Doing Gender, Doing Geography Ii J Doing Gender, Doing Geography Doing Gender, Doing Geography Emerging Research in India

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Doing Gender, Doing Geography ii J Doing Gender, Doing Geography Doing Gender, Doing Geography Emerging Research in India

Editors Saraswati Raju Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

LONDON NEW YORK NEW DELHI First published 2011 in India by Routledge 912–915 Tolstoy House, 15–17 Tolstoy Marg, Connaught Place, New Delhi 110 001

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ISBN: 978-0-415-59802-6 Saraswati Raju would like to dedicate this book to David Sopher (1923–82), her mentor and teacher who taught her to be empathetic toward the marginalised, the peripheral and the neglected. Her location at the Centre for the Study of Regional Development in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi fuelled it further.

Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt would like to dedicate this volume to those from whom she learned geography: the teachers in Lady Brabourne College, Kolkata: her other teachers Professors Sunil K. Munsi; Pradip K. Mukhopadhyay and late Shri Arabinda Biswas, and those at Calcutta University, in particular, Professor Suprova Roy. This volume is also a gift to, and an effort to speak with, Kuntala’s students in Burdwan University. They all inspired her to pick up the courage to ask difﬁ cult questions and seek simple answers. vi J Doing Gender, Doing Geography Contents

List of Tables, Figures and Maps ix

Preface xiii

Introduction 1 Saraswati Raju and Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

1. Engendering the Androcentric Discipline of Geography and Claiming a Place: Revisiting the (Un)familiar 14 Saraswati Raju

2. ‘Doing Gender’ in Geography: Exploring Contemporary Feminist Methodologies 47 Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

Part I: World of Work

3. Mobilities and Spaces: Gendered Dimension of Migration in Urban India 89 Arpita Banerjee

4. Creating New ‘Places’: Women and Livelihoods in the Globalising Town of Burdwan, West Bengal 110 Pallabi Sil

5. Gender, Poverty and Microﬁ nance: Interrogating Women SHGs in West Bengal 131 Gopa Samanta

6. Interrogating Temporal and Spatial Negotiations: Home as the Gendered Site for Working Women in Delhi 157 Taneesha Devi Mohan viii J Doing Gender, Doing Geography

Part II: Reproduction, Survival and Care

7. Expanding Masculine Spaces: Planned Births and Sex Composition of Children in India 181 Mohammad Izhar Hassan

8. Neighbourhoods and Narratives: Contextualising Gender and Child Health in Lucknow City, Uttar Pradesh 199 Manisha Singh

Part III: Domestic and Public Spaces

9. Unequal They Stand: Decision-making and Gendered Spaces within Family 231 Mohammad Sanjeer Alam

10. Public Spaces and Everyday Lives: Gendered Encounters in the Metro City of Kolkata 250 Tanusree Paul

Bibliography 270 Notes on Editors 308 Notes on Contributors 310 Index 00 List of Tables, Figures and Maps

Tables

3.1 Sex Ratio among Migrants by Duration of Residence across Urban Centres 93 3.2 Migrants by Source Regions and Sex across Urban Centres 95 3.3 Migrants by Source Regions and MPCE Classes 103 3.4 Migrants and Associated Characteristics: Multinomial Logistic Regression 106 5.1 Development Proﬁ le of Burdwan District 140 5.2 Types of Livelihood Activities of SGSY Groups 144 5.3 Distance to Nearest Market 146 5.4 Purposes of Loans Taken by Individual Members Arranged from Higher % to Lower 147 5.5 Monthly Income of Women from SHG Activities 150 6.1 Background Proﬁ les of Respondents 162 6.2 Distribution of Activities across Spaces within the Household 174 7.1 Descriptive Statistics of CSR, SRB and CMR Ratio in Districts of India, 2001 189 7.2 Correlates of CSR with SRB and Female–Male Child Mortality Rate 193 7.3 Results of Regression of CSR on SRB 193 7.4 Distribution of Districts in Different Categories of Residuals from Regression of CSR on SRB 195 8.1 Analytical Schema of the Neighbourhoods 204 8.2 Factors Affecting Response to Child Health 211 8.3 Factors Affecting Response to Child Health and Attitudes to Neonatal Care, Recent Illness and Overall Childcare 212 x J Doing Gender, Doing Geography

8.4 Factors Infl uencing Response to Child Health 213 8.4A Model Summary of Factors 213 8.4B Coeffi cients (Dependent Variable: Overall Response to Child Health) 214 8.5 Response to Child Health for the Better- and Worse-off Groups (Average Scores for Child Health by Mohallas/Sites) 216 8.6 Response to Child Health among the Poor 219 8.6A Components of Child Health: Percentage Distribution by Location 219 8.6B Components of Child Health: Mean Scores by Location 220 9.1 Socio-economic Profi le of Currently Married Women by Region 236 9.2 Pattern of Women’s Participation in Decision-making 239 9.3 Regression Coeffi cient on Index of Participation in Decision-making 345 10.1 Respondents’ Perception about Stationary Location of Middle-aged Persons (Mobile and Stationary) 258 10.2 Respondents’ Perception about Occupancy of Places of Recreation 259

Figures

6.1 Average Hours Spent on Speciﬁ c Activities in a Day by Single-earner Men and Single-earner Women 164 6.2 Average Hours Spent on Speciﬁ c Activities in a day by Dual-earner Men and Dual-earner Women 165 6.3 Time–Space Overlap of Single-earner Men 170 6.4 Time–Space Overlap of Single-earner Women 171 6.5 Time–Space Overlap of Dual-earner Women 172 6.6 Time–Space Overlap of Dual-earner Men 173 6.7 Participation of Men and Women in Women’s Domain (%) 175 6.8 Participation of Men and Women in the Male Domain (%) 175 8.1 Conceptual Framework 209 List of Tables, Figures and Maps J xi

8.2 Factors Affecting Response to Child Health (Difference [in Average Scores for Response to Child Health] between the Better- and Worse-off Groups across Mohallas and Sites) 217 10.1 Locating People in a Hypothetical Place 256 10.2 Negotiating a Public Place: A Street 260 10.3 Occupancy of Park for Recreation (Morning) 262 10.4 Occupancy of Park for Recreation (Evening) 263 10.5 Occupancy of Ofﬁ ce Area (Afternoon) 263 10.6 Occupancy of Ofﬁ ce Area (Evening) 264 10.7 Occupancy of Semi-public Space (4:45 pm–5:00 pm) 266 10.8 Occupancy of Semi-public Space (5:00–5:15 pm) 267

Maps

7.1 Overlapping Marginalisation 186 7.2 Survival Chances for Daughters 187 8.1 Location of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh 201 Lucknow City — Location of Wards Studied 202 xii J Doing Gender, Doing Geography List of Tables, Figures and Maps J xiii

Preface

Until the 1970s, gender had remained invisible in the analyses of social space and place in the discipline of geography. Terms such as ‘mankind’ or ‘human’ were widely used, assuming that they ‘include’ women as well. In human geography, communities and social groups were seen as homogeneous and any specifi c reference to ‘women’ was largely unwelcome. The masculinity implicit in these and in other contents of geography has thankfully been challenged widely; recent contributions to feminist geography have successfully offered new interpretations of space and place, as well as thrown new insights into women, gender and gender relations. After the initial collision, feminism and geography have reconciled, and through the use of cross-disciplinary research methodologies, a rethinking of geography itself has taken place as an increasing number of geographers have adopted the gendered perspectives. By introducing new methodologies into geographical studies, these researchers have further enriched geography as an academic discipline. Even humanist geography that foregrounds cultural values and perceptions, have benefi ted from bringing out the intersection of place and space with the existential specifi cities of women’s lives. Indian geographers have also engaged with studying gender through their disciplinary lens; a growing body of writings on gender is thus being produced. However, much of Indian geographical research has followed proven areas of research through orthodox methodologies in order to carve out hitherto unwelcome niches without destabilising the established order. This perhaps is done subconsciously and also as a response to the need to receive academic acceptance and acknowledgement, because the use of qualitative data and methods has been less widely acceptable in the geographical tradition in India. Also, often in Indian context a ‘feminist’ tag bears a negative connotation that many scholars do not want to possess even as what they do can be included essentially within the subject matter of feminist geography. xiv J Doing Gender, Doing Geography

In our opinion, one must not dismiss such apprehensions and strands as they are the products of their times, and also recognise the subversive value of such work in further propagating gender studies in geography. That said, as younger scholars are increasingly becoming interested in studying gender in geography, one witnesses innovative and new methods including combinations of quantitative and qualitative analyses, visual sources and in-depth case studies being tried out and accepted in geography despite its masculine legacy. That the momentum has yet to gather the critical mass for those working on gender to be considered fi rmly within the disciplinary fold of geography in India remains an issue for concern. Overall, however, the trajectory has followed what we may like to call incremental pragmatism — using available spaces as entry points and carving out new spaces at an appropriate moment. We would like to position this book as a pioneering and a signifi cant intervention in bringing upfront Indian geographers’ contributions on understanding gender. In placing gender as a legitimate subject in the fi eld of geography, this volume also engages, to some extent, with the recent ‘spatial turn’ in international and national social science scholarship that has reclaimed the explanatory power of space and place in social theory, which was almost lost by deconstructive postmodernist scholarship. The contributors to this volume represent an excellent mix of established and well-placed scholars with emerging ones. If the younger scholars have raised their voices, pushed the research frontier into a less-trodden fi eld at some risk, the book aims at creating spaces for them to claim their arrival. As evident from the contents, this volume draws entirely from Indian scholarship; this is purely an intentional and political act of the editors in so far as it showcases the act of contextualised knowledge production. Through this volume, we are also initiating a dialogue with internationally-based scholars working with feminist methodologies and seeking Indian feminist scholarship in the field of Indian geography. We are confi dent that the volume — the fi rst of its kind in India — would have signifi cant uses for Masters and Doctoral level students in the country as also for other disciplines engaged in gender studies as well as for those working towards the betterment of women and men’s lives from outside the academia and from within the civil society and NGO movements. We hope that this book Preface J xv will provide them with the much sought after material on feminist ontology and epistemologies from an Indian perspective. As we sign off, it would perhaps not be out of place to talk a little about the process of shaping this book together, the fact that we came from different academic and personal backgrounds — Kuntala, from a large regional university in India and later at the Australian National University (ANU), and Saraswati earlier at Gwalior and then at Jawaharlal Nehru University — this is not coincidental. It shows our differences as well as similarities in backgrounds. Researching gender in these locations would have had a very different trajectory. At the same time, however, we both were doing gender in geography at a time when androcentric tenor of the discipline was stark. This common background meant that we had much to share — enshrined in the Indian tradition of geography, we both were somehow made to answer: ‘What has geography got to do with gender?’ — a question which seems rather unbecoming in the context of contemporary global scholarship in geography on the day-to-day basis and yet in a strange way, this question actually helped as critically interrogate: ‘Indeed, what and how can geography add to the feminist understanding of gendered lives in India?’ If there were moments of resistance, we also had our share of support that cannot and should not be undervalued. It is an impossible task to list the innumerable inspirational sources/persons in one’s long journey. Yet Saraswati would like to acknowledge the academically exciting as well challenging environs of her university that allows one to explore the uncharted paths to heart’s delight. It was the Vice Chancellor’s Fellowship award at the Australian National University (ANU) in the summer of 2008 which provided her with requisite time and space to embark upon this long-cherished project along with Kuntala. Kuntala would like to thank the ANU for providing an enabling and refreshing environment after her many years of service to the University of Burdwan. We would both like to thank the Resource Management in Asia Pacifi c Program at the Crawford School of Economics and Government, ANU College of Asia and the Pacifi c, where the idea of this volume took full shape. xvi J Doing Gender, Doing Geography Introduction

SARASWATI RAJU AND KUNTALA LAHIRI-DUTT

Part I

The term ‘gender’ has a long history and a range of meanings. The root of the word can be traced to Latin, ‘la: genus’, meaning ‘type’, ‘kind’ or ‘sort’. It is also connected to the Greek root ‘gen’, meaning ‘to produce’. In popular parlance, the terms ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ are often equated, but although biology or sex might form the basis of gender, gender is quite different from sex. The term ‘sex’ denotes biological differences between males and females, and ‘gender’ conveys what individuals conceive of their roles as males and females, largely sanctioned and ascribed by societal strictures. In other words, gender refers to how societies set the behavioural, social and cultural rules for being a man or a woman.1 That is, gender involves the way society creates, shapes and rewards the notions of femininity and masculinity.2 One can even see gender as something we do within specifi c social constraints, making gender identities fl uid over time and space (Bradley 2007). In some languages, gender signifies grammatical usage — a type of noun-class system, which may be classifi ed as masculine or

