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International
Women's Day - March 8, 2004
No Turning Back
Another Women's Day. The UN
will issue statements and release reports. Development agencies will hold
seminars. Newspapers will bring out special supplements. The more serious
TV channels will host programs on women and poverty, women and HIV/AIDS or
women in Iraq; the more frivolous ones will show women-centered films and
performances. Heads of State will issue statements reiterating their
commitment to women's empowerment. Governments will launch special schemes
for women. These things will certainly happen in India as well.
But Incredible India, true
to its ad copy, has always managed to add an extra something to these
predictable events. What is it to be this time? Maybe the Prime Minister
will write a poem and recite it at his tea party for young women
achievers. An MNC best known for its fairness cream might announce special
scholarships for incurably dark-skinned girls who choose education over
marriage. Perhaps a home-grown empress of beauty will offer salon
franchises at reduced rates to rural women entrepreneurs.
Our latest trio of women
Chief Ministers might well decide to commemorate the day in their own
unique ways - one by inaugurating another temple to herself, the other by
announcing posthumous awards for satis. And the third by launching an
integrated program for the welfare of females, albeit of the bovine race.
With so much happening, who will notice the women's groups? After all,
they will only do what they always do - hold rallies and marches, organize
demonstrations, shout slogans and sing songs of protest. Just a bunch of
party poopers, like the World Social Forum (WSF) crowd - chronic
protestors, unable to see the good in India even when it's Shining right
under their noses.
No, not all of us are going to the PM's tea party. As we have done on
every Women's Day for nearly three decades, women all over the country
will come out on the streets to show our numbers, to voice our anger, to
demand justice. As always, we will ask awkward questions, rake up old
issues. We will ask what the government of Rajasthan is planning to do
about the verdict exonerating those accused of glorifying Roop Kanwar's
murder in Deorala 16 years ago.
We will ask what happened to the Women's Reservation Bill. We will ask why
the murderers of Bilkis Yakoob's family (in Gujarat) are still roaming
free. We will want to know how those who have lived in this country for 30
years, who have voted in several elections and have ration cards, can be
evicted from their homes on the grounds that they are Muslims and speak
Bengali. We will ask why multinational corporations operating in India are
allowed to override workers' rights and the law of the land with impunity.
We will ask how a country like India can have a maternal mortality rate
higher than that of sub-Saharan Africa. We will demand to be heard, and we
will demand answers. We will be strident, loud, un-ladylike; party manners
will not be in evidence.
The women who first thought up the idea of Women's Day never meant it to
be a party. It had its beginnings in the US, where socialist women
organized large-scale demonstrations in 1909 in support of women garment
workers who were on strike to demand better pay and working conditions.
The first International Women's Day was held on March 19, 1911, in a few
European countries. Alexandra Kollontai, the Russian revolutionary and
feminist, was one of the organizers of the demonstrations in Germany,
where 30,000 women came out on to the streets and resisted attempts by the
Kaiser's police to disperse them.
Perhaps the most memorable Women's Day was the one in March 1917 in
Petrograd. The Communist Party had advised women textile workers not to
strike, but as Kollontai described it, "When workers were locked out of
the Putilov armaments plant on March 7 the women of Petrograd began to
storm the streets. The wives, daughters and mothers of soldiers demanded
an end to their humiliation and angrily denounced all the hungry suffering
of the past three years. Gathering strength and passion as they swept
through the city over the next few days in food riots, political strikes
and demonstrations, these women launched the first revolution in 1917."
The "lady-fication" of Women's Day is a fairly recent phenomenon, the
result of a conscious effort to obscure its radical origins and present it
as a purely celebratory event. This process began in 1975 when the UN
discovered Women's Day and decided to give it formal recognition. Then on,
it became an official date on the government calendar in many countries,
gaining respectability and even a fair degree of commercial success.
Of course there are some things even feminists can and do celebrate.
Nearly three decades of feminist activism have made an indelible mark on
the conscience of the country. Women have claimed a space in the public
eye - their presence can no longer be ignored or wished away. The language
of gender equity is well entrenched in the national development discourse.
A few laws have changed, and some doors have opened. There are
conspicuously more women than there used to be in the upper echelons of
almost every profession. A few women have been able to reach extraordinary
heights of achievement.
