This was published in the print edition of Economic and Political Weekly. (Issue December 24-31, 1988)
It is premature to talk of rural women’s movements in India today. This paper examines various rural movements—the factors that have facilitated the participation of women, the extent and quality of their participation, and the limits to their involvement. Some lessons art drawn from this experience, on the basis of which the author suggests how it may be possible to build rural women’s movements.
Since the early seventies, there has been a new upsurge in the mobilisation of rural women as participants in various movements. They are being mobilised in large numbers, and participating in more militant actions within a wide variety of rural movements as well as around a wider variety of issues. These mobilisations have often been described as rural women’s movements. However, in my view, these sporadic mobilisations of rural women within various larger movements do not amount to evidence of the existence of rural women’s movements.
At a minimum, rural women may be said to be mobilised when they begin participating in social action outside the family even sporadically, and with some, even slight, intensity. However, for any group’s mobilisation to acquire the character of a movement, certain minimum pre-conditions must be met, of which the following would seem to be most important…