1 The French philosopher and writer, Simone de Beauvoir, in her classic text The Second Sex argued: ‘One is not born, but rather becomes a woman’. This view emphasises that gender is more a result of culture than nature, the differences between men and women being socially constructed. 2 See Ann Oakley’s infl uential early work Sex, Gender and Society of 1972 on this subject. Oakley was among the earliest sociologists to develop ideas about socialisation to explore how gender is learned and femininity and masculinity are socially constructed. 2 J Saraswati Raju and Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt feminine. Yet, another set of languages may apply the term ‘gender’ in a neuter-grammatical sense without attaching any masculine or feminine connection to the meaning of the word. The word ‘linga’, part of vernacular Hindi, which originated in the classic Sanskrit language, is one such term which requires a qualifying prefi x ‘male’ or ‘female’ — pung-linga and stree-linga, respectively — if it is to be used to mean biological sex. Interestingly, these two languages also do not have equivalent terms to denote ‘gender’. In the absence of such a term, ‘linga’ is used in an expanded way, that is, prãkritik linga (natural/biological sex) and saamajik linga (social sex or gender) (see Bhasin 2003). Of late, however, the term ‘gender’ has gained popular currency and is being (mis)used even for differentiating males and females as biological beings — ‘gender-ratios’ as opposed to ‘sex-ratios’, for example. While this is not desirable, it is, however, also to be noted that ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ are no longer seen as mutually independent of each other. It has been argued that male and female socialise into gendered roles through their sexed bodies, whereby sex as the biological identity of individuals plays out how they internalise certain values and behavioural codes as social beings (Nicholson 1995 quoted in McDowell 1999). Given this overlap, people who feel that their gender identity is incongruent with their biological sex would identify themselves as ‘intergender’. Since gender is a social construct, gendered encodings — behavioural norms for women and men — vary over space and time. Today, many women and men do things which were not socially acceptable till recently. Again, not everywhere are these social norms the same for all women. The presence of differential gendered spaces/places across India has been talked about in both popular and academic literature (Desai 2007; Grace 2003; Niranjana 2001; Phadke 2007). Recent development reports in India have brought out how spatial location in which women live makes a difference to even as basic a well-being indicator as ‘longevity’, that is, women in Kerala can expect to live longer by a margin of 18 years as compared to women in Madhya Pradesh despite little difference in per capita incomes between the two states. Such spatial overlapping with specific gendered attributes cuts across cultures. For example, residential patterning in North American cities has clearly identifi able physical correspondence with Introduction J 3 women-headed households, particularly of marginal groups; with suburbanisation and increasing use of private transportation, travel patterns have become gendered; labour market outcomes have been interlinked with women’s spatial access to opportunities. Examples abound to indicate the spatially-embedded processes of differentiating between women and men and how such spaces selectively allow men to produce and reproduce power and privilege creating gendered geographies. Why this should be so is an intriguing question and the answers lie in the complex interplay of social structures and institutions embedded in locational specifi cities which signifi cantly inform the place practices of women and men (Spain 1992). Until the 1970s, the gendered dimension had remained invisible in the analyses of social space and place in geography, which was till then largely an androcentric discipline. Communities and social groups were seen as homogeneous and terms such as ‘mankind’ or ‘human’ were assumed to include women as well. However, as contemporary discourses started challenging the masculinity implicit in contents of geography in new interpretations of space and place, women, gender and gender relations have emerged as fresh frontiers to be explored. In such endeavours, the positioning of ‘gender’ as a separate conceptual category against the rather immutable ‘sex’ ‘proved invaluable’ for gender relations were being theorised as spatially variable ‘phenomena across a range of different scales ... not only between countries and over historical time but also in everyday spaces and interactions’ (McDowell 1999: 105). Taking full advantage of theoretical developments in other disciplines, geographical research started offering increasingly complex and persuasive explanations and understanding of place and habitus as gendered locations. With gradual maturing of the fi eld, alternative explanations questioning some of the established notions involving gender, space and place also arose. It was argued, for example, that feminist scholarship (in geography) was essentially produced by relatively affl uent sections of scholars without enough sensitivity to difference amongst women from other subaltern locations such as women of colour, ethnic minor- ities and so on. These processes resulted in wide-ranging discussions on how knowledge is situated, produced and valued and how locally- relevant research has to be acknowledged (Belgeo 2007: passim; see Chapters 1 and 2 in this volume for elaborations on many of 4 J Saraswati Raju and Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt these issues. One such example is the much-debated binary separation of spaces into ‘public’ and ‘private’ — both as the outcome of ideologies of domesticity for women on the one hand and the reinforcement and reproduction of those ideologies through spatial confi guration on the other — which could be challenged when contextually placed. For many poor women in rural India, boundaries between the public and private are often blurred as much of the agricultural work is carried out within home premises and as women take their children along to the fi elds. Similarly, in some urban locations, a public street essentially dominated by the presence of men in the mornings may turn into a semi-private space on snug winter afternoons for women in the neighbourhood. In ‘doing gender’, the place did not remain just a ‘thing in itself’ — a passive locus/container as the ‘unchanging backdrop against which life is played out’ (Lefebvre 1991 quoted in Mitchell 2000: 215) — but turned into a historically and socially-grounded existential space. This space constitutes and is constituted by socially produced and signifying aspects, and consequently the meanings of space were expanded to include the imagined and symbolic. Thus, space was no longer simply seen or defi ned abstractly or subjectively– discursively; it has an existential reality. In other words, the epistemological tensions/boundaries between what constitutes space (non-real) and place (real) became increasingly blurred. Framed thus in a mutually interactive framework, space and place, it is argued, open up potentially latent sites for critical engagement with gender and patriarchal structures — that is, how the gendered realms get enacted, re-enacted, constituted and reconstituted in mediation with specifi c spatial context. Indian geographers have also started engaging with gender issues and a growing body of writings on gender has been produced. However, much of Indian geographical research has been in proven areas of research carried out through orthodox methodologies and accepted tools of research in order to carve out hitherto unwelcome niches without destabilising the established order. This is perhaps done subconsciously because following a particular approach also meant adopting a rational strategy. Feminist research methods — often qualitative in nature — have been less widely acceptable in the geographical tradition of India with its emphasis on empirical/ quantitative data-based analyses, and also as a response to the Introduction J 5 need to receive wider academic acceptance and acknowledgement. Also, many scholars do not want a ‘feminist’ tag even as what they do can be included essentially within the subject matter of feminist geography. It is possible that the research methods and approaches prevalent in the geography of gender are intricately linked with the (then) existing intellectual traditions and practices in Indian geography in general and cannot be sidelined or undervalued. More importantly, the initial works have to be recognised for their subversive value in propagating the fi eld further. Interestingly, while more qualitative methods are being explored and increasingly getting recognition, quantitative studies are also being undertaken alongside. Opinions still vary about the effi cacy of one methodology over another. It is not our intention to enter that debate within the space of this volume — some of these issues are dealt with by the editors in their respective chapters. Let us say that the kinds of questions being asked and the scale at which they are being pitched would determine what methods and tools to use as research concerns/questions should inform the research methodologies rather than the other way round. That said, as younger Indian scholars are increasingly becoming interested in studying gender in geography, dissatisfaction with empiricism is quite palpable and recent research has begun to include innovative mix-method approaches such as use of remote sensing, GIS, visual sources and in-depth case studies. That momentum has yet to reach a critical mass for those working on gender to be considered fi rmly within the disciplinary fold of geography in India remains an issue for concern. Overall, however, the trajectory that has been followed is what we could call ‘incremental pragmatism’ — using available spaces as entry points and carving out new ones at appropriate moments. We would like to position our book as a pioneering and signifi - cant intervention in bringing to the fore front Indian geographers’ contributions to understanding gender, and through it, help enrich the discipline of geography itself. In placing gender as a legitimate subject fi eld of geography, this volume also engages, to some extent, with the recent ‘spatial turn’ in international and national social science scholarship that has reclaimed the explanatory power of space and place in social theory, a power that has unfortunately been dif- fused in the contradicting tendencies that characterise geography 6 J Saraswati Raju and Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt today — of the two extremes of pure objective ‘scientism’ and deconstructive post-modernist scholarship.3 Although ‘our geographies’ of gender are very different in their content and methodologies to ‘their geographies’, we appreciate that there are many in-between categories that allow us space to establish a dialogue. This dialogue is not only amongst those working within the disciplinary fold of Indian geography, but in which others can participate. Through this volume, we would like to initiate a dialogue with both internationally based scholars working with feminist methodologies and seeking Indian feminist scholarship in Indian geography, and Indian feminists and Indian geographers working from their disciplinary perspectives. In order to have a meaningful dialogue, it is important to communicate our research to a wider audience of geographers in a language accessible to non-specialists. Very often, feminist language tends to be obscure and the text too dense for uninitiated readers. In shaping this volume, we have purposively kept this in mind. This volume draws entirely from Indian scholarship — a mix of a few established and well-placed authors together with emerging ones. If the younger scholars have raised their voices, pushed the frontiers of research into a less-trodden fi eld at some risk, the book aims at creating spaces for them so as to claim their arrival. It would have been possible for us to invite international scholars or even more established scholars from India to contribute to this volume. While this would have made our editorial task somewhat easier, we conciously avoided that path. With the present sensitivities and contestations toward the Anglo-Saxon/Eurocentric hegemonies, we not only wanted to posit upfront how local context and legacies have shaped knowledge production in Indian geography, but also to trace the changing contours of theoretical and methodological shifts in research over the years. The pairing of chapters in this book with diverse methods, even as the issues are similar, is thus done with

3 The past two decades have witnessed questioning of and a shift away from the overarching theories and grand narratives which have been insen- sitive to difference and localised speciﬁ cities. That geography matters in unravelling the processes and events in the existential lives of humans has now been increasingly acknowledged across social science disciplines including geography — a paradigm which has often been referred to as the ‘spatial turn’. Introduction J 7 the purpose of foregrounding the parallel processes of knowledge production and methodological diversities/shifts. We do not claim an exhaustive coverage of themes on gender that are being studied by Indian geographers either in terms of content or geographical coverage. For example, we have no exposition on ‘gender and environment’ which is clearly ‘geographical’ in nature. This may be both a limitation on the editors’ part in not being able to locate a geographer in India who has worked on the theme or, more importantly, a telling sign of the state of current affairs in geography of gender that nothing is readily available on this issue. However, we do feel that the collection is symptomatic of the emerging concerns and the changing research tools in doing gender in geography.

Part II

The chapters are grouped under three broad themes: ‘World of Work’; ‘Reproduction, Survival and Care’ and ‘Domestic and Public Spaces’. Following the brief introduction, the fi rst part consists of two papers by the editors. Drawing largely from her experiences of formative years of geography of gender internationally and nationally, Saraswati Raju (Chapter 1) maps out the emergence of (research) subjects as gendered and spatially anchored having a bearing on existential realities in their day-to-day lives. Based on an extensive literature review and her own struggles within the discipline, she lays bare how gender, space and place intersect to create geographies of their own. In doing so, she makes a strong case for claiming legitimate spaces for gender concerns in geographical knowledge in India. In tracing the trajectory of geography of gender as it historically and pedagogically evolved elsewhere and in India, Raju engages briefl y with the politics of knowledge production and its contextualisation, identifi es certain stumbling blocks and ways to circumvent them in a pragmatic manner. The second chapter by Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt has two distinctly separate threads. One is pedagogic and explores feminist research methodologies to present the geography of gender as a legitimate, relevant and popular research fi eld with a focus on India. The second hinges upon her argument that to understand gender research in Indian geography, one must situate both geography and feminism in 8 J Saraswati Raju and Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

India and understand their growth, resultant hierarchies and historic inequities. The author argues that the ongoing engagement of Indian geography with the scientifi c project of modernity in India attributes a unique positivist nature to the studies of gender in the discipline. According to her, feminism in India is expressed differently and arises from a different context; geographical studies of gender in India have different interests, agendas and issues and that they present an increasingly compelling voice that needs to be heard by those who dominate feminist geography. A variety of aspects of women’s formal and informal world of work is the subject of the chapters included in Section I. Arpita Banerjee (Chapter 3), while suggesting a clearly identifi able upward- rising trend in terms of women moving to cities for work, points out how marriage and accompanying household responsibilities intersect women’s pathways to work. She further notes how the primacy of marriage and the framing of men as ‘bread-earners’ continue to relegate women’s working status to the backburner. For example, married women may be formally working, but if they are married and working, their married status would override their working status and in offi cial record-keeping, they are most likely to be identifi ed as ‘associational’ migrants who have moved along with their husbands on account of marriage. It is not incidental that most young women workers in the labour market are unmarried. At the same time, however, Banerjee argues that an expanded and anonymous urban environment helps women to break away from the traditional gendered roles to some extent. These dynamics vary according to the locational and size specifi cities of urban centres — larger versus smaller. The opportunities they provide play out differently in terms of caste/class/ethnic intersections. In general, however, urban locales seem to encourage women to expand their activity spaces. In contrast with Banerjee’s macro study of urban centres for India as a whole, Pallabi Sil explores the gender and space dynamics in the small town of Burdwan in Chapter 4. Deviating from the usual positioning of globalising processes as exploitative in terms of women’s increasing burden, Pallabi Sil shows that these processes have created a trans-local situation which has motivated middle- class women to reconfi gure space and places. This has been achieved through newer forms of economic transactions in terms of adopting individualised ways of income generation suited to their own skills, Introduction J 9 ability to invest and familial positionalities. Thus, even as the overall burden may have increased, new and tacit possibilities have been created for these women to expand their social and economic spaces. Drawing from research on the Swarnajayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana (SGSY) in Burdwan district of West Bengal, Gopa Samanta (Chapter 5) looks at the viability of microfi nance and group approach as poverty-alleviating strategies for rural women as well as the problems underlying the functioning of such groups. The author contends that the SGSY scheme must address specifi c contextual needs and requirements rather than act as a restrictive instrument. According to her, geographical factors specifi c to a given location such as variations in transport facilities, availability of local market and/or mismatch of indigenous skill and acquired skill of women for livelihood activities become signifi cant in infl uencing the outcomes of microfi nance activities. Similar to Pallabi Sil’s observations, Taneesha Mohan’s chapter (Chapter 6) on high-end women workers operating from homes in conservative Delhi, talks about how, for such workers, a certain degree of blurring of the spatial and temporal boundaries that separate the public (workplace) and the private sphere (home) had occurred. Although these women have crossed over the domain of work traditionally associated with men, being at home means that they also take care of gender encoded familial responsibilities — in many cases more than the women who go out and work. For their male counterparts, home or outside as a workplace does not seem to make any signifi cant difference. Thus, home-based work seen in popular discourse as ‘fl exible’ and therefore more suited to women’s needs’ conveniently re-endorses the primary constructs of men as ‘bread-earners’ and women as ‘homemakers’. In this sense, homeworkers only rearticulate age-old gendered norms. What makes it worse is that the home, even as a workplace, continues to be framed as a private domain outside the reach of public scrutiny. The chapters in this section hint at several parallel processes. While certain spaces are liberating, even if in a limited sense, certain others seem to be constraining. Even if questioned in principle, one can perhaps see how working from home may be interpreted as a tacit consent to socially assigned roles to men and women — many a time internalised by women themselves. And yet, as argued by many feminist scholars and endorsed here as well, these constructs 10 J Saraswati Raju and Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt seem to spill over to formal labour markets as well where marriage and domesticity not only intervene in women’s pathways to formal work, but also act to infl uence the ‘suitability’ of occupational avenues for them. Section II consists of two chapters engaging with survival and healthcare of young children using very different methodologies. Hassan’s study (Chapter 7) examines the spatiality of gender relations in India as articulated through differential survival chances of baby girls and boys, that is, child sex ratios (CSRs), in the 0–6 age group. Using district-level data from the Census of India and Population Foundation of India, the author maps the CSRs to identify regional patterns therein. Accordingly, there exist vast areas of what he calls ‘survival disadvantage’ for girl children in the north and northwest of the country. Patches of this ‘survival disadvantage’ were also seen in the southern states. He concludes that the often talked-about north–south divide whereby the south is seen as having a relatively better gender regime for women as compared to the north is getting blurred as far as CSRs are concerned. The author cautions that in the absence of any corrective measures, the demographic regime of the north is likely to obliterate the distinctively differing gendered landscape in the country. On a very different scale, Manisha Singh (Chapter 8) explores the interface between household gender dynamics and child health in the city of Lucknow. Using the concept of spatial embeddedness of existential lives as an entry point, she argues that the locational specifi cs of a given neighbourhood, through its social network and ‘demonstration effects’, signifi cantly shape women’s lives independent of their religious locations — Hindu and Muslim in this case — and their responses to child health. She differentiates between mixed (Hindu–Muslim) and isolated (Muslim) neighbourhoods as backdrops to the possibility of ‘pull up’ and ‘pull down’ effects on health of adjacency to different types of people or places. This study reveals that isolated locations are likely to have more watertight hierarchical set-ups between the rich and the poor than the intermixed locations, affecting the interchange in ideas and values and consequent bearing on child health indicators. Neighbourhoods where the rich and poor live in close spatial proximity seem to provide scope for ‘social learning’ as also ‘social checks’ on acceptable behaviours in so far as Introduction J 11 child health is concerned, even as the private domain of the household remains largely unaffected by such neighbourhood effects. The last section opens with Sanjeer Alam (Chapter 9) who focuses on married women’s decision-making processes within families. Conventionally, social policy debates on gender equity do not move beyond access to education and employment status, ignoring the questions of women’s location vis-à-vis men in a family and in socio- economic domains. Using macro-level data from the National Family Health Survey, the author argues that women’s exclusion from decision-making processes demonstrates a multi-dimensional character. At one time it is the structural determinants whereas at another it is the agencies of change that emerge as the most powerful explanatory variables. In yet another case, the processes appear to be affected by geographical location. Thus, in a complex, mutually constitutive manner, family characteristics, acquired individual attributes such as education and work status, and broader structural variables of class and caste interact in consonance with spatially embedded contexts. Of these, however, spatial characteristics seem to override the infl uence of other factors as even after controlling for all other variables signifi cantly infl uencing women’s decision-making power, women in the northern/eastern region of India are far less likely to participate in decision-making than those in the southern/ western region. The author contends that such an observation calls for further investigation into nuances which are spatially entrenched and are quite distinctive in enhancing/impeding women’s decision- making power, independent of the factors explored and examined in his research. Tanusree Paul (Chapter 10) explores the gendering of presumably neutral public spaces such as markets, playgrounds and business districts in the city of Kolkata. She observes that despite the city’s relatively clean image as compared to other metros in terms of treating women, these public places clearly emerge as the locales where sex- differentiated practices are acted out whereby human agents create and recreate social structures through their bodily practices. When women use public spaces, their presence has to be legitimised by a purpose rather than a desire to be leisurely consuming them, quite in contrast with men who have socially sanctioned ‘hangouts’. The association of gender with public spaces, however, is not that simple. 12 J Saraswati Raju and Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

