Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Perspectives On Women's Studies From India: Strengths, Struggles And Implications For Programs In The U.S., Aditi Mitra, Manjeet Bhatia, Sobha Chatterjee

Journal of International Women's Studies

An important goal of Women’s Studies (WS) is the advancement of women’s rights not just locally, but on a global scale. How well this goal is accomplished will ultimately depend on the current WS curricula adapting to include international and transnational perspectives. This paper investigates how Indian-WS programs, with some comparisons to WS programs in the US, are meeting this challenge. It begins by tracing the development of WS and examines its curricula by conducting a content analysis of ten syllabi from Indian universities and offers reflections from WS practitioners in India. The research yields important insights on institutionalization of …

Gender Dynamics Of Missionary Work In India And Its Impact On Women’S Education: Isabella Thoburn (1840- 1901) - A Case Study, Marthal Nalini

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article is a cross-cultural study of the work of the first North American single woman missionary educator Isabella Thoburn who was sent overseas by the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The objective of this article is to examine the motives of Isabella, her career in India, and the impact of her work on women’s education. It also highlights the facts that Isabella was an extra-ordinary woman and carved spaces for herself as professional, administrator, mentor, and matriarchs, first in her parent society and then in cross-cultural contexts, for which there was no precedent. The early …

Extent And Causes Of Gender And Poverty In India: A Case Study Of Rural Hayana, Santosh Nandal

Journal of International Women's Studies

In spite of the enshrining anti-poverty programs and objectives of the poverty eradication programs contained in India’s five year plans, women’s poverty in India, even after 58 years of independence, is glaring. This paper, based on a field survey, addresses the issues of economic constraints and the denial of women’s access to productive assets in the form of land ownership and human capital such as education, skill-training. The article contributes to the overall picture of female poverty at the national level. The author finds an exaggerated emphasis being placed on women laborers and inadequate economic opportunities among them as the …

“Nowadays Who Wants Many Children?”: Balancing Tradition And Modernity In Narratives Surrounding Contraception Use Among Poorer Women In West Bengal, India, Devalina Mookerjee

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper investigates how poorer women in West Bengal, India balance the ideas of modernization and tradition in their choices to use birth control. Ideologically, Indian women have traditionally been placed within the context of the home and valued principally as wives and mothers. Children, therefore, are tremendously important for women within this framework. In contrast, the ideology of the relatively well structured and very large family planning program asks especially poorer women to have fewer children for the good of the family and the nation.

How do poorer, predominantly illiterate women balance these two oppositional ideas in an area …

Power, Structure, Gender Relations And Community-Based Conservation: The Cawswe Study Of The Sariska Region, Rajasthan, India, Maria Costanza Torri

Journal of International Women's Studies

Most current community development projects have a built in gender component. Despite the WID, WED and GAD schools of thought there is still however a long way to go in order to effectively implement these principles in conservation projects. Merely getting women a place on the policy-making agenda is not enough, especially if it comes at the cost of promoting a simplistic and often wildly inaccurate picture of gender-environment relations. This article analyses the repercussions of community-based conservation on women in terms of use, access, and control of natural resources. The area chosen is the Sariska region of Rajasthan, India. …

Examining Empowerment Among Indian Widows: A Qualitative Study Of The Narratives Of Hindu Widows In North Indian Ashrams, Nimi Mastey

Journal of International Women's Studies

Contemporary discourse on widowhood in India tends to concentrate heavily on quantitative evaluation. Discussion of the narratives of the women is confined to more popular medium, and tends to focus on the need of the women to be empowered. By simply visiting ashrams in Vrindavan it becomes clear that the term “empowerment” is vastly up to interpretation. This study focuses on the models of empowerment applied by two different widow ashrams: Ma-dham and Chetan Bihar. Through obtaining narratives of the women’s lives, I attempt to assess the success of the ashrams in “empowering” the widows, and question the necessity and …

A Study On The Empowerment Of Women Construction Workers As Masons In Tamil Nadu, India, Annette Barnabas, D. Joseph Anbarasu, Paul S. Clifford

Journal of International Women's Studies

The construction sector has the largest number of unorganised labourers in India next only to agricultural sector. Women form half the workforce and by choice or by design they are not allowed to acquire specific skills that may enable them to become masons. Women join as unskilled workers and remain unskilled till the end of their working life span. However, men get training and systematically upgrade their construction skills to graduate as masons, supervisors and contractors. A study was conducted on the career progress of 440 men construction workers and 440 women construction workers and 51 building contractors to find …

Islamic Feminism And Muslim Women’S Rights Activism In India: From Transnational Discourse To Local Movement - Or Vice Versa?, Nadja-Christina Schneider

Journal of International Women's Studies

The very recent phenomenon called Islamic feminism receives quite a lot of attention from academia and media alike. Although it is basically a discourse whose strategy and praxis is primarily script related, there seems to be an overt tendency to equate Islamic feminism with an ideology for a transnational social or political movement. As a perceived singular movement, Islamic feminism is often distinguished from two other supposedly singular movements, namely “Muslim feminism” and “Islamist feminism.” With regard to India, however, these ideal types don’t seem to be very helpful as analytical categories, as the growing influence and reference to Islamic …

Gender Empowerment And Equality In Rural India: Are Women’S Community-Based Enterprises The Way Forward?, Maria Costanza Torri, Andrea Martinez

Journal of International Women's Studies

Despite the renewed commitment of the international community to provide economic opportunities for poor women, most observers suggest that the majority of the past and current experience of community enterprise programmes for women has failed to make any significant impact on women’s incomes and social empowerment. Based on ethnographic research methods, this paper presents a feminist analysis of a singular women’s community enterprise promoted by local NGOs in the state of Tamil Nadu in India, usually known as GMCL (Gram Mooligai Company Limited). GMCL has been promoted by local NGOs in the state of Tamil Nadu and is an example …