Development and The Social Construction of Gender in India

Anja KovacsRoom 2.73a.kovacs@uea.ac.uk

16 March 2007

The ‘face of Indian women’?

Indicators of women’s status

Sex ratios (Census of India):

1901: 972 1971: 930 1981: 934 1991: 927 2001: 933

Indicators of women’s status

Indicators of women’s status

Sex ratios

Literacy Rates (Census of India):

General: 65.38 (1991: 51.63)

Men: 75.96 Women: 54.28

Indicators of women’s status

Sex ratios

Literacy Rates

Women’s labour market participation

Women’s (lack of) property rights

Explanations? Organisation of households in India

Social and cultural norms, influenced by caste/class and religion

Laws of Manu (IX, 3): “Her father protects (her) in childhood, her husband protects (her) in youth, and her sons protect (her) in old age; a woman is never fit for independence”.

Laws of Manu (IX, 6): “Considering that the highest duty of all castes, even weak husbands (must) strive to guard their wives”.

Consumerist Capitalism and Gender

Increasing evidence in India that

development processes are profoundly biased against women

and contribute to an increase in gender inequity, rather than a decrease.

Example: spread of dowry in South India (Kapadia 2002)

Powerless Women/Oppressive Men?

World Bank (1991: xv), Gender and Poverty in India:

“The culture’s very definition of the female is her association with the ‘inside’ – the home. By contrast, men belong to the ‘outside’, where livelihoods are earned and political power is wielded”

Larger agenda? Efficient women vs irresponsible men

Powerless Women/Oppressive Men?

Women are not (always) powerless

‘model’-explanations do not hold to same extent for everyone everywhere

norms and practice do not necessarily overlap

spaces for power within traditional roles

Not all men have economic and political power

Women and the Hindu Right

Women and the Hindu Right

(Feminist) Agency?

But at whose expense?

Women and arrack in Andra Pradesh

Additional References

Kapadia, Karin (2002). Translocal modernities and transformations of gender and caste. In Karin Kapadia (ed.), The violence of development: The politics of identity, gender and social inequalities in India. London: Zed.

Raheja, Gloria Goodwin and Ann Grodzins Gold (1994). Listen to the heron’s words: reimaging gender and kinship in North India. Berkeley: University of California Press.