Women can rightfully claim the public spaces depending upon their age and the time of day. However, irrespective of age, women’s presence in public places during the late evening and at night is taboo even within the ‘parochial’ domain or the neighbourhood spaces where women are otherwise likely to feel more comfortable and in command. The author concludes that the spatial contexts of public spaces are sites that replicate the tenacity of asymmetrical gender relations in society at large. To sum up, the place-specifi c nuances and complexities of women’s gendered experiences are captured as snapshots rather than in their entirety in this volume. While certain locales, by virtue of their particular set of socio-economic and cultural attributes, may contribute to spatially anchored gendered experiences, these experiences may also be framed by the overwhelming and almost universally accepted norms, creating differences and integration of spaces and places at the same time. As we sign off, it would perhaps not be out of place to talk a little about the process of putting this book together, the fact that we came from different academic and personal backgrounds — Kuntala, from a large regional university in India and later at the Australian National University (ANU), and Saraswati, earlier at Gwalior and then at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. This is not coincidental, and reveals the differences as well as similarities in our backgrounds. Researching gender in these locations would have had a very different trajectory. At the same time, however, we were both doing gender in geography at a time when the androcentric tenor of the discipline was stark, inhibiting innovative thinking amongst Indian geographers. This common background meant that we had much to share. For example, enshrined in the Indian tradition of geography, we were somehow made to answer: ‘What has geography got to do with gender?’ This is a question which seems rather unbecoming in the context of contemporary global scholarship in geography and yet strangely, this question actually helped us to critically interrogate: ‘How can geography add to a feminist understanding of gendered lives?’ If there were moments of resistance we also had our share of support that cannot and should not be undervalued. It is an impossible task to list the innumerable inspirational sources/persons in one’s long journey and yet Saraswati would like to acknowledge the Vice Chancellor’s Fellowship award at The Australian National University (ANU) in the summer of 2008 which provided her with Introduction J 13 requisite time and space to embark upon this project along with Kuntala. Kuntala would like to thank the ANU for providing an enabling and refreshing environment after her many years of service to the University of Burdwan. We would both like to thank the Resource Management in Asia Pacifi c Program at the Research School of Pacifi c and Asian Studies in ANU where the idea of this volume took full shape. 1 Engendering the Androcentric Discipline of Geography and Claiming a Place: Revisiting the (Un)familiar

SARASWATI RAJU

What is gender? It is perhaps a dated inquest in present times and yet I want to start with such a question! When, in the proverbial Victorian sensibilities, girls were admonished to hear and not be seen, when boys were told not to be sissies when they cry or when young girls were punished for attempting to climb trees like boys, behavioural codes were being ascribed for boys and girls in certain ways suppressing their capabilities to be exactly the ways they were. Boys have tear glands and they can cry; girls have vocal cords and limbs and they can speak and climb trees! And yet, there are, almost everywhere, differential codes of conduct for boys or girls or for that matter, men and women. When Rani Laxmibai fought, she became a mardani (like a man) because women did not fi ght, while Indira Gandhi, the former prime minister of India, was often lauded as the ‘only man’ in her cabinet for her strong political overtures! Simply put, this is what we call gender — a socially, superfi cially imposed construct as to what boys and girls, men and women should or should not do. This essentialised construct of sex as different from the artifi cially imposed gender made it possible for gender to be theorised as ‘the cultural or social elaboration’ of ‘absolute [biological] sexual differences between women and men and, importantly, womens’ supposed inferiority in matters of physical strength and mental agility’ — and as such ‘amenable to change’ (McDowell 1999a: 107). The discourse around gender has been much nuanced at present, that is, sex and gender are not seen as delinked from each other now as was the case earlier. Scholars have argued that as sexed bodies, men and women are made to achieve and maintain Gendered and Claiming a Place in Geography J 15 a particular state of embodiment. In such a state, sex and gender play onto each other as a legitimised performance, any ‘deviation’ from this standardised code takes one to queer studies, to issues in the transgender and transsexual realm. However, I want to leave aside these very well-conceived, evolved and at the same time contested discourses interconnected with sex and gender and their constructs to return to gender as it is basically understood. What, has geography got to do with gender and its construct and why should we bother? Indeed what and why? Without much rhetoric or indulgence in theorising about the subject matter, is not geography the relationship between the (hu)man [sic] and the environment — built and the natural — expressed though spatial practices in terms of adaptation, changes and modifi cations? If we agree on this over-simplifi ed, yet some core concepts in geography, would the behavioural codes that make men and women gendered subjects change the environment — space/place–human relationship, that is, would men and women relate differently to environmental–spatial stimuli and constraints? More generally, would the gendered constructs infl uence and/or inhibit how people experience and interact with others humans and non-humans in the lived-in world? Would certain privileges or opportunities be open or closed to men and women because of their gendered locations? Those studying gender in geography would say an emphatic yes to these and many more similar questions, and also substantiate their claims.1 I am one of them trying to put my arguments across in this chapter, in as uncomplicated a manner as possible, indeed a formidable task to assert that gender matters in how geographies are created.2 Before engaging with gender and geography, I would like to bring to the forefront two points: (a) one of the most important outcomes of gender relations is that it not only reinforces, but also

1 It is ironical that I speak of ‘substantiation’ while talking about gender because one of the preoccupations of scholars in this area is questioning the particular manner in which knowledge is produced in a so-called ‘scientiﬁ c’ manner. 2 It is rather frustrating that each time gender is brought into geographical enquiry, there would still be someone questioning its legitimate place in the discipline often asking, ‘is this geography’? Also, see, Datta and De (2008). 16 J Saraswati Raju

‘solidify hierarchies and relationships of power in a society’ (Cope 2002: 45) by creating multiple marginalities and excluding privileges; and (b) women and gender constructs are not monoliths. Caste, class, religion and ethnicity intercept gendered locations. For example, it is well-documented that women from higher castes face stricter spatial codes as opposed to those belonging to lower castes (Carr and Jhabvala 1996; Grace 2003; Raju and Bagchi 1993b). Women from different class locations often have a clash of interests when it comes to environmental consumption and management which is essentially because poor women are more likely to depend on nature-linked activities for their survival in contrast with women from more affl uent classes and so on (Sarin 2008).3 I take note of multiple locations and proscription and nuanced complexities of multilayered gendered existence in which, following Archer’s (2004) argument, all axes of differentiation may not be equal. That said, my prime engagement here is with gendered locations and spatiality and how they are mutually and constitutively anchored (Agarwal 1994; Buhler 2001; Huq-Hussain et al. 2006; Raju et al. 1999; Seager 2003).4 Despite or perhaps because of awareness of how incredibly rich and fast growing scholarship on the geography of gender has become, I neither claim an exhaustive review of the repertoire of the literature on gender nor do I attempt to trace every possible strand of argument there is across the globe on the theme — it is an impossible task, at least within the purview of this chapter. My attempt here is in the manner of stocktaking, tracing the arduous journey that the sub-fi eld has crossed through to reach where it has — the maturing of the fi eld

3 In an excellent exposition on gender and nature relationship, Madhu Sarin (2008) quotes an incident where a Munda tribal man got women from his community to beat women of a lower status tribal community who were cutting fi rewood from their protected forest — a show of the zeal with which men of his community were protecting their forest. Possibly an atypical extreme case, as Sarin points out, the above example illustrates how the complexity of power dynamics of class and gender between communities and between different sections of the same community play out in a situation of confl ict over management of dwindling forest resources. 4 I am also not looking at the postmodern engagements with deconstructed categories of gender making it so fl uid at times that at worst it preempts feminist methods to be meaningful and at best opens up animated debates about feminist methods and feminist politics (McDowell 1997; also see Raju 2002). Gendered and Claiming a Place in Geography J 17 internationally — as much as to argue for positioning gender fi rmly within the orbit of geographical research and teaching in India. Our geographies would remain partial without it. The chapter is organised in four sections. The fi rst reviews a wide variety of literature, not only from various facets of life, but also from different contexts in order to critically show how gendered constructs produce different spatial experiences for men and women and impact their lives. I use examples, not necessarily from geography per se, but from non-geographical sources as well that fall directly within the realm of geography. Although not sequentially so, such understanding had indeed provided a backdrop to become the stepping stone for establishing the sub-fi eld of the geography of gender even if unevenly. The second section traces the historical trajectory of the sub-fi eld internationally to then place the Indian situation in perspective in the third section. In locating India so, I am informed by my fi rm belief that knowledge is situated and produced contextually and should be placed and evaluated thus.5 Accordingly, I frame my discourse on the geography of gender against the larger terrain of geographical knowledge as it developed in India. The last section, contains brief reflections along with a discussion on the politics of knowledge production and its bearing on research agendas in general.

