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Shifting Sands: Women’s Lives and Globalization

Edited by Centre for Women's Development Studies, Delhi

From the reviews:

Focusing on the hidden costs of globalization and consistently uncovering
evidence of the human cost is an exercise we require badly, this collection is a
welcome step in that direction. - Indian Review of Books

What does 'going global' mean for women? While gender has become increasingly important in development policies, there is less awareness that policies and the consequences of structural adjustment are never gender-neutral. The myth of neutrality continues while women often suffer de facto exclusion from the development process because of methods of implementation. Globalization means that resources for the social sector will come out of an ever-shrinking common pool, where women will get even less priority.

In this meticulous pioneering study, the contributors, all well-known women scholars in the fields of economics, sociology, health and the environment, examine what happens once these macro policies affect women at the micro level, especially the poorer women in urban slums and rural villages.

The contributors
Joy Deshmukh-Ranadive, K. Seeta Prabhu, Malavika Karlekar, Kumud Sharma, Sumi Krishna, Preeti Rustogi, Vasudha Jain and Indrani Mazumdar

Nonfiction Demy Octavo Hardbound 357pp ISBN 81-85604-40-1 January 2000 Rs 450

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Negotiating Intimacies: Sexualities, Birth Control and Poor Households

Arna Seal

From a review:

'Arna Seal's work is particularly useful as a critique because its research
reveals certain sociological and economic determinants in the lives of poor women
which must be assimilated into any serious thinking about population control.'
 – The Telegraph

For far too long, the 'population problem' in India has been seen from the point of view of the policy and statistics of population growth, attempting to control the fertility of poor women without reference to them, their bodies, their needs or their lives. In this book, a hundred women who live in Calcutta's slums talk directly about their sexual and birth control experiences. As the facts and stories accumulate, we get a picture of these women's lives that is frighteningly bare of choice. The author asks how women's income-earning capacities as well as those of their men, their status in their families and their relations with other kin affect their social and sexual autonomy. How does religion influence their birth control choices? Are they satisfied with the course their childbearing careers have taken? Seal goes on to consider whether their interests conform to the ideals of feminist liberation. How far has the movement been able to address the concerns of poor, illiterate, or semi-illiterate women?

About the author
Arna Seal is a consultant in marketing and social research. She received her masters and doctoral degrees in sociology from Tulane University, New Orleans.

Nonfiction Demy Octavo Hardbound 150pp ISBN 81-85604-29-0 Jan 2000 Rs 290

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Indelible Imprints: Daughters Write on Fathers

Edited by Priti T. Desai, Neela D'Souza and Sonal Shukla
Foreword by Neera Desai  

From a review:

'This unusually spontaneous collection of essays is . . . a painfully frank
exploration of the father-daughter-bond and struggle, from highly individual and
varied perspectives.' – Indian Review of Books

Most women have found the relationship with their fathers to be the key one in helping them to step outside tradition, which often remained identified with their mothers. In this book, twelve women, all middle class, ranging from middle to old age, talk about what their fathers meant to them. Some have famous fathers: K. K. Hebbar, the artist, Shuksampatrai Bhandari, the pioneer who compiled the first modern Hindi dictionary, a composer of music for the Gujarati stage and cinema, Bimal Roy, an early art film-maker. Some have fathers who were successful in their careers, others who were not particularly so. Written with perception, detachment, appreciation, and also searing bitterness, this book reveals many surprising aspects of this crucial relationship and about the women themselves.

About the editors Priti T. Desai retired from a business career in Bombay; Neela D'Souza has taught history at undergraduate level and written children's books and articles; Sonal Shukla is an activist and film-maker who runs the Vacha Library and Research Centre for Women in Bombay.

