– Hillary Clinton
Contents
1. Introduction 60
2. The Profile of Women in India 60
2.1. Social Structure, Social Processes and Women 62
3. Nature, Range and Patterns of Women’s Work 65
3.1. What is Women’s Work? 65
3.2. Unpaid Work in Home-Based Production and Family Farms 65
3.3. Female Child Labour 67
3.4. Paid Work 67
3.5. Women Workers and the Growth of Unorganized Sector 69
4. Women’s Issues: A Manifestation 69
5. Women’s Issues: Responses 70
5.1. Women’s Movements 70
5.1.1. Women’s Movement as a Social Movement 70
5.1.2. Dimensions of Indian Women’s Movement 70
5.1.3. Pre-Independence Women’s Movements 71
5.1.4. Post-Independence Women’s Movements 75
6. An Analysis of Women’s Current Situation 83
7. National Policy for Women 89
7.1. National Policy for Empowerment of Women, 2001 89
7.2. Priority Areas for a New National Policy for Empowerment of Women 89
8. Conclusion 90
9. Appendix 90
9.1. Legislative Acts 90
9.2. Constitutional Provisions for Women in Our Constitution 91
9.3. Government Response 91
9.4. Women Empowerment Programs/Schemes by GoI 93
10. GS Mains Test Series Questions 94
11. Previous Year UPSC GS Mains Questions 106
1. Introduction
Imagine the following scenarios:
♤ You are waiting for a bus at the bus stop and a young man takes out a knitting needle and wool and starts knitting. A school girl who is also waiting for a bus climbs a tamarind tree to look for a raw tamarind.
♤ A couple lives in your neighbourhood. The husband stays at home and takes care of their two-year-old daughter and manages other household chores while the wife works in a bank as a manager.
Do these events surprise you? What reactions do you expect to hear from people with respect to these incidents? What is so unique about these scenes / events that people have to express their surprise or pass such comments? Why cannot a man knit or a girl climb a tree? What is wrong if a man stays at home and takes responsibility for child care and house work? Why cannot a woman give full time attention to her career? These images surprise people because they are contrary to the existing practices, which they usually see in society. It is our culture, which has built many stereotype images of men and women, and over a period of time most people have come to accept it as the right image.
Women can thus be described as a social category. There have been a series of women’s issues in terms of low access to productive resources, medical facilities, educational and employment opportunities and various other social and economic discriminations faced by them. Women play various roles in their lifetime ranging from a mother to that of a breadwinner but are almost always subordinated to male authority; largely excluded from high status occupation and decision making both at work and at home. Paradoxically, even in our Indian society where women goddesses are worshipped, women are denied an independent identity and status.
In recent years, particularly with the rise of Women’s Liberation Movement, this discrimination
against women has been widely debated. Two main positions have emerged from this debate.
♤ One maintains that this inequality between the two sexes is determined to some degree by the biologically or genetically based differences between men and women.
♤ As against this, the second position argues that they result from socially constructed power relations and are culturally determined.