Gendered Locations and Differentiated Responses Natural Resources and Access

It is well documented that women’s dependence on common property resources is disproportionately higher than that of men because they are the prime users of these resources (Robbins 1998). This is essentially because of the gendered division of labour within households. According to the NSSO Report (2004), 41 per cent of women in India indulge in free collection of fi sh, and fi rewood including minor forest products; in northeastern states, with their mountain economy, this percentage is much higher. Water collection is another task disproportionately shared by women. In Asthana’s study (1997) of seven Indian villages, which covered 490 households, the proportion of women (above 15 years) in the household emerged as a signifi cant factor in choosing a safe

5 See fn. 24. 18 J Saraswati Raju source of drinking water irrespective of distance travelled. As almost 79 per cent of this water was carried by women, a household with a higher proportion of women had a higher capability of bringing water from a long distance. Not surprisingly, the proportion of adult men in the household had no effect. A study from Banaskantha in northwestern Gujarat points out, for example, how despite an improved drinking water situation following the state-installed scheme, water collection continued to remain a time-consuming process. Village women spent an average of three hours per day fetching water out of 15–16 working hours throughout the year whereas the family as a whole spent almost four hours for the same — the time allocated by daughters was 83 minutes, by sons 12 minutes and by husbands 15 minutes. James et al.’s 2002 survey showed that during summer each woman spent an average of seven hours a day to fetch water.6 In addition to the time and effort spent, women cover immense distances to collect water and free goods. In the central region of Malawi fuelwood collection was almost entirely carried out by girls and women with men pitching in only in exceptional cases. What is noteworthy in this case is that households that tended to collect more frequently from places farther away from home were not only large in size, but also had more women members (Brouwer et al. 1997). Although women are primarily responsible for domestic and commercial water, their needs can signiﬁ cantly differ from that of men. For example, although Sri Lankan and Nepali women worked on their husbands’ plots with similar water needs (in terms of adequate water supply for growing crops), they had different opinions regarding water deliveries. Nepali male farmers were most concerned about enough water at the start of the rice season to soften the soil for land preparation — their prime responsibility — whereas the women stressed the importance of water availability during the entire

6 A survey carried out in 1994 in the African countries of Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia showed that the time devoted to water carriage, primarily by women, ranged on an average from 135 hours per annum (22 minutes per day) in Zambia to 565 hours (93 minutes per day) in Tanga (Tanzania), whereas the load-carrying effort ranged from 4.4 ton–km per annum (12 kilo– km per day) to 24.7 ton–km (68 kilo–km per day), respectively. The fi gure of 24.7 ton–km per day is equivalent to carrying a 20 kilo load over 3.4 km per day (Calvo 1994; also see, Rathgeber 1996). Gendered and Claiming a Place in Geography J 19 season to suppress weed growth (Zwarteveen 1997; Zwarteveen and Neupane 1995). As Zwarteveen (1997) observes, gender differences in water needs may be caused indirectly by women and men having different crop preferences. Women’s direct and indirect dependency on nature have led to intricate theorising by scholars who saw nature as feminine and culture as masculine (see, Mies and Shiva 1993; Shiva 1989). They saw an important connection between the oppression of women and the oppression of nature and argued for women’s intrinsic affi nity with nature. This strand of thought has come to be known as ‘Eco- feminism’. Admittedly simplifi ed, it can be said that the discussions on Ecofeminism assume two basic forms: one around the (female) body and the other around female subordination/oppression. The ‘natural bond’ as envisaged by the proponents of Ecofeminism is thus based on the procreativity that women and nature are capable of and the latter argument draws from the exploitation of (inferior) nature by (superior) culture. Shiva’s work has been extremely infl uential internationally in this regard and yet Ecofeminism has also been equally contested as a theory, even as women/gender/natural resources studies are pursued. The basic argument running through the criticism is that women’s affi nity has nothing to do with the so-called ‘feminine’ qualities of care and nurturing but is refl ective of their pragmatism which emanates from the gender divisions of labour and distribution of opportunity which are closely connected with nature (Agarwal 1992; Jackson 1993; Raju 2006b). For example, in the remote Himalayan village of Dungari-Paitoli, women prevented men from selling the community forest which was to be converted into a potato seed farm. Unlike the women, who would have been deprived of free collection of fuel and fodder from the community forest, the men were more interested in the commercial conversion because it would open up their access to income-generating prospects and other modern means of development such as roads and so on (Agarwal and Anand 1982).

Gendered Spatiality, Mobility and Labour Market Outcomes

Although it is known that lack of access to formal labour markets has implications for reduced bargaining power for women within 20 J Saraswati Raju households, what is more important to note is that women participating in formal markets have greater spatial mobility (Dharmalingam and Morgan 1996). However, as work opportunities are expanding for women in India, they are not only becoming increasingly self- employed, the informal component of formal work is also being brought into the conﬁ nes of their homes (NSSO 2004). In both cases, their activity spaces become spatially limited and constrained with serious implications in terms of their access to information and opportunities (Baud and Raju 2002; Bose 1999; Carr et al. 1996; ILO 1999; Kantor 2002). However, these limitations are misconstrued as advantages in several ofﬁ cial discourses as pointed out by Mazumdar (2004: 17):

The system of home work is sometimes advantageous to ... [women] because [they] do ... their routine work at home … and … supplement the incomes of their families [as well]. The raw materials are generally collected from the employers/contractors by the men folk of the household and fi nished goods are also delivered to the contractors/ employers by them. The women have fl exibility in working as there are no fi xed hours of work and they do not have to move out of their houses . . . (emphasis added).

It is almost a universally recognised fact that the asymmetrical burden of household responsibilities keeps women from participating in formal labour markets and women taking care of household responsibilities are more or less omnipresent. And yet the participation rates of the women’s workforce vary widely across space. India, for example, is characterised by a marked regional pattern: states in the northern plain have relatively lower workforce participation rates as compared to the southern states (Agarwal 1994; Raju et al. 1999). The northern states have differential poverty and developmental levels and agro–ecological environs, but they share the common feature of fewer women in formal labour markets. This suggests that commonsensical propositions such as poverty pushing women to (formal) work including the restrictive role of household responsibilities do not impact women uniformly across space in terms of constraining/enhancing their entry into the labour market. In fact, some region-speciﬁ c socio-cultural factors create the uneven terrain. The explanations are complex, but there seems to exist differential social spaces that treat women differently in different Gendered and Claiming a Place in Geography J 21 places in India.7 As mentioned elsewhere, pure economic arguments anchored to demand–supply equations prove to be inadequate in understanding such gendered spatial formations in India (Raju and Bagchi 1993b). Workplace choices, even in formal settings outside the domain of the home, are gendered. This area remains under-researched in the Indian context, but studies from the West clearly show that journeys to work differ signiﬁ cantly for men and women (Sandow 2008). Women’s workplaces are usually situated closer to their homes than men. Shorter distances to work for women are because their work is usually concentrated in the neighbourhood (Henning and Lanzendorf 2005; Hjorthol 2000) or alternatively because their reproductive responsibilities take over their priorities in terms of allocation of time and energy (Henning and Lanzendorf 2005). Women have also reduced access to means of transport, particularly private means (Boris and Prugl 1996; Downing 1990; Hjorthol 2000; World Bank 1989). Moreover, long-established differences between men and women in terms of use of particular forms of transport having a bearing on their spatial access continue to remain (Pooley and Turnbull 2000). Whichever way one looks at it, the differences between men and women in terms of length of journey implicate how their employment opportunities are spatially contained (Hanson and Johnston 1985). In a study of trained and skilled women employees in Chennai and Delhi, women were often discouraged to apply for promotions as it would necessarily entail transfer to other locations or cities (Baud and Raju 2002). Despite several evidences which show that women are constrained as far as their spatial mobility is concerned, British and American studies indicate that housing is often chosen in relation to the job of

7 NSSO Report No. 518 on ‘Participation of Women in Specifi ed Activities along with Domestic Duties’ 2004–2005 offers some clues. Women who reported domestic duties as their usual work were asked the reasons for spending most of their day in domestic duties. About 20 per cent of rural women cited ‘social and/or religious constraints’, but this percentage varies from Haryana (42 per cent), Rajasthan (27 per cent), Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh (26 per cent), Bihar (21 per cent) — all located in the northern plain — to about 12 per cent in most southern states with none in Mizoram. Under such circumstances, the issue is not as much as of fewer opportunities as of norms and the intervention would have to be of a very different nature. 22 J Saraswati Raju the husband whereas the wife chooses her job in relation to location of abode (Hanson and Pratt 1995; Holcomb 1986; McDowell 1983). There is thus a general tendency for women to have fewer choices in terms of the geographical labour market than their husbands. The studies also reveal that for men, travelling distances rarely enter the evaluation of job possibilities. Since the turnover is usually higher on the labour market than on the housing market, a choice of housing is likely to infl uence men’s and women’s employment possibilities differently. In an interesting experiment concerned with the spread of literacy in one the most backward districts, Pudukkottai in rural Tamil Nadu, ‘mobility’ was added to other requisites of the project including literacy, numeracy, functionality and awareness. The existing means of transport were not in sync with women’s needs in terms of routes and timings. More importantly, having an independent means of transport was seen as providing women with ‘a sense of freedom, motivate them to learn more about the outside world, and evoke a desire to gain access to information’ including labour market opportunities. The campaign thus imparted the skill of riding bicycles to women and almost within a month, 50,000 women in the districts had learnt to bike (Rao 1999: 459). Rao further documents the impact such a seemingly innocuous measure had on women’s lives. Disregarding a few outcomes on the fl ipside such as increased work burden, just the fact that women had gained more physical mobility added to their spatial knowledge and worldview and eventually to their sense of independence, esteem and confi dence. Although Rao does not specifi cally touch upon this point, it is implicit in her account that women’s needs in terms of accessibility to resources differ from that of men. Urban geography has the distinction of being central to the development of feminist geography (Fincher 2007). In this context, Hanson and Pratt’s (1995) project on the relationship between work and home for men and women in the city of Worcester, Massachusetts, assumes a very signifi cant contribution.8 This project placed gender

8 As Cope (2002: 53) observes, this study made a difference to the research by saying it is ‘nearly impossible to conceptualise what [the] study would have been without it’. The chapter by Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt will talk about the methods including feminist epistemologies in detail. Gendered and Claiming a Place in Geography J 23 dynamics at the centre in terms of inherently-interdependent relations between household division of labour and the occupational segmentation of the labour market by pointing out how what women are supposed to do at home puts both spatial and time limits on their job searches on one hand and how, on the other, some of the jobs get ghettoised as ‘women’s jobs’ in employers’ minds (also see Raju 2006c). Bose’s 1998 study resonates with almost similar concerns as that of Hanson and Pratt. She uses a theoretical framework that addresses women’s spatial conﬁ nement and segregation as it relates to employment opportunities for slum women of Kolkata (also see Tenhunen 2006). I would also like to draw upon some of my recent and not-so- recent works to further exemplify how spatiality intersects with gendered constructions or alternatively how gendered constructs have to be spatially contextualised. For example, skilled women workers in the garment and electronic industries in Delhi and Chennai despite being located primarily within the domestic sphere were seen to have experienced a very different normative regime in the relatively more gender-friendly environs of Chennai located in the south as compared to the more restrictive northern city of Delhi — a regime much discussed in the literature (Bhatt and Zavier 2003; Dyson and Moore 1983; Karve 1965; Menon-Sen and Shiva Kumar 2001; Raju et al. 1999; Rustagi 2003).9 This has created a unique social system of industrial production that aims at an international reach, but the social dynamics of labour remain ﬁ rmly embedded in locally- contextualised ways in which labour and skills are produced and institutionalised (Raju 2006c; also see R. Basu 2001). Following the same strand of thought, I argue elsewhere that although spatial contexts are by no means deterministic, they set limits to possibilities with which gendered relations can be negotiated and/ or bargained for or not negotiated and/or not bargained for. It makes it possible for men in some places to remain marginal to an otherwise dominant order of patriarchy and its masculine manifestations while elsewhere they may subscribe to it rigidly suggesting that patriarchy is not a monolith and there can be several manifestations of what I call ‘regional patriarchies’ (Raju 2001, 2006d).

9 The data from NFHS-2 also show similar geographic variations. 24 J Saraswati Raju

Other Spheres

Apart from the spheres which have been traditionally associated with women’s responsibilities, gender is emerging as a central analytical construct in exploring other arenas of concern as well. One such concern is ownership of landed property and tenancy relationships. Baruah (2007) explores the nature of land tenure and landed property rights in slums in Ahmedabad from a gender perspective. She persuasively argues that ownership rights in landed property hold a privileged position in the South Asian context and therefore property ownership has a strong bearing on gender relationships both within and outside the household. Thus, women’s struggles for a legitimate share in landed property have the potential to become critical entry points for women’s over-all empowerment. Also, S. Basu (2001) raises key issues that need consideration in developing a gendered vision of urban land rights, tenure and reform. Inclusion of gender in political geography may seem somewhat questionable, but as Cope (1997) observes, there has been progress in this direction over the years. According to her, gender-based structures enter the conceptualisation of power relations at a variety of scales and in different spatial contexts. The citizenships issue is a case in point. Skill-based entries — formal or informal — across borders, concentration of migrants in ghettoised quarters of settlements and so on have defi nite gender angles (Bannerjee and Raju 2009). These issues are complex and at the same time crucial for a thorough understanding of political theory and the role of the state (Cope 1997). Scholars are now writing across sub-disciplines in geography on gender ranging from economic, social-cultural and historical on the one hand to Geographic Information System (GIS, see Chapter 2) and environmental and physical fi elds on the other. It is not possible to trace all that is available. There is diversity in content as well as approaches and methods so that we no longer talk about the fi eld as an undifferentiated entity or feminist/gender geography — rather we have geographies (McDowell 1997; Moss and Al-Hindi 2008). In a way, these writings raise awareness about place-specifi cities and question women-centric understanding of gender — usually we talk about gender but we often mean women and that too exclusively — a problematic practice because it undermines the play of asymmetrical power relations between men and women that produces gendered Gendered and Claiming a Place in Geography J 25 geographies.10 Geographies of gender are thus far more multifaceted than just being additive, which is, including women as one component (see, Agarwal 1994). Feminist geographers have systematically talked of the ‘power geometry’ of difference — complex web of relations of domination and subordination between the two genders — that often articulate themselves through spatial segregation of space in the contested binaries of inside/outside, private/public, home/market and so on. Examples are ad infi nitum from both geographical scholarships and disciplines outside geography. In the Indian context, however, geographically-embedded discourses on gender are largely coming from outside the discipline. This may not be an issue in itself as disciplinary boundaries often blur in the pursuit of knowledge. The more important question to be asked is why geographers with their special edge to spatial understanding existential realities are not engaging as much with the subject matter under discussion? The problematic, as the subsequent section unravels, is that the ‘human’ in geography has largely been constituted as the ‘man’. What makes it wore is that such masculine construct claims ‘to be exhaustive and it therefore thinks that no one else can add to that knowledge’ (Rose 1993 quoted in Cope 2002: 46).