Memoirs Demy Octavo Paperback 154pp ISBN 81-85604-25-8 Jan 1999 rpt 2002 Rs 140

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'And Who Will Make the Chapatis?' A Study of All-Women Panchayats in Maharashtra

Edited by Bishakha Datta

From a review:

'This is a fascinating study that represents attempts by rural women panchayats,
to carve out a political space that will enable them to locate their needs, concerns
and priorities on the political agenda.' – Deccan Herald

'If men and women are asked to devise programmes in panchayats women will think of water and latrines, while men will talk of roads and buses.' This in-depth study of twelve panchayats in Maharashtra by a group of activists reveals what happens when women work within the existing political system.

Even if women have come to power at the behest of men, they have managed to place their needs on the political agenda. Women have also learnt to be creative tactically: lacking knowledge of formal processes, they have come up with their own informal pressure tactics as lobbyists. Yet it remains easier to address women's practical needs rather than to combat effectively male domination. The book offers insights on participation and empowerment, discussing the prospects of a more gender-just society.

About the editor and contributors

Bishakha Datta is a writer and founder of Point of View, Mumbai; Meenakshi Shedde, Sharmila Joshi and Sonali Sathaye are members of Aalochana, Centre for Documentation and Research, Pune.

Nonfiction Demy Octavo Paperback 162pp ISBN 81-85604-24-X May 1998; reprint July 2000 Rs 175.

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Gender, Culture, Politics series

Editor Susie Tharu

Former Professor, School of Critical Humanities, Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages (CIEFL), now English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad

This series is envisaged as a forum for scholarship and critical reflection that has been energized by new movements in historiography, cultural and political theory, cinema studies and, most important, women's studies. Full length works and edited collections that investigate the articulation of gender with historical formations of caste, class and religious denomination are of particular interest; as are theoretical reflections on these and related issues.

Among the titles are studies and edited collections on aspects of cultural history, popular film, visual politics, and personal laws. The interdisciplinary frame in which they are translated and presented makes these literary texts of interest to scholars in the humanities and the social sciences. We hope they will also introduce the general reader to the pleasures of the new, non-canonical modes of reading

A distinguished feminist scholar and activist, Susie Tharu is one of the two editors of Women Writing in India, 2 vols (The Feminist Press, New York, 1991, 1993; Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1992; 1993). Her current research is in the area of cultural history/theory. She was among those who started Stree Shakti Sangathana, an autonomous women’s group, and is also a founder-member of Anveshi, a centre for research on women in Hyderabad.

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Conditions of Visibility: Writings on Photography in Contemporary India

R. Srivatsan

Elaborating new theoretical perspectives on visual hegemony, this book addresses the political processes of the photographic image. How does photography invoke an epistemology that subtly determines the scope and limit of what can be understood, said or done with images? Srivatsan uses gender, caste and class to serve as frames of reference for this very original and stimulating analysis. He takes into consideration a range of visual material: handpainted cinema hoardings, the modernism of Henri Cartier-Bresson, photographs in police records and the visual politics of advertising and news photography.

The photograph, better than writing in a language, produces a visible and recognizable entity as the author of a list of disorders. The photograph brings a lustrous finish to the rowdysheet's prime function: the demarcation of social unrest as originating in specific individuals. Order, in the irresistible perspective we inherit from British rule, can be envisioned only if disorder be individualized and safely contained (indeed, as Foucault says, even produced?) within a manageable grid of information. ('The Photograph on a Rowdysheet')

R. Srivatsan is an independent scholar. He works on contemporary visual culture and political theory in India. His writings have appeared in Economic and Political Weekly and Public Culture.

Demy octavo paperback 200pp ISBN 81-85604-28-2 2000 Rs 450

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Legally Dispossessed: Gender, Identity and the Process of Law

Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay

From the reviews:

This pathbreaking study of women’s experience of litigation under personal laws (those that cover marriage and inheritance) raises vital questions of identity and citizenship in India and throws new light on the uniform civil code debate. The author asks why it is so difficult to disentangle woman ‘as subject/citizen imbued with rights from that of being daughter, sister, wife, widow and the symbol of a community’? Why is it that both Hindu and Muslim women are usually unsuccessful in their claims for property despite appealing to different personal laws?

