Empowering women
KALPANA KANNABIRAN writes on a government policy which incorporates the major concerns and issues that the women's movement has been engaged with over 25 years.THE National Policy for the Empowerment of Women 2001, is an attempt to institutionalise the gains of women's movements across the country. Taking the Constitution as its point of departure, the National Policy outlines the historical context within which it is located, which interestingly, is the historical context of the women's movement as well: the international conferences from Mexico (1975) through Nairobi (1985) to Beijing (1995) and the follow up on Beijing; the women's movement and the widespread network of non-government organisations with a mass base; the landmark "Status of Women" documents in the country - Towards Equality and Shramshakti.
The objectives and goals of the National Policy include the creation of an enabling environment for women through economic and social policies, active protection of rights, equal access to decision making and social sector needs, strengthening institutional support systems and legal machinery, and forging partnerships within civil society. In short, the active and committed elimination of all forms of discrimination against all women. These objectives, the Policy affirms will be realised through a review and formulation of positive measures in the judicial legal system, decision making, through the economic and social empowerment of women.
A cursory reading of the Policy gives the impression that it is a feminist charter. A feeling that we have a government with a feminist imagination. A more careful consideration throws up the basis for that likeness. The Policy incorporates all the major concerns and issues that the women's movement has engaged with over the past two and a half decades: domestic violence, rape, poverty, conditions of work, employment, representation, support and solidarity networks, access to credit, health, nutrition, child care, education, housing, rights, the adverse impact of globalisation, prostitution, single women, property rights and so on. The agenda of the women's movement is a policy concern now. This is cause for celebration, yet troubling.
Women's groups across the country have survived losing battles with each case and on each issue. The struggle was essentially against the state that was either unresponsive or complicity with families and communities that divested women of rights with impunity. That is, when the state was not itself the perpetrator of crimes against women. While we do have the Domestic Violence Prevention Bill and a few other small victories on paper we do not yet know how effective they will be, there is no significant change in the condition of women despite years of struggle. What we do have is some measure of reparation with respect to data on women. But the critical issue, violence, continues unabated. Given this reality, the implementation of the policy and the operational strategies are areas that are deeply problematic.
It might be pertinent first to look at the issues the Policy addresses. It makes specific mention of "social exclusion" of women of the Scheduled Castes/ Scheduled Tribes/ Other Backward Castes, social stereotyping, violence and discrimination against girl children and women both in the economy and society. This is particularly significant when viewed against the government's averments on caste today, in the context of the Racism Convention.
Yet another significant point is the recognition of the needs of "Women in Difficult Circumstances". These are "women in extreme poverty, destitute women, women in conflict situations, women affected by natural calamities, women in less developed regions, disabled widows, elderly, single women in difficult circumstances, women heading households, those displaced from employment, migrants, victims of marital violence, deserted women and prostitutes etc." All women who are situated on the margins - of society and Policy - are now at the centre of official concern. This concern, far from being the product of imaginative Policy has to be viewed against the corpus of incisive feminist research and persistent advocacy on the rights of and denial of rights to each of these constituencies.
The consciousness of regional imbalances again is the result of human rights campaigns and mass movements struggling for a more equitable distribution of resources within the country. The Telengana movement in Andhra Pradesh is a case in point. Ironically, however, while the Women's Policy has acknowledged the fact of regional imbalances, the Telengana movement is yet to articulate its position, even nominally on the question of women's rights.
The strategy of policy hitherto on addressing women's needs by focussing on the family, has inevitably meant that single women and women "outside families" remain invisible and outside the framework of policy. Single women, absent from public discourse till the decade of the nineties, began to be heard through the women's movement, which systematically critiqued the family and the assumption of women's "natural" location within the family. That this effort has led to a restatement of the official position on single women is encouraging, without doubt.
The Women's Policy, at several points, picks up the concern of the negative impact of globalisation on women. Starting off from the observation that the underlying causes of gender inequality are related to social and economic structure, it asserts the need to frame positive economic policies that will enable women realise their full potential by participating in decision making in the social and economic life of the nation. The displacement of women from employment, the increase in trafficking in women and girls and the lack of accountability of the electronic media networks in the era of globalisation all issues that have been extensively debated, especially by the critics of globalisation, find mention in the Policy. Acknowledging that the new global economy is characterised by an uneven distribution of resources and opportunity, the feminisation of poverty and unsafe working environments, the Policy states that women will be empowered to meet and contend with these impacts. Clearly the elimination of the impact or its source is not within its power.
Particularly telling is the section on environment, which focuses on conservation and restoration and the promotion of programmes of non-conventional energy resources. The involvement of women in propagating the use of solar energy, biogas, smokeless chullhas etc., are initiatives that have been tried out at the micro level with varying degrees of success over the past two decades at least. Placing these initiatives within the programmatic framework of policy is an acknowledgement of their positive contribution. The critical participation of women in environment struggles at the macro level (the anti dam movements immediately come to mind) do not enter the account, even in terms of the socio-historical and political context of the Policy. Yet this is not surprising, since globalisation is a fact that the Policy does not/cannot engage with in any fundamental manner.
The operational strategies of the National Policy range from the collection and collation of gender disaggregated data at every level, gender audits and evaluations to the creation of a multi- tiered institutional structure from the Central level in self help at the village level. Again, some of this is a re-statement of what already exists. What is new, however, is the proposal to set up National and State Councils to ensure the implementation of the Policy. These councils will be headed by the Prime Minister and Chief Ministers with representatives from the government, NGOs, women's organisations, corporate sector, trade unions, academics and social activists, among others. National and State Resource centres will function as clearing houses of information on women.
This is really the most problematic part of the Policy. The Policy draws substance and perspective from rights based struggles and research over the past three decades in the country. The issues that have emerged as areas of concern, likewise, were brought into focus by the women's movement and by women in other movements, like the Dalit movement or the environment struggles. The advocacy and action on all these fronts has been both effective and successful, which is why the issues have found mention in the Policy. To re-state the point, the mainstreaming of the entire gamut of issues that find place in the National Policy on Women's Empowerment 2001, is a direct result of civil society interventions and resistance struggles in different parts of the country. Logically then, since here are systems that are already in place in civil society, that are doing the work, the Policy should create mechanisms to affirm and support the non-state institutional mechanisms that have built legitimacy and credibility through their work.
Instead, by proposing parallel institutional structures under state authority that replicate/appropriate the work of existing institutions might lead to an adversarial situation, with the work of non-state institutions and groups being seriously undermined.
Finally the record of institutional apparatuses set up by the State is far from encouraging. Most of the existing institutional mechanisms set up by the state are extremely patriarchal and headed by the people with very reactionary views on women. By creating a new set of institutions which will be managed by personnel, mostly politicians and bureaucrats for whom the work will be merely another portfolio/posting, there is a very real danger of the policy remaining a radical and attractive document on empowerment that on the ground disempowers women.
The author is a founder member of Asmita Resource Centre for Women, Secunderabad and teaches at NALSAR University of Law