Women's movements have broken the silence surrounding hitherto "private"
issues including domestic violence, sexual harassment and child sexual
abuse. Women's organizations have led campaigns, researched, theorized,
and provided support for women facing violence. The re-framing of the
debate at the global level in terms of women's human rights and the
incorporation of action on this issue into the agendas of the state and
mainstream development agencies are an evident impact of our struggles.
But we are painfully aware that these are small victories. We are
confronted today with new forms of violence that threaten to undermine the
gains of the past decades. The rapidly declining sex ratio and the
millions of "missing women" in South Asia are indicators of the extent to
which violence has been institutionalized in this region. The rise of
religious fundamentalism, often in the guise of "cultural" movements that
include subjugation of women among their stated goals, is providing an
ideological smoke screen for brutal violence. The dominant neo-liberal
economic paradigm is itself a form and means of violence, depriving
thousands of women of their livelihood and pushing them out of economic
arenas where there presence was taken for granted in the past.
These trends are not unique to India. In response, the focus of feminist
politics is now on exposing, challenging and confronting the nexus between
patriarchies, fundamentalism, and neo-liberal economic paradigms. Women's
movements, once accused of being exclusionist and inward-looking, are
lowering their defences and building new alliances, reaching out to other
movements and constituencies, building bridges across borders, reasserting
that all issues are women's issues. These new forms of organizing and a
stronger and more strategic feminist presence were among the most striking
features of WSF in Mumbai.
Efforts over the last decade to build solidarity at the South Asian level
are also beginning to show results. Despite many logistical barriers and
skepticism or outright hostility from right-wingers, a few platforms for
exchange between South Asian feminists have become institutionalized in
each country. The enthusiastic public responses to the peace journeys to
each other's countries by Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi women is
evidence of the possibilities of regional organizing.
A South Asian conference on violence against women, to be held in Delhi in
March 2004, is the latest effort. This will be an opportunity for
organizations and individuals - women all - from South Asia and the world,
to re-examine and sharpen conceptual frameworks, and evolve new strategies
and ways of resisting violence. Participants at this conference will
include feminists of three generations, who have given energy and vibrancy
to assertions and struggles on a range of issues.
Our shared history of struggle and resistance is what we will celebrate on
Women's Day. We have come too far down the road to retreat before the
threat of a backlash. There is no turning back. We will not disappear
meekly into our homes. We will not take what we are given and be grateful
for it. We will not be silent. Shining India will have to answer our
questions.
– Kalyani Menon-Sen
March 8, 2004
Kalyani Menon-Sen works with
Jagori, a feminist resource centre that celebrates its 20th anniversary
this year.
International Women's Day -
March 8, 2004
Articles
Females: Superior by Choice, Design and Default
by Gaurang Bhatt, MD
Getting Behind Abuse by Linda Light
It's All About Women by Elayne Clift
New Enemy Threatens Baby Girls by Manipadma
Jena
No Turning Back by Kalyani Menon-Sen
Single Moms by Choice by V. Radhika
Towards Freedom From Fear by Malvika Kaul
Poetry
Beacon of Hope by Neria
Harish Hebbar, MD
Mothers Never Die by Michael Levy
Woman by Pavalamani Pragasam
Women Empowerment: Today's Vision for
Tomorrow's Mission by Hillol Ray
International Women's
Day - March 2001
Ah! Women by Roberta Lee Wilcox
Ahilya - A poem by Manisha Bansal
And the International Women's Day was Born by Meera
Chowdhry
Being A Woman by Manisha Kulshreshtha
How to be a Woman, though a Human by Sangeeta Goel
March 8th - International Women's Day by Pavalamani
Pragasam
Most Beautiful Things
about Women by Smitha V
Mother Teresa: Woman of
the Century by Bijal Dwivedi
Musings of a Lady - A poem by Maria Reed-Shore
Nari 2001 by Lavanya Shah
Nevertheless - A poem by Manisha Bansal
Thoughts on Women's Day by Gargi Chaudhuri
What you can Never
Understand about Women by Smitha V
Women: Symbols of Sacrifice or Sacrificial Lambs? by
Meenakshi Madhur
By arrangement with
Womens Feature Service
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