Marriage, Violence, and Choice:Understanding Dalit women's agency in rural Tamil Nadu

Literature on Dalit women largely deals with issues of violence and oppression based on intersections of class, caste and gender. Women’s bodies, sexuality and reproductive choices are linked to the ideological hegemony of the caste-gender nexus in India, with marriage and sexual relations critical in maintaining caste boundaries. Often the ways in which women manipulate their multiple, interlinked identities as women, Dalits, workers and home-makers to resist control over their bodies (labour and sexuality), negotiate conjugal loyalty and love, and construct a sense of selfhood is missed in the analyses. Based on research in rural Tamil Nadu, I analyse in this paper Dalit women’s narratives that reflect multiple concerns and dilemmas about marital choice and violence, generating in the process a deeper understanding of agency, voice and gender relations, as fluid, dynamic, and intersecting in response to changing experiences, positionalities and subjectivities

Male ‘providers’ and female ‘housewives: A gendered co-performance in rural North India

Problems of measuring and public recognition of women’s work are not merely statistical. This article highlights the co-performance of stereotypical gender roles, where men and women jointly seek to establish the status of women as housewives rather than as farmers and of men as providers, thereby upholding a particular social order and simultaneously reinterpreting the meanings of existing norms to include new realities. Evidence from rural north India demonstrates the discernable disjunctures between social norms, narratives and action. Conscious of the growing insecurities faced by their husbands in the context of a rapidly changing economy, women try to allay rather than aggravate them. Instead of asserting their identities as ‘workers’, their strategies for gaining recognition and reciprocity from their husbands focus on reconstituting gender relations in the household, by expanding individual spaces and making incremental gains within the existing social order, rather than struggling for wider transformative changes

Respect, status and domestic work: Female migrants at home and work

The transition from adolescence to adulthood is a complex and often contradictory process for female, ethnic minority, migrant strangers, moving as domestic workers to Delhi, India’s capital. Drawing on empirical work in a village in Jharkhand State, which has witnessed increasing migration of adolescent girls as domestic workers to Delhi over the last two decades, this paper highlights the experience of tribal domestic workers at home and at work. It points to their agency in dealing with the contradictions they face between earning incomes, acquiring markers of status and gaining respect across the urban and rural worlds they stride

Confronting poverty and educational inequalities: Madrasas as a strategy for contesting dominant literacy in rural Bangladesh

In a context of globalisation and the rapid expansion of low-paid ‘global’ jobs, formal schooling is no longer perceived as contributing to the acquisition of skills that are appropriate or even relevant to active engagement with the new opportunities. Based on empirical material from a village in Bangladesh, this paper explores the role of madrasa education in challenging the dominant paradigm of learning embedded in formal secular schooling. Despite charges of low quality and traditionalism, local narratives reveal how madrasa learning is used to negotiate and transform inequalities, both in material and social terms. Madrasa education is cheaper, and addresses issues of poverty, but the narratives also emphasise learning the Arabic language, seen to facilitate male overseas migration to the Gulf countries, a channel for upward social and economic mobility. In a context of global competition that supports individualism, a focus on character and morality as represented through an Islamic identity, alongside communitarian values, is seen as important for maintaining a degree of social cohesion and is hence socially valued. Reading and reciting the Quran are also viewed as essential traits for a woman, enabling her to appropriately socialise her children in the absence of her migrant husband. One finds here a simultaneous process of contestation and resistance, seeking successful occupational trajectories and social recognition for men, while at the same time contributing to the reproduction of gendered inequalities

Migration, Representations and Social Relations: Experiences of Jharkhand Labour to Western Uttar Pradesh

Studying a stream of migration from Jharkhand to western Uttar Pradesh (UP), this article focuses on the work and life experiences of migrant labour from tribal India. Based on an in-depth study of a Jharkhand village, alongside a briefer stint at the destination village in UP, it examines the micro-level nuances and complexity of migrant labour movements and their often unexpected and unrecognised social consequences, particularly, the renegotiation of class and gender relations at home and the destination. Apart from pointing to the deep interconnections between the relations of production and reproduction, it demonstrates how the use of distinct representations of work and life due to spatial distanciation contribute to renegotiating both labour relations and social identities

Assets, agency and legitimacy: Towards a relational understanding of gender equality policy and practice

