Caste, class, and gender: Production and reproduction in North India

Abstract

Major changes in the technology and economic organisation of Indian agriculture have had far‐reaching effects on other aspects of social life. A critical area of neglected research has been the effect that the changing technology and accompanying social relations of production have had on women's role in agricultural production and on gender relations. Research carried out in a village in North India concretises general statistical trends affecting the lives of Indian women under capitalist development. Female participation in production activities mirrors their caste and class positions. Differential participation directly affects, and is intimately related to, other aspects of women's lives. The article also discusses some of the major contradictions for women's status stemming from the transformation of agrarian relations.

Notes

University of Hawaii, Liberal Studies Program, Bachman Annex 13, 1630 Bachman Place, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822. My first contact with the perspective presented here was at a graduate seminar conducted by Dr Gita Sen on Class and Gender in the Third World (Economics Department, Graduate Center of the New School for Social Research, NY, Spring 1980). My debt to her is inestimable. I am also grateful to Dr Rayna Rapp for extending a similar courtesy to participate in her seminar on the Anthropology of Women. The writings of Beneria and Sen, Boserup, Humphries, Middleton, Omvedt, Scott and Tilly, Sen, Tepperman, and Young are among the many seminal to my own research. Fieldwork in India was carried out with the aid of Fulbright, NDEA, and NSF pre‐doctoral research grants. Mahalo also to Emma Porio for helpful comments. This was originally presented as a paper at the Women's Studies Conference at the University of Hawaii, November 1982.