturbing evidence of women’s active complicity in the politics of exclusion and violence. Of equal concern also is the seeming inability of women’s rights groups and/or human rights interventions to counter the situation effectively.
One strategy to address these concerns may be to forge better and more operative links between policy-level interventions and grassroots initiatives. Legal provisions and policy documents can only provide an opportunity. As such, they are necessary, but insufficient, conditions for bringing about widespread meaningful participation and access to power. It is important that those aiming to increase women’s access to power should simultaneously create opportunities through policy and legal reforms, and engage at the grassroots to build alternative models of power and a new culture of women’s agency.
A cautionary note needs to be mentioned here about the role of NGOs. Though NGOs have gained acceptance (sometimes, grudgingly) as legitimate actors in the policymaking process of states and in the UN system, they are not a replacement for political processes. Structural and systemic changes only come about through social movements. However good-willed and committed they are, NGOs rarely represent the mass will of the people, although they can be advocates and lobbies of change. In this, a crucial link is one between women’s autonomous groups and women politicians. Presuming like-mindedness, the link would serve to strengthen both. Trying to avoid falling into the dominant patterns of politics, where corruption is rampant and self-aggrandisement the ultimate aim, is a difficult challenge for all politicians, whether in local or other levels of government. The dominant style of politics is a major impediment to women’s participation. Links with women’s organisations may provide women politicians with the support systems required to avoid this trap. Linkages would also strengthen the ability of both politicians and women’s organisations to develop a new culture of political activism of their own design.
Finally, the challenges facing women today make it imperative to locate effective allies. In the past as well as the present, women have an increased access to power and have gained rights in conjunction with allies in the political and social arenas. Allies provide the first opportunity for women to put into practice a change in political culture and a sharing of power. Changing the operational framework of their allies will help to alter, in some measure, the existing framework for intervention. Modifying structures and practices of power is a slow process. Only when efficient lobbying is combined with effective political leadership rooted in direct interventions, and the different initiatives linked, can one hope to permanently change the parameters of women’s lives, and their access to power and political influence.
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Among the excluded have been gypsies in Europe, the blacks and natives in the US, or the Jews or Catholics in Protestant majority countries, and vice-versa. Indeed, the famous “Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen” of the French Revolution of 1789 purposefully excluded women. Fighting to assert women’s right to political participation and citizenship, Olympes de Gourges who wrote the “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and Citizen” (1791) was guillotined in 1793, “accused of wanting to be a Statesman, and forgetting the virtues suitable to her sex” (Callamard, 1997:4).
In his famous 1869 essay “The Subjugation of Women,” Stuart Mill argued, “It is said that women do not need direct power, having so much indirect power through their influence over their male relatives and connections…it is true that women have great power. It is part of my case that they have great power; but they have it under the worst possible conditions, because it is indirect, and therefore irresponsible power…” (Stacey and Price, 1980:44).
Others were: scheduled castes as a sub-section of ‘general citizenry’, Anglo-Indians, Europeans, Indian Christians. This held true for Pakistan before the military coup of October 12, 1999. Imposition of martial law prevented national elections from being held under this provision.
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