By shifting the focus from the text of the law to an ethnography of litigation–the nature of disputes, the attitudes of lawyers, the experiences in court, the logic of judgements, and so on–the analysis brings into play the crucial factors that are obscured in abstract discussions of ‘rights’

Under instructions from the lawyer Noor and I went to Mahestola police station to register a ‘proper’ complaint. There was in interesting sequel to Noor’s interaction with the lawyer. At the meeting in February 1992 the lawyer harangued Noor about the ease with which Muslim men divorced their wives. . . The lawyer expansively claimed that all ‘jatis’ were the same, we were all Indians. Noor, who hitherto had listened patiently to the lawyer’s harangue, said quietly but firmly, ‘No Dada [elder brother]. There are two jatis—men and women.

Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay received her Ph.D. from the School of African and Asian Studies at the University of Sussex. She is currently working at the Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam.

Demy octavo hardbound 258pp ISBN 81-85604-39-8 1998 Rs 180

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Theorizing Feminism series

Paperback series for students and the general reader

Series Editor Maithreyi Krishnaraj

Senior Fellow, Indian Council of Social Science Research; formerly professor and director, Research Centre for Women's Studies, SNDT Women's University, Mumbai.

Introducing key concepts in feminist theory, this series makes them accessible to students and the general reader. Defining the concepts as 'thinking tools', the authors explain how these built a new knowledge system that challenged existing patriarchal theories. Any reader will find the series vitally useful, not only for understanding what the new theories mean and how they are used, but also for grasping how they have evolved. Of special interest is the way ideas generated in the West have been altered to suit the Indian context.

Written by teachers of Gender Studies who have worked with these concepts in classroom environments, these books will explain ideas and theories in a direct, simple way, serving as essential guides for students. Now that Gender Studies has become a widely taught discipline in many parts of the world, there is a need for textbooks that summarize the core concepts and equip students to deal intelligently with them.

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Gendering Caste Through a Feminist Lens

Uma Chakravarti

From a review

Examining the crucial linkages between caste and gender, undertaken, perhaps for the first time, Uma Chakravarti unmasks the mystique of consensus in the workings of the caste system to reveal the underlying violence and coercion that perpetuate a severely hierarchical and unequal society. The subordination of women and the control of female sexuality are crucial to the maintenance of the caste system, creating what feminist scholars have termed ‘brahmanical patriarchy’. She discusses the range of patriarchal practices within the larger framework of sexuality, labour and access to material resources, and also focuses on the centrality of endogamous marriages that maintain the system. Erudite yet accessible, this book enables the reader to understand the interface of gender and caste and to participate in its critical analysis.

A distinguished feminist historian, Uma Chakravarti taught history at Miranda House, University of Delhi, from 1966-1998. She has long been associated with the women's movement and the democratic rights movement. Among her writings are The Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 1996); and Re-Writing History: The Life and Times of Pandita Ramabai (Kali for Women, 2001).

Demy octavo pbk 202pp ISBN 81-85604-54-1 Sept 2003 rpt 2006 Rs225

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Gender

V. Geetha

From the reviews

In her incisive discussion, V. Geetha points out that 'gender is everywhere', and when we allocate to the male and female sexes, specific and distinctive attributes and roles, we are 'doing' gender. She suggests insightfully that gender 'is both part of the world we live in as well as a way of understanding that world'.

Provocative and jargon-free, the book shows how gender identities mesh with those constituted by caste, class, religion and sexual preferences, forming a set of arrangements that have evolved through history. It enables the reader to undertake a fresh and critical look of what we consider to be normal and given, to ask questions, to take stock of the self and the world.

V. Geetha writes in Tamil and in English on history, culture and gender. She is editorial director, Tara Publishers, Chennai. She has co-authored with S. V. Rajadurai, Towards a Non Brahmin Millennium: From Iyothee Thass to Periyar (Calcutta: Stree, 1998 rev ed, July 2008), and the author of Patriarchy (Calcutta: Stree 2007).

Demy octavo paperback ISBN 81-85604-45-2 175 February 2002.

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