The Emergence of Geography of Gender International Discourse

All of this is so close to my heart that I’m sure if anyone cut me open They’d ﬁ nd a map inside, with rivers and roads for veins. — Ena L. Yonge, American Geographical Society map curator, 1917–1962 (quoted in Monk 2003)

10 There are other more complex issues to deal with: How do we situate our analysis? Should gender be an isolated concern particularly if one is dealing with rigid structures? Should gender concerns not be woven into prevailing wider social issues such as inadequate water supply, livelihood concerns, alcoholism, smoking and drinking, to name a few, with which women and men can relate more directly and which would perhaps provide a larger canvas and a disciplinary legitimacy in the world of Indian geography? I will return to these issues brieﬂ y in subsequent paragraphs. 26 J Saraswati Raju

Until the 1970s, gender had remained almost invisible in the androcentric discipline of geography even in the Anglo-American context where one was taught that the terms ‘human’ or even ‘mankind’ subsumed both men and women. For most feminist scholars it has been a tough journey to challenge the implicit masculinity of the discipline by continually highlighting the intersection of place and space with the existential speciﬁ cities of women’s lives. According to Hanson and Monk (1982), the initial project in this regard was essentially framed in terms of ‘not excluding half the human from human geography’, but it soon became clear that a critique of the very category of humanity was required. Starting such work has been described as a ‘cultural moment of revelation and relief whereby the category of the ‘human’ — a standard against which all differences translate to lack — was brought down to earth, given a pair of pants, and reminded that it was not the only player in town’ (Bordo 1990: 137). McDowell notes that this was a ‘critical moment’ for many geographers in ‘staking a claim within a discipline that had either ignored women or constructed them as the “other”’ (1992: 400–01). The Anglophone world in general and the USA in particular have documented histories, unparalleled elsewhere, about women geographers and gender discourses in the ﬁ eld of geography in USA (Monk 2003).11 It is not possible within the limited scope of this chapter to capture all the facets of this exciting account, but if one were to focus only on professional geographers, as Stoddard suggests (quoted in Monk 2003), they were rare in the early 1950s and early to mid-1960s despite these years being boom years for higher education in the US as well as for geography in general (Monk 2003). However, if the category of ‘professional geographer’ were to expand to include those practising not only in ‘universities’ but

11 It is a difﬁ cult task whom to label as a geographer and which writings to call geographical—they can be women travellers writing their travel accounts in British India (Blunt 1999) or Lucia Harrison as far back as 1909 riding a mule in the Sierra Madre Oriental and publishing in Economic Geography and Journal of Geography in USA. Harrison was a faculty in institutions of higher education that were designed to prepare school teachers. Initially two-year institutions, they were gradually upgraded to degree-granting institutions. By the early-mid 20th century, many of the women teaching in them had masters or Ph.D. credentials (Monk 2004). Gendered and Claiming a Place in Geography J 27 also in teachers’ training institutions, as journal editors and in government, as well as the women travel writers, there were many professional women geographers in America well before the 1970s. Later years, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s saw some decline (also, see Maddrell 2009).12 It was around the 1970s and 1980s, that geographies of women’s experiences began to develop in the Anglophone human geography as it was increasingly felt that they were not effectively articulated in the geographic literature (Fincher 2007).13 Yet, as late as in 2002, Anglo-American geographers lamented that geography as a discipline is a ‘gendered space’ within which gender equity can only be seen as a ‘boundary object’ that mediates the tensions between conservatives who oppose equity programmes and those who support them. Whilst the proportion of women in all social sciences was around 26 per cent in Canada, for geography, it was around 16 per cent (Berg 2002: 249). Geography performed poorly in terms of gender equity in Canadian universities: there were 19 times more male than female full-time professors in geography departments. Janice Monk from the USA has been the pioneer woman geographer at the forefront of establishing the legitimacy of gender studies in geography. In fact, in tracing her professional life course, one can also trace the evolution of geography of gender (see, Fenster 2007; Fincher 2007; Howitt 2007).14 Two of Monk’s early review writings deserve special mention: the one which has been referred to earlier also is ‘On Not Excluding Half of the Human in Human Geography’ with Susan Hanson and the second is the ﬁ rst review article on

12 I thank Professor Janice Monk, School of Geography and Development, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA for pointing this out to me as also for many useful comments on the initial draft of this paper. 13 Recalling her experience, Ruth Fincher (2007: 5) says: ‘Vivid in my memory is my participation in a panel at an AAG meeting in the early 1980s when I was a new Assistant Professor in Canada. On the panel with me were three eminent, senior, male geographers, one of whom I asked why he never mentioned the importance of gender in the spatial social theory about class relations that he was developing with great success. “Oh,” he said, “it’s your job to do that.” And maybe it was, though clearly he saw gender as solely about women and so a matter for them.’ 14 See, Gender, Place & Culture, 14 (1): passim. 28 J Saraswati Raju feminist geography with Wilbur Zelinsky and Susan Hanson, both in 1982. These writings clearly established the invisibility of women in geography academia, which the authors attributed to the deep- rooted gender bias in geographical research. Monk notes how such invisibility/under-representation was ‘associated with women geographers’ feelings of isolation, of being outsiders, of oppression and of lack of collegial support (2004: 9).’15 Monk, Zelinsky and Hanson covered a wide range of themes on women that were being produced in geography including environment and landscapes, transport, health, medical facilities and childcare, quality of life and status of women indicators, access to housing, educational attainment, women and the world of work and so on, both in the Third World and in industrialised countries. As Fenster (2007:45) points out: ‘[T]his vast review was a signiﬁ cant statement in itself: that regardless of women’s inferior status, low representation in geography departments and limited access to resources, women in fact did produce an impressive body of work.’16 It was at the Paris Congress in 1984 that Janice Monk and her colleagues organised an informal session of concerned scholars to discuss the prospects of advancing studies on women and gender through the prestigious International Geographical Union (IGU).17

15 The representation of women within university teaching has implications for the climate for students and for the nature of the curriculum, which shape women’s consciousness of gendered practices and their strategies for dealing with them. 16 There is a vast repertoire since then on geographical writings on gender. 17 The Commission on Gender and Geography of the IGU is an active group with about 350 members from 60 countries. Its active programme organises one or two meetings each year and expands its intellectual network through academic publications, newsletters and its website. The objectives of the Commission are: a. to create a comfortable platform for women and men to exchange ideas concerning feminist and gender studies in geography; b. to present and discuss new research on these issues; and c. to create collaborations in research and other academic work among students and scholars working on these themes. It was not an easy task, as some senior geographers did not want to have ‘a few lesbians’ muddling with geography! Gendered and Claiming a Place in Geography J 29

This was followed by the presentation of a half-day programme in Barcelona in 1986 which assessed emerging gender research in the international arena to foster networking and consider further steps. At the Sydney Congress in 1988, it successfully proposed a study group on gender and geography, which was recognised as a full commission by the IGU in 1992 even as several study groups could never achieve such a status. In the meanwhile, the AAG Specialty Group ‘Geographic Perspectives on Women’ was founded in the early 1980s. Efforts were on elsewhere in the USA. As Domosh and Kenzer (1991) report, the Department of Geography, the Program and the Institute for the Study of Women and Men in Society at the University of Southern California had sponsored a conference in March 1990 titled ‘Geography and Gender: A Feminist Geography Symposium’ — the ﬁ rst of its kind in North America that speciﬁ cally addressed the issue of feminist geography. This event was inspired by another conference on feminism and historical geography at the University of London in the previous year. Also, the British Women and Geography Study Group had produced the collaboratively- authored book Geography and Gender in 1984 (also see, Momsen and Townsend 1987). Subsequent years have witnessed the formation of many national commissions in various Anglophone and African and Asian countries. Undoubtedly, the IGU commission has a crucial role to play among English-speaking First-World geographers. More importantly, it has also provided a very proactive and congenial environment for international scholars to meet and engage in mutually fruitful dialogue in large numbers from countries across the globe including scholars from Australia, Europe, South Asia, Spain, Taiwan and others (Fincher 2007). The Commission’s newsletter, for over 18 years, serves as an important hub for international scholars (see Fenster 2007). Apart from the IGU Commission, the Association of American Geographers’ Geographic Perspectives on Women Specialty Group networks with other groups and occasionally sponsors scholars from across the world (Cravey 2007). With an ever-expanding repertoire in terms of research and teaching to claim internationally, women/gender concerns are now a part of geography curricula in almost quite a few universities in the USA, the UK and Europe and slightly more sporadically elsewhere. 30 J Saraswati Raju

The Anglophonic Hegemony

It is a rather undisputed fact that Anglophone geography has not only performed a pioneering role in bringing gender concerns to the forefront, but also that Anglo-American centrality in the production of knowledge in feminist geography is especially strong (Fenster 2007). This centrality has been seen as part of the overall hegemony of Anglo-American knowledge-production in geography and its role in formulating the terms of international academic debate for over two decades (Fenster 2007; Garcia-Ramon and Pujol 2004; Garcia-Ramon et al. 2006; Garcia-Ramon and Monk 2007; McGuirk 2006; Sheppard 2006).18 Since Antipode published the fi rst feminist article in geography, a paper on gender and the structure of cities by Pat Burnett in 1973 (McDowell 1997), the fi eld has grown immensely in terms of method and content. More importantly, scholars had started to make a case to move beyond description and start seeing women as located in the asymmetrical power relations between men and women. Patriarchy was posited both as a theoretical construct and as a normative set of rules framing the existential (material) realities of women’s lives, emphasising, thus, ‘the structural nature of social relations’ (Little 2007: 338). These were some of the key moments. As gender started fi guring in international discussions and political agendas and as countries became signatories to gender-pro declarations, with networking, funding and exchanges around the world, ‘gender’ started becoming part of the politically correct vocabu- lary. These national and international discourses thus worked toward making gender a part of geography academia in several countries including South Asia, even if indirectly. To quote (Kobayashi 2003), the overall output has been awesome to say the least. And yet a caveat is in order. While doing gender, scholars had to struggle, negotiate and wade through fi rmly established old academic orders and prevailing constructs of what is geography and what is not.19

18 Garcia-Ramon et al.’s (2006) observations are based on content analysis of the premier journal Gender, Place & Culture dedicated to feminist geography. 19 I was often asked whether I want to be a ‘good’ geographer or a ‘bad’ sociologist even in an academic environment which takes pride in being inter-disciplinary. I was also advised to change to bio-geography by one of my very senior colleagues. Also see Datta and De 2008. Gendered and Claiming a Place in Geography J 31

This would often mean studying hitherto unexplored themes in geography such as the gendered nature of employment, education, demography and health, using the conventional tools of statistics, models and mapping for ready acceptability and training.20 While this can be said to be universally true, albeit in varying measures, the subject matter was pragmatically drawn from local concerns and traditions (see the special issue of Belgeo 2007: passim). Thus, while Anglophone scholarship has moved to issues such as representation, identity, body gay/lesbian rights, queer studies, masculinity and so on, elsewhere (as also largely is the case in India), structurally- embedded issues such as demographic characteristics, fertility behaviour, poverty, women’s empowerment, paid work and livelihood strategies, infrastructural development, environment and policy implementation continue to engage geographers’ interest. With the growth of this ﬁ eld, questions are being raised about the hegemonic dominance of Anglophones in knowledge-production and the invisibility of non-English speaking scholars and researchers on the international (publishing) scene, arguing for more inclusive feminist geographies and methodologies (see Monk 2000). Privileging one kind of knowledge over the other (theoretical versus empirical) has also been challenged. It has been argued that place affects not only ‘legitimate’ geographies, but also where and what research and writings can be undertaken and accepted under the rubric of geography (Belgeo 2007: passim; Raju 2002, 2004). This debate is revisited later in the chapter. Over the years, the international geography of gender has traversed a vast canvas, both in terms of content and analytical rigour — from descriptive accounts of women’s lives to interrogation of multiple axes of gender identities and the immense complexity of processes that create differences amongst and between both the genders. How- ever, as McDowell (1997) and Fincher (2007) point out, Anglophonic scholarship largely foregrounded women’s experiences through the feminist lens, both as part of the political strategies to claim

20 As I was struggling with my research on gender and facing tacit dis- approval because it was not a real geography, our Gender Atlas came out (Raju et al. 1999). Although this happened quite by chance, it was timely as nobody could deny the atlas as non-geography. 32 J Saraswati Raju their presence in the academia as well as the research agendas.21 The proverbial feminist saying ‘the personal is political’ thus continued through the ‘academic too’. However, as McDowell maintains, even in doing so the feminist accounts were ‘multi-scale analyses, drawing out the links between the macro- or structural scale, the meso-level of institutional behaviour, looking at ﬁ rms, the workplace and at the household, for example, and the micro-level where individuals’ intentionality, actions, behaviours and meanings are studied and assessed’ (1997: 383). Acknowledging that the prime focus in the initial geographical feminist research was on women, McDowell distinguishes the terms — women, men, femininity, masculinity and gender relations — and argues that they allow interrogating questions differently. For example, men and women can be considered as ‘taken for granted’ categories and one can look at spatially-differentiated behaviour between them. Femininity and masculinity, on the other hand, are socially constructed characteristics and certain kinds of behaviour (for example, aggression and rationality usually associated with men and docility and emotions with women) become markers of being a man or a woman. Although essentialised, they are not ﬁ xed characteristics. For example, a man can possess feminine qualities and vice versa. The questions to be asked then would be how masculine and feminine attributes are articulated through body space and, as more recent literature shows, how these spaces map onto the places.22 Gender, as pointed out earlier, is about the relational domain between men and women. Men and women may be different and yet equal. However, when gender relation is the dominant construct and it is geographically addressed, the issue is no longer about the differences alone. It is about subordination and domination and its spatial manifestation. Under such scrutiny, we need to ask what is going on with

21 The notion that early work focused on women to the exclusion of comparative study (relative to men) has been seen as misconstrued because of certain interpretations of the development trajectory of women/gender studies — a progression from women/socialist feminist/gender studies, which was not just the same in the US as compared to elsewhere, particularly in Britain (see Hanson and Monk 2008 for details). 22 Although there are fewer Indian studies on this particular aspect, the works of Phadke (2007a) and Seemanthini (2001) are very useful. Gendered and Claiming a Place in Geography J 33 men as well.23 Somewhere along the line, we get an impression that these concerns also differentiate whether one was doing ‘geography of gender’ or ‘feminist geography’24 — relational domain or women- centric.25 That said, two important points need to be made. First, as McDowell points out, even as feminist geography dealt with ‘the actions and meanings of gendered people, at their histories, per- sonalities and biographies, at the meaning of places to them, at the different ways in which spaces are gendered and how this affects people’s understanding of themselves as women or men’ (1997: 382), the engagements continue to remain equally concerned with the larger context. Second, much of the epistemological challenges to women- centric analyses and the tendency to position women as undifferentiated monoliths arose from within the Anglophone scholarship itself — inside and outside the discipline of geography. And yet the explicit acknowledgment of relational domain between men and women had come later in the Anglophone research. 26

