Amniocentesis and sex selection

"This paper examines the introduction, spread and impact of amniocentesis (and more recently other sex-selection technologies) in India roughly since the mid-70s, to isolate the key actors, the driving forces of propulsion, and the historical context for the phenomenon of female foeticide following such tests. An attempt is made to demystify the runaway spread of the practice by comparing it with the emergence of female infanticide, also within the last two decades, in a region and a community with no previous history of such a practice. The two stories are presented as manifestations of the same process - though some of the actors are widely different - in terms of class. culture, ethnic traditions, gender role history, population, geography and exposure to debates on reproductive rights, freedom and the autonomy of choice. In the last section, some questions are raised on these philosophical concepts and their social implications.

Education and rural women: towards an alternative perspective

"To fellow educators who have assembled here from different countries to discuss the future role of education in achieving gender equality, I have two messages from millions of rural women of my country, and I believe, from many other parts of the world. The first is to recognise and support their collective struggle for human survival, including their own, against the destruction of their productive base, land, water, forests and other natural resources by types of development that are planned far away from them, by people and agencies they are not aware of, and through the use or misuse of knowledge power which has been kept away from them by a process of historical change that has increased their powerlessness, and deprivation.

Gender issues and educational development: an overview from Asia

"The papers prepared for the Mount Holyoke Conference present a refreshing advance in approaches to women and education. Most of them examine the historical context of modern educational development. Some highlight the impact of colonial rule and the encounter with western cultures and knowledge systems, while a few go back to an earlier past to search for religious, cultural or other influences that determined the perception of gender roles by the dominant section of their societies which eventually flowed into the modern systems of education.

An unfulfilled or a blurred vision?: Jawaharlal Nehru and Indian women

"My attempts in the last quarter of a century to unravel the complex relationship between the processes of nation building and changes in women’s status has driven me to the conclusion that Jawaharlal, along with most other Indian nationalists - of the right, centre or left, men or women, - never understood the political significance of gender equality in India’s nation building process.

Gender issues and educational development: an overview from Asia

"The papers prepared for the Mount Holyoke Conference present a refreshing advance in approaches to women and education. Most of them examine the historical context of modern educational development. Some highlight the impact of colonial rule and the encounter with western cultures and knowledge systems, while a few go back to an earlier past to search for religious, cultural or other influences that determined the perception of gender roles by the dominant section of their societies which eventually flowed into the modern systems of education.

An unfulfilled or a blurred vision?: Jawaharlal Nehru and Indian women

"My attempts in the last quarter of a century to unravel the complex relationship between the processes of nation building and changes in women’s status has driven me to the conclusion that Jawaharlal, along with most other Indian nationalists - of the right, centre or left, men or women, - never understood the political significance of gender equality in India’s nation building process.

Face to face with rural women: CWDS¿ search for new knowledge and an interventionist role

Written in the mid-1980's, this paper documents results of CWDS action research, useful for the large number of organisations and institutions trying to play an interventionist role in the empowerment of rural women today. It also represents an effort to preserve CWDS' own memory of earlier struggles

Peasant Women Organise For Empowerment: The Bankura Experiment

Organisations are accepted as an instrument to provide collective strength, or greater bargaining power, or to articulate the voice of an interest group. They may also be recognised as a constituency, to ensure representative of that section in local, national or inter-national deliberative bodies.Organisations, instrument, collective strength, constituency, local, national, inter-national

Emergence of the Women's Question in India and the Role of Women's Studies

The women’s question, like the untouchability question or the communal question, emerged during the national movement as a political question that had to be solved to give shape to the vision of a free Indian nation. It is my contention that this political aspect of women’s equality or inequality has never received adequate attention from historians or other social scientists - a neglect which has helped to perpetuate many ambiguities, mis-conceptions and under-valuation of this issue. The primary role of women’s studies in the contemporary period is to rectify this neglect and to generate both empirical data and theoretical perspectives to place the issue in its proper context.untouchability, communal question, national movement, historians, ambiguities, theoretical perspectives