The Simplicity and Complexity of Women's Movements

by Mary Des Chene

Last year I helped a Nepali doctor carry out a survey on the incidence of neo-natal tetanus in a VDC near Nepalgunj. To hear, in a few days, dozens of women recount the history of the births - and the many, many deaths - of their infants is a sobering experience. Amid all those tales of birth and death one young mother and her husband brought their baby to be looked at. It was weak and sickly, malnourished. My doctor friend examined the baby gently but he spoke in uncharacteristically sharp tones, telling them what needed to be done, what to feed it, where to go for treatment and so on. And that if they did not do these things it would surely die quickly. I later chided him, saying what is the point of giving all that information if it won't be followed? Issuing orders in a commanding tone when the hospital may seem an impossibly intimidating place or there may be no money for medicine or better food will do no good. You have to find out why they haven't done these self-evident things already and walk them through a scenario in which they can conceive of a practical path to doing them. In other words, pay attention to the "cultural", said the wise anthropologist.

I had been looking at the woman while he examined the baby. She was teenaged, as anemic looking as her baby, skeletally thin, wearing a old worn sari. And shy and hesitant even before this doctor who was right in her neighbour's courtyard. It was her I was thinking of as I spoke. But my wiser, more discerning doctor friend had taken in a wider scene. He had looked behind her at her husband, a young man in strikingly robust health, muscles bulging. His clothes were new and fancy. He carried a big portable radio. He had sunglasses. His hair was styled. I had taken in these details, but not their significance. Sad to say, I think such a glaring discrepancy between the condition of a man and his wife and child was just too "natural" to my female eyes. Nor had I taken in the significance of the fact that the baby was a girl. His curt instructions were directed at the man behind - standing, healthy and indifferent, proudly displaying his expenditure on luxuries, behind an undernourished wife and a dying girl child. On that day I learned a simple thing I thought I already knew: sometimes, to understand the problems of women the place to look is behind, to the men.

But of course, as my story also witnesses, men are not always part of the problem and gender is no sure guide to who will have the greatest insight into the sources of women's oppression. Nor is it enough to look behind to the men or women, even when they are agents of women's oppression. We must also look behind the men and women, to systems of patriarchy, which brings us back, in a more useful way than I proposed to my doctor friend, to "culture".* The world over women, as a class, are more undernourished, more under-compensated for their labour, and more under-represented in formal decision-making bodies than men, as a class. The only measure in which women collectively come out "ahead" is life-span; those who endure seem to be hardy (though in Nepal, according to the statisticians, even women's lives are shorter than men's). Except to those who profess to find in the universality of women's subordinate status across disparate societies evidence of its "naturalness", these sorts of facts declare something very simple: the imperative for a women's movement - here, there and everywhere.

From that simple realization to the realization of a united women's movement lies a path strewn with complicating barriers. First among them is the nature of women as a collective body, united by virtue of subordination on the basis of gender, divided along every other social criterion that usually serve as the rallying points for social justice movements. Women - not the world's women and not Nepali women - do not speak one language, do not share one political ideology, do not have one ethnic identity. Above all, women are not a class like dalits, peasants or workers.

Women may be the dalit of each social class, but such unity of relative subordination hardly supercedes the very real class interests and sensibilities that separate women, one from another. Herein lies the great potency and the great difficulty of creating a women's movement. More than any class-based revolution, a truly united women's movement has potential to produce revolutionary change from within every class, for it has ready-made cadres at every level of society, top to bottom. And for just that reason many forces converge against any sign of trans-class unity among women, women's movements frequently have conflictual relations with class, ethnicity, and party-based movements, and women's movements are often splintered from within by the contradictory social interests of their members. These challenges, natural to any effort to organize against the grain of social hierarchies, have beset women's movements everywhere, not just in Nepal. They are a better explanation of the contradictions within and limitations of women's movements than those that anti-feminists like to put forth to disparage them and deflect notice from the revolutionary potential of female unity: women's "inherent" tendency to "squabble", women's "weakness" (mental, physical), and so on.

