Caste, class, and women's liberation in India

Abstract

When Katherine Mayo wrote her notorious attack on the fitness of Indians for independence, Mother India, she used the subjugation and oppression of women as its driving wedge. In a sense, this was relying on an established Victorian tradition that the position of women was the measure of the advancement of a civilization. Writing in a year in which American women had only just attained the vote, Mayo had no doubts of India's failure in this respect. Today, nearly fifty years later, many foreign feminists have a different impression. In spite of the survivals of traditionalism, of the subordination of the individual to the family, of the emphasis on mul ani chul (“children and hearth”)—the Indian version of the Western precept that “a woman's place is in the home”—it appears that women in India take part in the basic production and political life of their country as fully as in Western societies and probably play a greater role in high-level political decision-making.

Notes

While it does seem true that women play greater leadership roles in educational and political arenas in India, we should be cautious about jumping to conclusions regarding the overall effects of labor market participation. According to 1960-61 figures (see Table 1) women participate highly unequally in both India and the U.S. In both countries they were about 1/3 of all workers; in both they are highly unlikely to be found in high-level legal and business professions. In both they are concentrated in the most low-paid and nonunionized categories of work, although in India this represents agricultural production, while American women have been joining the white collar positions—clerical, sales, services—rather than basic manufacturing. The 1971 Indian Census figures show a lower participation in the work force for women that may modify these conclusions, but this may in part be due to different methods of classification; see Sulabha Brahme “Stri-Mukhti Samaj-Karan.”