23 I remember, distinctly that in geography seminar in India, one researcher was talking about the relatively lower participation of Rajasthani women in electoral events. My question to him was if this was unique to women only or did Rajasthani men also not vote; he has not looked into the issue. It is important to see what axes are qua (specifi c to) women and what are not — lower literacy rates may be because of discrimination towards girls and women or it may be a part of an overall depressed situation (see Alam and Raju 2007). 24 In the earlier years, it was even labelled as ‘geography of women’ with the eminently dangerous connotation of such geography being of women, by women and for women, a ghettoised fi eld without challenging the mainstream geography as ‘the ungendered, disembodied individuals that appeared as the subjects of this [mainstream] research were, in the main, men’ (McDowell 1997: 384). 25 McDowell (1997) talks about how the decision to study women in geography was a political decision for many scholars in the fi eld. It was toward making themselves visible in the discipline. The political act then meant a long debate over how research on women should be named — women’s studies or gender studies as the latter would have resulted in men co-opting by men. At the same time, the designation of ‘women’s studies’ was equally problematic as the concerns got confi ned to women academics and students and their token presence at the beginning was seen as enough to initiate and then the women could be left to get on with it. 26 There are, however, notable exceptions in the early studies. See, for example, Monk (1981); Professional Geographer 1982 34 (1): passim. 34 J Saraswati Raju

Feminist geographers have questioned metanarratives and foregrounded differences and contextualised knowledge. It must be pointed out, however, that the very foundation of feminist geography is rooted in the claim that the existential realities of women are different from men. Interestingly enough, it is also true that feminist scholarship in geography has been most visible in advancing ‘postmodern’ concerns for locating the varied forms of women’s oppression in historically and geographically entrenched contexts. It also argues that the implication of power makes a simple binary distinction between all women and men too polarised and aims at changing gender relations. This, in McDowell’s opinion is different in research done by feminist geographers as compared to postmodern analyses of difference (McDowell 1997; also, see Raju 2002). I leave the issues pertaining to ‘feminist’ methods and their appropriateness to be dealt elsewhere in the book, but generally agree with what McDowell has to say, i.e., feminist scholars are primarily concerned with research questions rather than the ‘methods per se’ (1993: 390) as there can be several ways to do research. How one selects research topics and approaches the ﬁ eld depends upon a combination of factors embedded in the intellectual trajectory of the subject in a given region/context.27 How one wants to position oneself — doing feminist geography or geography of gender — is as much a matter of one’s intellectual, ideological and academic orientation, location and context (see Lahiri-Dutt’s chapter in this volume). Overall, however, when geographers study women as

27 What researchers should do; what should inform research priorities; whether the research has to have a ‘policy applicability or contextual relevance’ or not (Wellens et al. 2006); should empirical versus qualitative research be posited as mutually exclusive (Datta and De 2008) or complementary (see, John et al. 2008); is there a difference between journalistic vis-à-vis academic writing; what are ‘authentic’ sources of data? There are no simple answers to these and many more such questions. When one talks about engaging with certain research concerns ‘academic luxury’ (Raju 2002), one is raising the question about ‘relevance’ of such concerns at a given point of time, place and context. That does not mean by any stretch of imagination that research themes and tools are not amenable to evolving and responding to changing disciplinary priorities and proﬁ les as well as the needs of the times, notwithstanding the power implicated in deciding which way the trajectories must move (also see, McDowell 1996). Gendered and Claiming a Place in Geography J 35 a category by itself or as in a relational domain their spatial edge over other disciplines would/should impact the methodologies they adopt.

The Indian Situation

It was in 1993 that I had contributed a review paper on the status of geography of gender in South Asia. That was perhaps the fi rst such attempt. I had then commented on the ‘lack of coherent efforts ... [on part of scholars and absence of] offi cial ... recognition’ as impedi- ments for geography of gender to emerge as an independent line of enquiry (Raju 1993c: 77). This could be attributed to the inherent androcentrism of the discipline and a rather contrived notion of what geography is all about. This necessitated gendered research to be situated within the larger concerns of the established branches of geography. Has the situation changed since then? Have we moved forward? My immediate observation is Yes and No. In terms of coherent efforts, the Indian geography still lacks a critical mass of scholars/ researchers even after more than a decade. That said, the fi eld has expanded considerably in terms of research and teaching and has seen a signifi cant shift from the earlier descriptive to a more theoretically and analytically grounded (small) body of work sans deepening (Datta 2008). Also, the fi eld has been offi cially recognised in many ways despite pedagogical and conceptual doubts in some circles about inclusion of gender as a legitimate entry under the rubric of geography. The publication of a position paper on Gender Issues in Educa- tion by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT 2006) dealing with school education is a signifi cant move towards establishing a base for inclusion of gender as a legitimate fi eld of study in geography at the higher education level, if the recommendations are followed through. The paper observes how gender is not incidental to geography; how it is in fact a driving force in creating spatial scales and environs against which social life unfolds. It further notes that some spaces, by invoking the emotions of horror and violence such as when one walks through the city at night, impede women’s spatial mobility. Elaborating further, the paper raises doubts about the egalitarian presence of men and women in the cultural landscapes and asks whether places are equally 36 J Saraswati Raju comfortable or safe for women and men? The position paper is explicit in recognising that among the social sciences, geography seems to be the most impervious to gender analysis and restructuring of knowledge. What was observed in the 1990s and much later in the 2006 position paper about Indian geography being largely androcentric has not changed much and yet, at the higher educational level, a new breed of scholars as well as newly-established departments are becoming more receptive to gendered concerns. There is now a tacit recognition that ‘gender issues in geography hold an important social position in understanding larger issues of female subordination and deprivation’ (Nayak 2008: 9). Having said this, one of the missing links in geography — incidentally, characteristic of most women’s movements and women studies — is the disconnect between school curricula and developments in colleges and universities with the result that there no exchanges of knowledge — an issue worthy of independent interrogation. In the following few paragraphs, I delve in greater detail with some of the structural and institutional issues which have a bearing on the trajectory of geography of gender in India.28

The Legacy of Geographical Knowledge

At the outset, it must be admitted that given the well-placed legacy of feminist struggles and scholarship in India, the place geographers have been able to carve out for themselves in studying women/ gender issues is far from impressive.29 One of the major reasons is the intellectual legacy of the discipline. Till date, it is unresolved whether geography is part of ‘science’ or ‘social sciences’. In many universities and colleges, geography is part of the science faculty and included in the departments of earth sciences (Progress in Indian Geography, A Country Report 2004–2008 2008). More than the implications for funding if geography is treated as ‘science’ or ‘social science’, the nomenclature has to do with a certain tenor — both in terms of content and methodologies adopted

28 For this section, I draw heavily from my earlier paper (Raju 2004). 29 This observation can be extended to the discipline of geography as a whole. See Lahiri-Dutt (2005). Gendered and Claiming a Place in Geography J 37 by geographers. One of the precepts of being part of science, by and large, is having rational and objective viewpoints — the ‘enlightened’ way of seeing the world as orderly, neatly organised and causally generalised. In this rational world, the realm of the social follows a defi nitive evolutionary track characteristic of physiological properties of organised matter and the forms and conditions of the existence of life. That is, scholars look for spatial regularity of function, hierarchy and norms in society similar to that found in the body. That was what made Brian Berry (1970) claim (now an (in)famous claim) that in their ‘equifi nal’ avatars, Chicago and Kolkata would look the same! In a quest for an essentially rational order, production of ‘truth’ meant use of methods which would lead to overarching theorisation without any scope for biases and/or persuasions of those seeing the reality. It was not surprising, therefore, that objectively produced knowledge, which could stand scientifi c rigour, scrutiny and validation, took precedence over other forms of knowledge. Geography was no exception to this rule. The discipline came to be seen as nomothetic (a science of general or universal law) rather than ideographic (place specifi c/one-of-a-kind work), as used by geographers during the heyday of the quantitative revolution. It is well-known that Indian geography imported this model without much refl ection. Moreover, the quest for ‘evidence’ (read data)-based objectivity has been further helped by the excellent colonial legacy of data production in the form of extensive reports, gazetteers and the record keeping system. In practice, it meant that what was not quantifi able and could not be put to rigorous statistical tests could not be geography! While the academic world, particularly the Anglophone, has moved considerably away from the quantitative revolution and resultant positivistic tradition to a much evolved and complex mix of methodologies in questioning many of the tenets of ‘scientifi c’ knowledge, this shift is still in a nascent stage in Indian geography. In a thought-provoking conversational piece on Indian geography, Datta and De (2008) engage with some of these issues and the politics of knowledge production in terms of how certain knowledge gets privileged over the other. Making a strong case for ‘other’ geographies (including gender) which may draw upon methodologies which do not always stand up to the rigorous ‘scientifi c’ treatment of the so-called ‘dominant’ geographies, the authors argue that the dominant is also masculine. 38 J Saraswati Raju

In both the cases, what is taught and researched may range from familiar themes in reproductive health, labour market outcomes, food security, conﬂ ict resolutions, disaster management, environmental concerns, resources, micro credit and policy planning and so on on the one hand to emerging ones such as masculinising public and private space/place etc. on the other. However, not many studies have directly dealt with how space implicates the asymmetrical power relations between men and women and alternatively how geo- ecologically embedded institutional responses create gendered spaces (Raju 2003, see Datta 2008 for an overview) or how the spatiality of gendered existence challenges seemingly universalising global processes (Raju 2006c). Most of the spatially anchored work has in fact come from non-geographers (see Desai 2007; Deshmukh- Ranadive 2002; Deshpande 2003; Phadke 2005; Niranjana 2001; Ranade 2007).30

Institutional Bottleneck

There are comparatively few universities where geography is taught at the postgraduate level. Still fewer universities offer courses in social and cultural geographies — spaces which are potentially easier for gender concerns to be incorporated as part of existing courses in geography or introduction of gender and geography courses per se. Out of 250-odd universities, geography is taught only in 83 (one- third of the total). Of these, only 30 (slightly more than one-third) universities provided the content of geography teaching. A quick perusal of the content reveals that only 11 universities have social

30 I am purposely not commenting on feminist work done on India by foreign-based and expatriate Indian geographers for the simple reason that the story I am weaving here has to be rooted in Indian soil and unfold in the Indian context — much of what Indian scholars abroad have been able to do is infl uenced and informed by the intellectual trajectory of their respective locations. Many Indian scholars in India have been trained/exposed to Western scholarship, but there are still academic/intellectual compulsions that make those opting to stay put in India follow a certain trajectory even as dissenting voices are growing. Gendered and Claiming a Place in Geography J 39 and cultural geographies at the postgraduate level. Whether and how gender is incorporated in these courses cannot be commented upon for lack of complete course outlines available to the author (UGC 2001), but it is quite likely that at the postgraduate level also, the dominant ideas of what constitutes geography structure the curriculum with very little scope for gender issues. The recent Country Report (Datta 2008), however, has listed two independent courses on gender as part of the Geography M.A. and M.Phil. programmes at the University of Delhi and inclusion of gender and spatial manifestations in several courses meant for M.A. at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. Likewise, there are independent courses on gender in the department of geography at Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey Women’s (SNDT) Uni- versity in Mumbai. Kurukshetra University, Jamia Millia Islamia and Gauhati University are some of the other places which fi nd mention in the report. In any case, many universities have not updated their courses since long, thereby providing little space for innovation. Contrary to what happens in many overseas departments and schools, teachers have almost no say in curriculum development in Indian universities, particularly so if they are in ‘affi liate’ colleges. The situation gets further complicated as students are taught for examinations held externally. Most of the senior teachers are products of their times and hence resistant to the changing nature of contemporary geography. The vicious circle — absence of demand and/or lack of a proactive and supportive academic environ for geographers trained in social geography/gender in the job market — reinforces the already existing androcentric resistance effectively. In the ‘absence’ of demand, there is no or very little institutional response. Since much of the research on women/gender is usually undertaken by women, the low number of women faculty in geography has its own impact in terms of attention to gender issues in the curriculum and pedagogy in general (McDowell 1992). These factors have been acting in consonance. The net result is that geographers in India working with gender lack the critical mass that can exert collective pressure in opinion building and infl uence either the job market or the syllabus. However, a few geographers have contributed towards gender-sensitive policy 40 J Saraswati Raju formulations in matters related to the population censuses and gender-sensitive statistical representations.31 Although one needs to probe deeper to interrogate why certain scholars and institutions have been able to embark upon gender studies in geography, some general observations can still be made. A combination of factors such as the spread of young faculty from parent departments (where geography had gendered concerns covered one way or the other), being in a women-centric university (for example, SNDT University), or being able to merge gender issues with interests in larger local milieu seem to be at work. For example, a relatively recent and large body of work on gender has emerged from young scholars located in colleges/universities of the north-eastern region of India where tribal women have a very visible and active public presence (Bhuyan 2008; Bhuyan and Sharma 2007; Borgohain and Sharma 2008; Kar and Das 2001–2002).32 It is acknowledged that young geographers who ‘dared’ to enter this ‘exciting’ fi eld are usually inadequately equipped to defend their disciplinary indulgence with gender — such situations are likely to be further aggravated if potential employers or interview boards are dominated by resistant patriarchs. Those who produced geographical knowledge in India were men (as had usually been the case elsewhere also). The latest account of Indian geography over the years showed this characteristic in that the National Association of Geographers has not had a woman president in its long history of more than three decades (Kapur 2002). The changing profi le of the increasing number of women students at college and university

31 Apart from the gender-sensitisation inputs in the Indian Census, the author has been associated with the Project on Gender Sensitisation in Macro Economic Management and Training in Cambodia (1993); Gender- sensitive Tabulation of data in Laos (1993) and Gender-responsive Devel- opment Statistics in Laos, 1994) — all initiated by the UN agencies, i.e., UNDP/UNIFEM. As a consultant with the India Ofﬁ ce of the Population Council, she has undertaken a McArthur Foundation Project on ‘Men as Supportive Partners in Reproductive Health’ (Raju and Leonard 2000) which has led to a few changes in the policy document. Her recent report (2007) on gendered access to higher education was part of the resource material towards the preparation of approach paper for higher education in the 11th Five Year Plan. 32 Personal communication. Gendered and Claiming a Place in Geography J 41 levels has not found reﬂ ection in faculty composition (Raju and Datta 2004). These factors, in a complexly intertwined and additive manner had, in the past, contributed to an inordinately slow pace at which geography of gender has moved in the Indian context.

