Different faces of the Indian women’s movement

GS Paper 1

Syllabus: Role of Women and Women’s Organisation, Social Empowerment

Source: TH

Context: The Indian women’s movement is well-known for its vibrancy, but there has been less attention on the movement’s gradual transformation.

A timeline of the Evolution of the Indian women’s movement:

• Nationalist/political movements:
  • Examples: All India Women’s Conference (1927) → salt satyagraha (1930) → Quit India movement (1942).
  • Acceptance of women’s leadership in politics, setting the stage for grass-roots mobilisation, and increased participation in electoral politics.
• Rights-based, civil society movements:
  • Examples: Chipko (the 1970s) – one of the earliest ecofeminist movements in the world → SEWA → Nirbhaya, Shaheen Bagh and Sabarimala protests.
  • Grassroots organising for legal and policy reforms, against persistent patriarchal institutions.
• State-led movements for political/economic empowerment:
  • The greatest success of this mobilisation –
    • The 73rd Amendment to the Constitution was passed, reserving 1/3rd of seats in panchayats for women
    • 17th Lok Sabha inducted 78 women as MPs – the most in the country’s history.
  • invested heavily in Self Help Groups (SHGs), which function mainly as thrift and credit institutions.
    • Today, there are about 1.2 crore SHGs in India, most of which are all women.

Nature of these movements: Some aimed to alter political discourse while remaining outside of party politics, while some were clearly associated with political parties.

Impact of these movements:

• Transformed Indian women: From abala (weak) → sabala (strong)
• Feminist advocacy/women’s collectives –
  • Highlighted sex-selective abortion and discrimination in inheritance patterns leading to legal reforms.
  • Worked hard to reform and implement laws against sexual harassment in the workplace and in public spaces.

Initiatives for empowering women:

• Mahila Samkhya (older programme replaced by SHGs): Explicitly designed to mobilise women and sensitise them about their rights → relative ineffectiveness in enhancing vocational skills and entrepreneurship.
• National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM): The above deficiency was addressed by the current generation of the SHG movement + NRLM.
• Participation in SHGs: Reliance on high-interest loans from moneylenders has declined. Overall socio-economic empowerment also facilitates SHGs to help meet national targets under
  • SDG 5 (gender equality),
  • SDG 16 (peace, justice and strong institutions) and
  • SDG 17 (partnerships for the goals).
• MGNREGA: SHGs under the NRLM have been able to use funds under MGNREGA to build income-earning assets for women, such as cattle sheds and poultry sheds.

Challenges:

• The SHG movement’s potential for enhancing women’s incomes has been underutilised.
• Most of the activities of SHGs are limited to micro-credit.
• Limited evidence of increased incomes due to entrepreneurship or women’s empowerment within the household.
• Sometimes SHGs have been used as a political weapon by ruling governments. For example, the use of SHG women in Kerala during the Sabarimala protests.

Way ahead – Developing synergies: Massive mobilisation of women must be supported with other complementary programmes that provide enhanced livelihood opportunities.

Some best practices of the SHG movement in India:

• The rani mistris (women masons) of Jharkhand built toilets, providing women with opportunities to diversify their livelihoods for improved incomes and socio-economic growth.
• Bank sakhis, pashu sakhis, poshan sakhis: The ES 2022-23 points to the empowerment of nearly 4 million SHG members through training programmes to transform them into community resource persons.

Conclusion: The key, however, is to not put all eggs in the single basket of state-led programmes and to ensure that other spaces for women’s activism are preserved.

Insta Links:

The importance of women-led digital solutions

Mains Links:

‘Women’s movement in India has not addressed the issues of women of lower social strata.’ Substantiate your view. (UPSC 2018)