Gender equality policies seeking to give women assets, particularly land, have often failed to achieve their goals. Explained as a failure of implementation and adequate resourcing, the deeper problem lies in using a segmented rather than holistic analytical framework that treats both assets and women as discrete, individual objects, rather than socially embedded and networked. Land gives meaning to people’s lives, it is more than a source of material wealth; hence access to land is coveted, contested and negotiated in multiple ways by differently positioned people. Drawing on long-term primary research in India, as well as secondary research in China and Indonesia, in relation to women’s access to land, I unpack some of the complexities and contradictions in terms of both legal and social interpretations of legitimacy as well as women’s agency. Apart from having a large proportion of their population dependent on agriculture, the choice of countries is also useful in constructing typologies of governance systems and social relations at different institutional levels that shape women’s access to land, a prime one being inheritance. I demonstrate the need for an alternate, relational framework that is both dynamic and transcends binaries, unpacking the multidimensionality of women’s agency vis-a-vis assets, in diverse livelihood, environmental and governance contexts, if gender equality goals are to be met

From abandonment to autonomy:Gendered strategies for coping with climate change, Isiolo County, Kenya

Access to resources, both material and social, are central elements in responding to social and environmental transition, and adapting to change, yet the ways in which such access is negotiated within and across varying household structures is not well understood. In semi-arid Kenya, persistent drought has made male incomes from pastoralism insecure, and contributed to women’s growing engagement with trade, farming and other independent enterprises, for survival. This has, however, raised questions about women’s dependence on men for household provisioning, and enhanced expectations of reciprocity in both production and reproduction within households. While demographers note the rise in female headship in sub-Saharan Africa, and female headed households are often the target of policy attention, the situation on the ground is much more complex. Polygamy, separation and consensual unions, multi-generational and multi-locational households, point to a growing diversity in gender and generational relationships, in rights, responsibilities and norms. Based on data from household surveys, focus group discussions and life history interviews with differently positioned women and men within pastoralist communities in northern Kenya, the paper explores the implications of changing household structures beyond headship, in particular the loosening of marriage ties, frequent separation and regrouping, on relational vulnerability and the micro-politics of adaptation in the region

Fertility, reproduction and conjugal loyalty: Renegotiating gender relations amongst Dalits in rural Tamil Nadu

Much of the literature on Dalits, and Dalit women in particular, focuses either on issues of violence, and subordination based on class, caste and gender, or the relative egalitarianism within Dalit households, arising from a context of shared hardship. It leaves out the contradictions and negotiations inherent in their everyday lives, of victimhood alongside the exercise of strategic life choices. In this paper, using qualitative data primarily from Dalit women in rural Tamil Nadu, I draw attention to the growing emphasis on conjugal loyalty and (upper caste) norms of domesticity within Dalit households. Reflecting normative changes based on the ideas of respectability and status, this appears to be entrenching new forms of patriarchy. However, contextualising this phenomenon in relation to changes in the larger political economy, especially the significant shifts in labour relations, education, State social protection and Dalit mobilisation, reveals that rather than accepting a subordinate status, Dalit women are strategically using these ideas to negotiate their sexual and reproductive entitlements, and companionate conjugality

Is the push for gender sensitive research advancing the SDG agenda of leaving no one behind?

Following decades of advocacy, collecting sex disaggregated data and conducting gender analyses have become an expected aspect of research in development studies. We strongly support this shift, yet it has focused attention upon one manifestation of inequality. We explore five dimensions of inequality, as expressed in health metrics in Ethiopia, to highlight diverse manifestations of inequalities. We call for a broader approach to understanding inequalities and how the simultaneous experience of multiple, intersecting inequalities, is greater than their sum. This shift is essential to support the ‘leave no one behind’ agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals

Gender, Water, and Nutrition in India: An Intersectional Perspective

Despite the global recognition of women’s central role in the provision, management, and utilisation of water for production and domestic use, and despite the close links between production choices, the security of water for consumption, and gendered social relations, the implications of these interlinkages for health and nutrition are under-explored. This paper seeks to fill this gap. It unpacks the gendered pathways mediating the links between water security in all its dimensions and nutritional outcomes, based on research in 12 villages across two Indian states. The findings point to the importance of the dynamic links between natural (land and water) systems and gendered human activities, across the domains of production and reproduction, and across seasons. These links have implications for women’s work and time burdens. They impact equally on physical and emotional experiences of well-being, especially in contexts constrained by the availability, access, quality, and stability of water