The Contemporary Scene

The Model Curriculum in Geography (2001) proposed for adoption by universities in India has included geography of gender as one of the optional courses for the fi rst time (the earlier curriculum reviews were undertaken in 1968 and 1989). Although the suggested content could be completely overhauled as it leaves much to be desired, it is the fi rst offi cial endorsement of the arrival of geography of gender on the horizon. In the same breath, however, the curriculum lists ‘Climate and Man’ as one of the papers and talks about the ‘study of earth as the home of man’ the latter ‘need[ing] urgent attention in the coming years (UGC: 2001: 27, emphasis added) while proposing specialist groups and thrust areas. Some colleagues dismiss the tendency of using such androcentric language as a ‘slip’. However, as in almost every discipline, the shaping of knowledge through language helps establish gendered inequities as ‘natural’ which is symptomatic of certain mindsets dominating the geographic discourses at the expense of important developments in and around the discipline overall.33

33 The masculine nature of geography as a discipline is not unique to Indian geography. Garcia-Ramon and Pujol (2004: 116) observe that the image of geography in contemporary Spain is more masculine than before following a different trajectory than in the past. Earlier, Spanish geographers had somewhat better records in terms of overall employment of women than the English-speaking world. The authors attribute this change to the image of geography which has changed in Spain since the early 1990s from a more traditional and feminine image of geographical teaching (more women associated with teaching in general) to a more masculine and technical turn linked with the ‘sudden growth of technical geography and professional practice outside the university’. The story does not change much when we move to Singapore where geography emerged as a strongly masculine discipline during the interwar years under colonial rule. However, the later changes one observes have a 42 J Saraswati Raju

In my opinion it is not at all problematic that issues of equity and distributive justice occupy major spaces in the works of most Indian geographers in one form or the other. One can interpret it as a postcolonial assertion that scholarship from the Anglo-Saxon or American-centred discourses does not have to be uncritically received by the so-called margins and that knowledge has to be spatially and temporally contextualised — a position I subscribe to. At the same time, however, it is important to be aware that existing power structures in academia may privilege some research over the other as intellectually politicised alliances may create powerful ‘centres’ within the ‘margins’ in terms of those who decide that even as one explores equity and issues of distributive justice, gendered research (even if in a cross-cutting framework) is less important and less geographical than some other issues involving class, caste and ethnic locations. At the risk of being anecdotal, I would like to cite an example. I had suggested to one of my Ph.D. students wanting to research on women in export-processing zones in India. We talked about using patriarchy as an organisational principle in understanding labour market processes in a framework that is spatially anchored. That is, how private patriarchy gets shifted to public patriarchy as women move from home-based informal work to the formal labour market and yet how the experience can liberate women. The idea being that such a framework would provide an exciting opportunity to address larger questions of negotiating private/public domains and expansion of social space for such women. My student was hesitant because she was not sure if she would be able to defend her Ph.D. proposal in the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, because others would comedown heavily on her arguing that such a topic belongs to sociology as women and

very different origin. Although there was no immediate parity in terms of hiring of staff and their profi le, as the last decade has witnessed an overall increase in student intake arising out of compulsory national service for male citizens some two decades earlier and the subsequent ‘drift’ of male students to the hard sciences and engineering. In turn, the current geography curriculum has taken on board a stronger interest in gender issues (including a dedicated gender and geography module) while staff research on gender issues in the context of the Asia-Pacifi c region is also making important strides (Yeoh et al. 2004). Also see, Blumen and Bar-Gal 2006. Gendered and Claiming a Place in Geography J 43 patriarchy were essentially sociological constructs and geography has nothing to do with such constructs.34 Perhaps prior to ruing about the status of geography of gender, one should take stock of the state of affairs in Indian geography as a whole (Lahiri-Dutt 2005; Prasad 2005). Following the brilliant start in post-independence India, geographers have not really been at the forefront of knowledge-production. This is not a place to ponder over the ‘why so’ question, but a point can still be made that in an overall recessive regime of geography,35 it is no surprise that geography of gender also did not take off as it should have, given the supportive environs in national and international discourses. And yet, a silver lining can be observed in case of those engaged in studies concerning gender for as compared to the ‘comfort zone’ in terms of research themes within which Indian geographers tend to confi ne themselves (Kapur 2002: 77), those doing ‘gender’ seem to have traded in relatively more diversifi ed and ‘out of the box’ terrain in recent years (Datta 2008). Following Linda McDowell (1997: 381–82), one can observe that ‘women as the subjects of the geographical gaze’ have moved from invisibility to, if not quite the centre, then at least ‘onto the stage’ in India. There are now a growing number of women and men producing a respectably-sized literature about women, gender relations, and the social construction of masculinity and femininity and their links to space and place. However, establishment of ‘Geography of

34 Whether some issues are geographical or sociological is a complex question and I do not intend to handle it here, but I feel that geographers with their expertise in understanding space and spatiality have a defi nite edge over other social sciences in contextualising gender. In the specifi c context of patriarchy, it has been argued that patriarchy is not a monolithic construct and enacts differently in different locations so that one can speak of region-specifi c articulation of patriarchy in its ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ versions (see Kabeer and Mahmud 2004; Raju 2001). 35 Indian Geography: Voice of Concern by Anu Kapur (2002) is an excellent reportage on the evolutionary trajectory of the discipline of geography in India. In the absence of systematic record-keeping, the author has been able to collect ‘diffi cult to come by’ data — historical and contemporary both. Unfortunately, however, none of the fi gures on faculty strength or the membership status are sex-disaggregated. Also, see Lahiri-Dutt 2005 and Prasad 2005. 44 J Saraswati Raju

Gender’ as an independent branch of mainstream geography unlike in some parts of the world remains a dream fraught with tensions.

Thinking Ahead, Thinking Introspectively

Given the general decline of geography as an academic discipline in many parts of the world — in 31 countries as per one survey (Gerber 2001), reorienting some of the androgynous leanings of the discipline to retrieve what I would like to call, ‘missed opportunities’ may not be such a bad idea. Although academia cannot be completely free from biases of the world at large where gendered power relations seem so deeply entrenched, hegemonic and institutionalised that they appear non-negotiable, the current socio-political environment is undoubtedly ripe for engaging in equity issues and social transformation. The meta-narratives are being questioned and subalterns including women are creating their own spaces. The ‘spatial turn’ — reclaiming the power of space/place in social science research is bringing back geographical concerns in uncovering existential realities. These combined with heightened concerns for marginal sections of society in inclusive development agenda are creating enabling circumstances in which gender concerns can easily be woven into the broader issues of social transformation and change — a role that geography in general must play if it has to survive. How do we do it? In the absence of a critical mass, explicit support structures and still prevailing resistance, it is important to use the already available spaces in teaching and research to incorporate gender — a strategy that can be called ‘integration’. Population, development, health and well-being, labour market and social and political issues are some of the readily available avenues in traditional branches of geography. For example, my teaching and research in social geography/ development helped me initially to bring forth the centrality of gendered locations in deprivation and marginality issues within the ‘women in geography’ (WIG) framework which can simply be described as providing gender a place within the existing academic structures. I could then move progressively to gender and geography (GAG) to confront and seek transformation of gender-blind theories and analyses. On refl ection, it was my conviction rather than a well thought-out strategy that this was the only way in which geography of gender Gendered and Claiming a Place in Geography J 45 needed to be handled in the Indian context at that particular point of time. Even as gendered construction continues to occupy the central axis in my work, much of my teaching and researching on gender has been a constant struggle to be critically aware that women and men are not undifferentiated monolithic categories. Their class, caste, ethic and other locations intercept their gendered locations signifi cantly. These constructions have also to be socio-spatially contextualised. Positing gender issues thus helped me in making discussions and teaching about gender more acceptable to my students with differing ideologies. Since social science is not the preferred fi eld for boys, those who opt for it are generally the ‘residuals’. However, the situation is not that regimented for girls as most women students who manage to reach the stage of higher education largely come from better socio-economic and urban backgrounds. They are often academically better placed than boys. As such, unless the academic environ is geared to generating social consciousness towards equality and equity concerns, these students do not usually relate proactively to issues of subordination and other concerns centred on gender. Moreover, some of the gendered matters are internalised so completely by girls that they rarely question or doubt the status quo. Situating gender in an inclusive framework of equity, equality, justice and so on works well in such environs. Once appropriated, such spaces may increasingly be used and new spaces can be created for more direct inclusion of gender. Too radical an approach or subject matter may still have a limited reach as gay, lesbian and queer studies are unlikely to emerge as prominent issues of concerns in immediate geographical teaching and research in India.36 Despite these incrementally pragmatic moves, the academia may continue to harbour indifference if not animosity towards feminist analyses. Academic environments can be traditional and conservative with very little or no scope for innovative ideas or as mentioned earlier, they may be liberal and forthcoming and yet limiting. How does one confront, counter and overcome such challenges? In order to establish fi rmly within the discipline, scholars interested in pursuing gendered explorations in geography will have to walk that extra mile to produce steady and rigorous research — whether enshrined

36 There are a few exceptions. See Bhairannavar (2005, 2007) quoted in Datta (2008). 46 J Saraswati Raju within the issues of caste/class deprivation and disparities or as independent endeavours. At the same time, they have to maintain their edge — never letting go of the spatial embeddedness of social relations and social formations and gender within them as contra hegemonic analyses. It is equally important to situate the process of knowledge production in contexts that would take into account the temporal and locational limits within which researchers operate in order to appreciate the body of work that is being produced. Although speciﬁ c situations require speciﬁ c handling and there cannot be a blueprint, forging alliances across personal, professional and ideological differences in order to create the critical mass which can engage with issues in a manner of collective bargaining is a must. There are no easy answers or ways to carve out feminist spaces; constancy to purpose and a very visible corpus of good research are the ways to forge ahead. 2 ‘Doing Gender’ in Geography: Exploring Contemporary Feminist Methodologies

KUNTALA LAHIRI-DUTT

Introduction

In this chapter, I discuss feminist research methodologies to present the geography of gender as a legitimate, relevant and popular research fi eld, with a focus on India.1 The essence of my argument is to understand gender research in geography, to situate both geography and feminism in India along with their growth and resultant hierarchies and historic inequities. In my view, the continuing engagement of Indian geography with the project of modernity in India attributes a specifi c nature to the studies of gender currently arising out of this discipline. More specifi cally, my argument slightly differs from the articulation of non-English speaking European geographers who, whilst reacting to the Anglophone hegemony, have presented their case more in terms of historical and contextual differences in feminists’ concerns and agendas. In this chapter, I emphasise that women geographers in India are not necessarily on their way to catch up with liberated feminists who have ‘moved on’ from a naturalised gender order, but that feminism in India is expressed differently and arising from a different context, geographical studies of gender

1 To begin with, I must admit my awareness of the extreme diversity and heterogeneity of experiences within India, and acknowledge that anything I say is a broad generalisation about the country. However, what I say about Indian geography may be familiar to geographers based in other disadvan- tageous, marginal locations. 48 J Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt in India have different interests, agendas and issues, and that they present an increasingly compelling voice that needs to be heard by those who dominate feminist geography. In dealing with the subject, I also see myself writing from the position of a subaltern geographer working within the unenviable and innumerable constraints put on an enthusiastic woman learning and practising geography in a non-metro location. Consequently, the observations stem out of personal experience. The fi rst-hand practice of geography — often teaching fi rst-generation Masters students from the rural hinterland, chasing research grants and scholarships all controlled at the centre, coping with sexist biases towards personal life and doing fi eldwork in circumstances where a single woman is immediately seen as ‘asking for it’ — forms my perspective. Obviously, I was devoid of any connection to international feminist geography circles, and missed out on acquiring the ‘enabling advantage’ that sometimes comes with a southern2 location (Raju 2006b: 155). In addition, a complete vision of the layout of this location from my present ‘distanced’ base overseas, working as a ‘native informant’ in a research school devoted to the study of Asia and the Pacifi c, has also shaped my views and helped me ‘gain a voice’. Talking ‘across’ the two worlds is not an easy task; much has been said about the different languages that are spoken ‘here’ and ‘there’, and indeed parts of this long chapter contain more pedagogic than critical material. This is deliberate; my intention is to bridge this communication gap, at least from my hybrid present position as a mediator between the two different worlds. Consequently, the chapter has two distinct but not unconnected parts. In the fi rst part, I place feminist geographical research in India within the overarching picture that includes not only Indian feminism, but also geography education at a tertiary level in India. Indian geography can arguably be seen as a microcosm of Indian academia that refl ects the larger Indian society and its interests and investments in higher education. Understanding certain interesting aspects of higher-level geography education might throw light on the gender research in Indian geography. Similarly, research on Indian gender geography needs to be connected to Indian feminism(s). Hence, the fi rst part analyses ‘the problem’ whilst the

2 I have used this term in consultation with my co-editor, but it could be replaced with terms such as ‘non-Western’, ‘Developing’ or ‘Third World’ countries. ‘Doing Gender’ in Geography J 49 second part provides an overview of the methodological debates within international feminist geography, particularly with regard to feminist practices of fi eldwork, and the use of data and techniques such as GIS. This chapter aims to serve two purposes — fi rst, to provide a critique of the power hierarchies within international feminist geography, and second, to illuminate some contemporary methods that are widely used by feminist geographers. Together, the two parts provide those interested in understanding feminist geography in India with a broad view of the context, and expose those located in India to broad view of recent approaches in the fi eld.

