Organisational strategy in India and diverse identities of women: bridging the gap

Ranjani K. Murthy

Some differences among Indian women are well known – for example, those based on class, ethnicity, caste, and religion. There is also a range of other differences – arising from marital status, position within the family, the sex of a woman's children, whether she has a disability – which are less widely noted. There is little written about the challenges posed by differences among Indian women for organising women at the grass roots. Various reasons exist for this. This article is a small effort to bridge the gap in the literature, in the hope that more will follow on this theme.

Many have pointed out how caste, class, and gender interweave in India, shaping the work women can do, the resources they can access, and the power they have in society (for example, Kannabiran 1996). These differences place groups of women in opposition to other groups. For example, Dalit women and labouring class women (not all labouring class women are Dalits, and vice versa), whose households have had land legally allotted to them by the government but do not as yet possess the land, may clash with upper-caste landed women, whose households have encroached on the land in question. The payment of minimum or equal wages is another point of contestation between women from different classes and castes. In these issues, the interests of women from the landed upper castes are similar to the men in their castes, and opposed to Dalit and labouring women.

Religion is another aspect of diversity which creates differences among women. How these differences play out is a highly complex issue, and cannot be generalised. A specific example comes from the conflicts in interest between women from Muslim and Hindu communities. Some of these conflicts arise out of the occupational differences between Muslims and Hindus: a greater proportion of Muslims than Hindus are engaged in trading occupations. At times, this gives rise to conflict over the terms of trade: in particular, regarding profit margins, the timing of payments, and so on. Often, the traders are men, while the sex of the sellers varies according to the trade. In conflicts over trade, women tend to align with their husbands, rather than with the other women. At community level, conflicts related to religion have arisen over the last 15 years as a result of the rise of right-wing Hindu movements in India. For example, the far right has used accusations that Muslims have built mosques by destroying Hindu temples to inflame communal conflicts. Although Muslim women have been raped and hurt in such conflicts, some Hindu women have aligned themselves with right-wing Hindu forces, and at times have even perpetrated violence.

Conflicts between tribal and non-tribal women are not uncommon. Tribal communities often reside in separate locations from non-tribal communities. However, the traders, moneylenders, and forest guards who operate in tribal areas are mainly men from non-tribal communities. When conflicts arise between them and tribal people, women align with their own men, rather than across the tribal/non-tribal divide.

Moving beyond the issues of identity that are relatively well known, two key aspects of diversity among women are marital status, and their position in the family. Those in more powerful positions in the family often perpetrate abuses against less powerful women, carrying and perpetuating the ideas and practices of the patriarchal system in which they live.

While there has been some analysis of the status of widows in India compared with married women, there has been much less research on the comparative status of married women, deserted women, divorced women, and women who have been forced for economic or social reasons to remain unmarried. Depending on their position in the extended family, women have different amounts of access to power, and are allocated different work.

Most single women have a low social status outside the family. If they head a nuclear family, they obviously have considerable status within that family. However, they may occupy a low status in their extended family. Widows and deserted and divorced women often come into conflict with the marital family over rights to their late or ex-husband's property. In these situations many mothers-in-law and sisters-in-law will support their male relatives.

Mothers have a higher status than daughters; mothers-in-law have a higher status than daughters-in-law in the early years of marriage; and husbands' sisters have a higher status than their brothers' wives. Mothers of sons have more status, and therefore more power, than mothers of daughters. Interests of mothers and daughters, and mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law, often differ over the younger women's freedom to go outside the house and interact socially. Other clashes can occur over the division of domestic work, over family size, and even over the amount of dowry. The interests of wives in the relatively small number of polygamous marriages very often clash. The first wife has property rights, but the second does not. One wife may be favoured by the husband over the other wife because of her beauty, the fact that her mother-in-law likes her personality, or the fact that she has borne sons.

As suggested above, age cross-cuts gender identity and position in the family and renders younger women open to abuse. Evidence shows that young women between the ages of 21 and 25 are less represented in self-help groups than women in the age group 26 to 55 (Murthy, Raju, and Kamath 2002; IF AD and TNCDW 1999). This is partly because younger women may be pregnant or looking after young children, without older children to call upon to assist them, as older women have. In some cases, it can also be because mothers-in-law do not allow their daughters-in-law to join such groups. In one village in Gorakhpur district, Uttar Pradesh, I asked a mother-in-law why her daughter-in-law was not in the group. She replied, 'What is the need for her to join, when I am in the group? Somebody has to be there to cook in the house when I attend meetings and training...