The slow transition from womanhood to personhood: can education help?

"This paper will look at how difference as inequality has led to gender differences in the use of education. I will then present a case study of one of the first Bengali women to write her autobiography; if Kailashbashini’s life appears incongruous at the end of a litany of injustices it is only to prove that difference as a value can-and did-put down early roots in a hostile environment. Acknowledging her subordinate position in a male dominated society. Kailashbashini used the skills of literacy effectively. The wife of a Bengali official with reformist tendencies was taught to read and write by her husband. In time, she described in great detail her life; her powerfully reasoned arguments only proved that those regarded as unequal and subordinate could in fact match many in their logic and rationality. Here, the informal, self-taught skills of literacy equipped Kailashbashini to express herself, her pain and her hopes through a long life. The therapeutic value of such an exercise can not be underestimated in a highly segregated, hierarchical society. However, before going further into the role of literacy in facilitating individual self-expression, it is necessary to explore further the relationship between difference and inequality. For it is against this backdrop that the former acquires a particular significance and relevance.

A fieldworker in women's studies

"A decade and a half after the International Women's Year is not too early for some enquiry and introspection into what, for lack of a better phrase, have been the gains and losses. Any such assessment can be pitched at various levels - Individual, collective or Institutional and of course viewed from a range of perspectives. This essay is an account of a personal as well as an intellectual journey. Beginning with a brief overview of an understanding of women's studies, the paper goes on to a more personalized description of my involvement in this area of research and activism.

Women and economic reform in India: a case study from the health sector

"Most official documents in the fifty years of India's independence have, with 'varying degrees of candour, admitted to limited success in bridging the gap in the population's access to basic rights such as education, health, nutrition, housing, sanitation and so on. Nor has civil society been silent on the declining role of the State: for instance, from 1975 onwards, the women's movement has drawn attention to certain negative socio-economic trends and how these affect the status of women and children. The many voices from the women's movement as well as from other broad-based people's movements fractures the, discourse on liberalisation by providing counterpoints and critical appraisals of avowed promises and preferred solutions. Accordingly, this paper examines the health sector with a view to highlighting myopic policies and faulty implementation strategies. By doing so we hope to contribute to an alternative discourse, one which questions the votaries of liberalisation, their expectations of the market, trickle-down theories of development and naive belief that the social sector can take care of itself.

A fieldworker in women's studies

"A decade and a half after the International Women's Year is not too early for some enquiry and introspection into what, for lack of a better phrase, have been the gains and losses. Any such assessment can be pitched at various levels - Individual, collective or Institutional and of course viewed from a range of perspectives. This essay is an account of a personal as well as an intellectual journey. Beginning with a brief overview of an understanding of women's studies, the paper goes on to a more personalized description of my involvement in this area of research and activism.