One result of the contradictions that work against the realization of a united women's movement is that class-based movements are far more common (though only peasant and working class movements are likely to identify themselves as such). And women's organizations organized around a class-based issue, on the basis of ethnicity or in affiliation with a political party are far more common than organizations that would unite women across such differences. This is not uniformly the case - within Nepal the current anti-alcohol movement, though so far largely a peasant-based women's movement, is an example of an issue-based movement that has potential effectively to unite women across classes, parties, and jati (for alcohol, like women, infiltrates every level and sector of society).** Yet in practice even such issue-based movements have limited potential to unite women across class interests unless they become a vehicle for breaking down class divisions. While abuse by an alcoholic spouse knows no class barriers, there is a world of difference in what is at stake for poor women in whose homes the purchase or brewing of alcohol replaces their consumption of food and for those for whom the financial outlay goes unnoticed. Similarly, efforts to legalize abortion impact women across classes and yet, if successful, it will remain the case that actual access to safe abortions will be unequal among classes along with access to other kinds of medical care, even while it might be that women of some janajati groups relegated mainly to the lower classes, economically and through social discrimination, would face less religious and social pressure against using such services if they had access to them. Such limitations to the potential for trans-class unity on the basis of a common issue, and to equal initial impact for all women of a given right or reform, seem to me not an argument for inaction, but rather a reminder of the necessity to go beyond first fruits in any reform-oriented work on behalf of women. For all women to reap the benefits will inevitably be a long term endeavour.

This brief discussion is meant to highlight two things. First, that something so seemingly simple (because the need is so evident) as a united women's movement cannot emerge in a society riven with other hierarchical distinctions but only in tandem with the elimination of other social bases of subordination besides gender. And second, that efforts to improve the lot of women through organizations and movements inevitably permeated by the other divisions existent in society, may actively - even if inadvertently - work against creation of a united women's movement. That is to say that class and party (which sometimes amount to the same thing), and ethnicity-based organizing in the name of women can serve to entrench female subordination overall.

Of the many ways in which that can occur (hijacking or subordination of women's issues for example), probably the most prevalent is to strengthen entrenched middle-class and upper-class interests in the guise of universal women's liberation. Rights may be acquired but restricted, in practice, to women of the middle and upper classes, thus further dividing their interests from those of more disadvantaged women and further disenfranchising those who are most vulnerable. Or dalit, peasant and working class women's movements with their broader, revolutionary implications, may be domesticated and tamed through strategic management by the middle and upper classes. There is an apparent catch-22 here that faces every kind of movement for genuine social equality - total transformation requires innumerable specific transformations in every sphere, yet the conditions under which reform-oriented efforts are conducted can co-opt such efforts, making them agents not of transformation but of entrenchment of the status quo.

The essays collected together here grapple with these issues as they manifest in very practical contexts within Nepali women's lives, Nepali women's organizations and Nepali women's movements. Several essays concentrate on individuals, reminding us of struggles that took place before (Pandey, Manandhar) and take place outside (K. Sangraula, Banskota) any organized women's movement, and of the kinds of hurdles that women, whether engaged in collective action or not, face in their daily lives (Joshi, Mishra, Uprety. Cf. Tawa Lama). Pandey expressly warns us against equating "movement" with street marches and other collective public actions alone; the others through the stories they tell, reaffirm the importance of avoiding that mistake.

NGOs appear in many of these essays and are the focus of several (Sherchan, Tawa Lama, Tuladhar and Joshi). This is unsurprising given the great number of Women-in-Development (WID) NGOs in existence today, and the ambiguities of the status of WID activities vis ˆ vis women's movements. Do WID NGOs, collectively, comprise a women's movement? If so, what kind and for whom? The class-based interests and sensibilities of WID leaders (Tamang, Cf. Sob) and the interference of political ideological and party allegiances with any straightforward devotion to women's issues (Sherchan, Tawa Lama) come in for particular attention. Tuladhar and Joshi enlarge the focus to include the INGO's that often fund NGOs and the agendas they bring to activities pursued in the name of women's interests. Two essays (Phnuyal, Shrestha) draw a clear distinction between reformist and transformative activism (equality vs. liberation in Shrestha's words, development vs. liberation in Phnuyal's) and see the role of NGOs, as presently constituted, to be limited to the former.

The role of ideology in women's subordination and questions about what ideological commitments are conducive to creation of a united women's movement appear in several guises. Phnuyal's essay is organized around patriarchy and the need, in all spheres, to eradicate patriarchal thinking through new forms of pedagogy (Cf. Mishra). Phnuyal and Parajuli, who also stresses the need for an ideological commitment to equality as a precondition to enduring change in the situation of women, both emphasize that the struggle is not male vs. female, but oppressor (male or female) vs. oppressed (Cf. Mishra, Pandey). Hindu ideologies also come under scrutiny, both the strictures placed upon high caste women (Mishra) and those that weigh upon the twice oppressed - dalit women (Sob).

Two specific issues - women's property rights and health care - are discussed in some detail. Gautam's discussion of the place of women's health in the national agenda and Uprety's personal narrative from a doctor's perspective bring to the fore the difficulty of trying to address women's needs within a general context of lack (of services, government commitment to health care, etc.). Y. Sangraula's essay on the lack of recognition, in law, of women as full persons provides a crucial context in which the women's property rights debate has taken place. Tuladhar and Joshi focus on INGO agendas that limited the utility of their interventions in efforts to create a women's property rights bill, and provide a vivid example of varied interests working at cross-purposes in the name of women's interests. K. Sangraula's essay responds to a number of the main arguments put forth in opposition to property rights for women (cf. Parajuli) and discusses the limitations of the Supreme Court decision that sparked that debate. The relation of party-based political struggles to women's liberation struggles is a theme in many of these essays. Opinions on what that relation should be vary, but many pick out this relationship as a critical problem for Nepali women's movements. Sherchan and Tawa Lama discuss how party affiliations shape the priorities of WID NGOs and women's networks. Shrestha discusses how the women's organizations of political parties become so submerged in overall party politics that they are unable to concentrate effectively on women's issues. Three essays presented here (Pandey, Parajuli, Shrestha) reflect broadly on women's movements as political movements, on what we should mean by mahila andolan and whether there can be said to be one (or many) in existence in Nepal today. Thapa, turning to a particular political andolan, reflects on the place (literal and figurative) of women in the People's Movement of 1990 and on the lessons contained therein for the Nepali women's movement.

The final two pieces return us to the bleak realities of particular lives, reminding us that grappling with the complexities that stand as barriers to effective united action is no abstract matter, but carries with it the weight of responsibility to quest for simple justice. An all too real situation is placed before us in fictional form (K. Sangraula) when the poor janajati girl child Mangali poses a simple question: 'Who will send me to school?' The corpse of Saraswati Adhikari, killed by the "cure" inflicted upon her as a boksi (witch) poses an equally simple question: How can this happen to women? That the rhinos exported to England received more sustained mainstream media attention than the death of Saraswati speaks loudly of the place of women in the hierarchy of social concerns and places starkly before us the simple question of Amrita Banskota's title: When will the jangali era be over? Clearly not until we all, men and women alike, rob women's subordination and oppression of their naturalness, through conscious effort in every sphere, from the most private and mundane to the most public and striking. That is simple enough to see; the path to such a day, leading as it does through real social terrain rife with contradictory, competing interests, is anything but simple to discover or create. We hope that the essays presented here, in both the disparateness of their perspectives and in their common recurring themes, will be useful to those trying to chart - and travel - such a path.

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Footnotes:

* Although I concentrate in what follows on the barriers to gender-based organizing within a class-based society, this is not to ignore patriarchy. Patriarchal ideologies in many guises support male advantage within classes, castes and ethnic groups, and work simultaneously against both women's movements and against trans-gender struggles organized on other bases. Although there is no evidence that patriarchy is an invention of capitalism, as some who invoke an earlier golden age of gender equality imply, there is also no question that patriarchy and capitalism (and thus class societies) cooperate as happily - and as effectively - as have feudalism and colonialism, to extract profit for a few from the oppression of the many.

**There is, however, equally the potential for the anti-alcohol movement to be contained by middle-class co-optation.