Part 1: Stating the Problem

‘Doing Gender’ was the title of an article by two sociologists, Candace West and Don Zimmerman, published in the Gender and Society journal in 1987.3 This article consolidated the challenge to the then widely-accepted view amongst most social scientists of gender as a sexually-determined attribute of individuals or as a reﬂ ection of natural differences rooted in biology, and marked an important theoretical shift towards the interrogation of power and inequality. Gender is a social construct, a category used by human beings as a

3 This article had a lasting impact on feminist thinking. This publication was followed by West and Fenstermaker’s ‘Doing Difference’ in 1995 and Judith Butler’s book, Undoing Gender, in 2004. However, recent discussion of West and Zimmerman’s concept points out that the ‘sex category’ remains an explicit facet of ‘doing gender’ (Messerschmidt 2008: 86), or that the perception of ‘male’ and ‘female’ is salient in the interpretation of behaviour as masculine or feminine in given contexts: ‘A focus on “doing” does not con- ceal deeper social relations, rather it points to the need to “understand how interaction operates to sustain relations of inequality”’ (Jurik and Siemsen 2009: 75). Following this, I establish the connection between my use of the term and West and Zimmerman’s ‘doing’ in the construction of gender in specifi c geographical contexts. I have, in this chapter, used the term in the sense of undertaking gender research in geography in India, and draw the awareness towards the active nature of the term. Both Saraswati and I, and the contributors to this book, have been ‘doing’ gender research in geography, raising our feeble voices over those who have conventionally dominated the discipline in India. From that point of view, by going against or beyond the traditional scripts, we have also ‘undone gender’ as individuals. 50 J Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt way of dividing up the world they perceive around them and making sense of it. Being a social construct, gender is not something fi xed, but varies according to time and, above all, place and culture (this is well outlined in Hanson and Pratt 1995). Understanding that gender differences are accomplished in routine social interactions, that gender socially produced rather than being biologically determined, has in the process moved feminist4 analyses beyond the essentialist thinking of earlier times. The main conceptual contribution of West and Zimmerman’s ‘doing gender’ approach was that they did not only hinge upon the sexual differences between women and men, but also explained inequalities and imbalances in power by drawing attention to gender as socially-constructed norms of behaviour in determining which attributes (besides sex), such as class and race, play important roles. The engagement of geographers with gender was to bring space into this explanatory framework, to show how space is conceptualised differently in relation to gender, and interweave both to show them infl uencing each other. To Indian geographers, ‘doing’ gender would imply working on gender within our disciplinary fi eld and context of India. The act of ‘doing’ gender entails knowing or accepting, and then displaying, certain kinds of behaviour as feminine or masculine. Geographical space or place is an integral part of this performance; when a woman or a man ‘does’ gender she or he does it in a physical context — at home, offi ce, in shops or in a football fi eld — along with a personal context which provides the background to what being a woman or a man might mean. The geographical interpretation of ‘doing’ gender has primarily been an effort of ‘situating gender’. Depending on the context, there are different ways of being women and men, and that social identities and relations produce a diversity of

4 Neither is feminism one thing, nor is there a feminist methodology per se. Feminism is best described as a window to social reality and encompasses within it a wide range of perspectives and practices. Aversion to the term is common, but its association with universal sisterhood or ‘women’ in general has long been lost. Feminist research is a complex process that intimately links theory, epistemology and method. For many women, feminism is a personal realisation that spills over into their work. However, men are not necessarily excluded or uninvited to becoming feminists, and in fact, within geography, there are fi ne examples of feminist work done by men. More on the term in gender studies in geography is provided in the next section. ‘Doing Gender’ in Geography J 51 femininities and masculinities (Longhurst 2000, 2001). These social relations are ‘stretched over space’, thus situating space within gender relations as noted by Massey (1994: 23). At the same time, human lives are lived locally and different gender identities are set within different areas. However, not only is gender embedded in space, but a feminist way can throw new light on the geographical conceptions of space and place. The way geographers have traditionally seen and thought about ‘space’ changes if one adopts feminist approaches. In particular, in today’s world of information-fl ow through mobile telephony, satellite television and the Internet, space has assumed a meaning that is far beyond the capacity of any previous explanatory framework offered by traditional geography. People can now travel globally through the medium of the television or the Internet, thereby stretching over and across a much larger space. Again, not everyone’s life-world is being expanded equally; this ‘stretching’ of lives needs to be seen in relation with the intensely local character of most women’s lives. Massey and Allen (1984) show that ‘geography matters’ in the constitution not only of gender but also of age, class, ethnicity and other factors that determine how differences and inequalities are perceived and laid over space. Hanson and Pratt (1995: 25) describe this as the ‘geography of placement’ in which they show how geography constructs differences, often generating ‘a stickiness to identity that is grounded in the fact that many women’s lives are lived locally’. The term ‘stickiness’ has been further elaborated by Bondi and Davidson (2005: 20), who suggest that ‘places and gender are mutually constitutive processes that exist in dynamic relationships across space and time, the “sedimenting” of these dynamics as geographical layers produce considerable inertia or “stickiness”’. Research on gender has brought into the fi eld of geography completely new insights on space and place,5 challenging and redefi ning

5 Let me fi rst elaborate how geographers had thought of ‘space’ conventionally. Space was initially referred to as a bounded entity, but human geographers added to this absolute space a ‘sense of place’; a space to which people forge profound attachments and identities. For example, according to Tuan (1977), undifferentiated space becomes place as we get familiarised with it thereby endowing it with value. Place can be defi ned as holding meanings that are subjectively appreciated and perceived; it has been a point of departure for a good deal of humanistic geography that focused on the 52 J Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt what these concepts mean to both women and men. Feminist geographers have offered insights into the ‘paradoxical space’ that entails a rethinking of gender and space and their relations to explain the complexities of the new imaginative geography (Rose 1993). The intersections of space and power and knowledge are experienced on an everyday basis, the paradox arising because whilst we acknowledge both the power of hegemonic discourse, we also insist on the possibility of resisting the power. Researchers working on gender in geography have critiqued the dominant and dominating (or hegemonic) conceptualisations of space and place, arguing that even humanistic views of place do not refl ect the different and ‘lived experiences’ of women and men. Rose (1993) argued that being a woman is likely to involve feelings confi ned in and constrained by space. A woman lives largely according to the masculine geographical imagination where the male gaze dominates and curbs movement of women subjects. In ‘Western’ and/or urban cultures, the commodifi cation of women creates and strengthens the notion that space is not their own. Also, not all spaces are meant for women — public spaces, for example, are masculine as compared to domestic spaces.6 Of all public spaces, streets have received feminist theorists’ attention as a social and spatial construct, a set of architectural forms and layouts as well as a collection of rituals and expectations. These expectations, according to Hubbard (2005: 322), ‘coalesce to bequeath the streets a distinctive social etiquette’: some gendered behaviours are deemed inappropriate. Women of the streets form the quintessential fi gure of the prostitute — a sexual commodity and a cause for concern for polite society — as opposed to those who inhabit the domestic sphere. Women, thus, rarely claim or control space, instead ‘are caught and confi ned by’ it (see Bondi and Davidson 2005: 21). Bondi and Davidson (2005: 17) explain that the core of the critique

‘sense of place’ (see the works of Cresswell 2006; Eyles 1985; Relph 1976). In comparison to place, in conventional geography, ‘space’ has been considered abstract, objective and deﬁ ned by locational and geometric properties such as distance, latitude and longitude. This conceptualisation of space leads to the identiﬁ cation of geography as a ‘spatial science’, using the statistical method of spatial analysis. 6 Similarly, the underground (mine pits, for example) and night times are widely seen and accepted as masculine spaces and times. ‘Doing Gender’ in Geography J 53 of space and place was formed by feminist understanding of how differences of gender, age, class, race, ethnicity and other forms of social differentiation constitute people’s lives: ‘The notion of places as producing shared experiences and the notion of space as abstract geometry both conveniently ignore … how social relations shape geography’. Massey (1984) observed that the uniqueness of a place can be understood as the expression of a particular mix of social relations which stretch far beyond that place. Massey conceptualised places and social relations and their interconnections as layers like those of sedimentary rocks, and the gendered identities and the social relations based on them are bound to change. Although changeability is a characteristic of places, it does not occur freely or easily; the dynamic interplay between space, place and gender thus becomes a subject of inertia and ‘stickiness’ (Bondi and Davidson 2005: 16). It is beyond doubt that feminist geographers have added valuable insights to ‘doing’ gender by situating gender in space and place. They have enabled new ways of thinking about and with interconnections between these key aspects of geography.

Feminist Geography or Geography of Gender?

A young student, while speaking at a seminar on her research on spatial variations in women’s perceptions of the environment, in the regional university I taught in India a few years ago, commented that ‘people tend to spit on us, saying, “look, here goes the feminist”’. And indeed, till date, the ‘F’ word7 arouses ambivalence even amongst the staunchest gender experts, particularly so in geography and in South Asia. Feminist geographers based in the global north8 have consistently tried to explain their positions to the uninitiated. The presidential address to the Association of American Geographers by Susan Hanson, describing geography and feminism as two powerful

7 Jenkins et al. (2003) use this expression. However, the questions they pose are broader, exploring the relationship between feminist methodology and social theory. 8 My use of this term is purely a matter of convenience, and consistently in the book. Elsewhere, I have critiqued the use of such directional terms to imply the economically richer countries of Europe and North America. 54 J Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt intellectual forces but in collision with each other, was published in the Annals of the AAG as early as in 1992. Hanson showed that feminism is neither science ﬁ ction, an extraterrestrial juxtaposition of geography’s earthbound concerns, nor are feminists alien, ugly, women warriors who have invaded geography to destroy its tran- quillity and established order. She showed that geography and feminism share certain traditions that, if acknowledged and nurtured, should enrich both, ‘but, ﬁ rst they need to become acquainted and to acknowledge what is common in their intellectual heritages’ (Hanson 1992: 569). In some parlance in south Asia, the term ‘feminist’ tends to be associated with ‘all those loose women in the West’ and, if not with lesbianism, with women with broken marriages, those nurturing hatred of men, inability to adjust and adapt to the challenges posed by the tough conditions of the academia, and with a deviant morality.9 Consequent to such social backlash, most women geographers, including those working on gender, have consistently rejected identifying with the term ‘feminist’ and prefer to be called ‘geographers working on gender’. Clearly, there are unresolved tensions between gender studies in geography and feminism. This is not unusual — even in countries that experienced the ‘second wave’ of feminism,10 feminism poses a ground of contestation amongst women. Still, in discussing geographical research on gender in India, it is an area that needs further probing.

9 McCabe (2005: 481) tells us that it is not entirely different in the global north where there still exists confusion surrounding exactly what it means to be a feminist and, in addition to its ambiguity, the term is not value- neutral and associated with many epithets such as ‘feminazi’, ‘man hater’ and ‘lesbian’. The black American feminist, Bell Hooks, critiqued feminism as a predominantly white, middle-class movement (Hooks 1984, 2000). 10 The women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s is commonly known as the ‘second wave’ to distinguish it from ‘ﬁ rst wave’ mid-nineteenth century women’s rights and suffrage activism. In the 1960s and the 1970s, the broader societal movements in the US by both organisations and individuals focused on issues such as work and employment, family and parenting, sexuality, reproductive rights and violence against women. Their objective was to improve women’s status in society and ultimately, the conditions of their lives. The women’s movement emerged at such a time when many other social movements questioned conventional social and sexual values, racism, poverty and other inequalities (Shaw and Lee 2006: 3). ‘Doing Gender’ in Geography J 55

It is important to ask: To study the geography of gender does one need to be a feminist geographer? The answer is hidden in the politics of identity. If one used a ‘Western’ lens, and conventional Western defi nitions, it would be diffi cult to defi ne even some contemporary radical women in India as ‘feminists’. The feminist movement in India did not shape through the 1960s equal rights movement of the Anglophone world; also, the use of the term ‘feminism’ in India has different connotations from those in the Anglo-American world. In Indian higher education, which grew in response to the colonial need to supply clerks, administrators and record-keepers, the presence of women in public places adhered to pre-constructed notions of modesty and decent behaviour (acceptable to men) resulting in a reluctance to be identifi ed as feminists in the Western sense. How- ever, there is more to such pre-determined notions of what constitutes femininity (or indeed feminism) than just orientalism. For example, many rural women in an Anglo-Saxon culture such as those in Australia or Europe hesitate to identify themselves as feminists (Brandth 2002; Pini 2007). They feel that the urban-based, postmodern feminists with their great focus on theory and methodology have alienated farm women, who have less power and voice in claiming public attention.11 It would also be mistaken to see Indian feminism following the model established by Anglo-American feminists, treading the same and imagined linear path, albeit with a gap of a few decades. Although Indian feminism benefi ted from the achievements of second-wave feminism, this feminism not only focuses on progress, equality and rationality, but also on a culture of compromise and subversion. Indian geographical work on gender would by defi nition be different in its subject matter and treatment from those being practised by Anglophone feminist geographers. Post-modernists and post-structuralists appreciate this difference of roots, histories, agendas and voice, and hence put greater emphasis on variation, difference and positionality than was initially given to the feminist voices from the margins.12 The common areas of concern for all

11 On a similar note, Sachs (1996) noted that it is not necessarily the case that feminism must be related to women’s lives: ‘feminist viewpoint does not immediately derive from women’s experiences’. 12 Many writers refer to this current trend as a ‘third wave’ of feminist activity infl uenced by postmodernism and multiracial feminism. This wave problematises the universality in the term ‘woman’. 56 J Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt feminists remain equality and justice for both women and men, the effort to eliminate systems of inequality and injustice in all aspects of women’s lives, greater human dignity for both, inclusion of and an affi rming stance to women, celebration of women’s achievements and struggles and a positive attitude towards women and womanhood. It is now more or less agreed that feminism does not have one defi nition: even within one country, feminists can take up different approaches. India is a classic example of this polyvocality of women’s movements and feminist positions with regard to engagements with the state.13 From this perspective, feminism does not appear to be an extremely radical and threatening notion and more men and women — those with a belief in equal rights — can be described as feminists than those who identify with it. Today, Indian women can enjoy rights that are taken for granted because of the many struggles made by feminists in the twentieth century.14 In geographical studies ‘doing gender geography’ is thus not different from being a feminist geographer. For example, the regional geography of gender envisaged by Townsend (1991: 25), a geography that ‘would show how gender matters to geography and geography matters to gender at all places and scales’, is essentially a feminist geography that asks feminist questions such as ‘what the life options are for those born male and born female in Delhi, Durham or Detroit, by class, ethnicity and sexual preference’. A useful starting point is understanding how differences from place to place came about, at local, regional or national scales, to be able to

13 Gangoli (2007) notes that the legal arena has occupied a central place in the Indian feminist movement, although there have been critiques of focus on legal reforms (as stated by Menon 2004). 14 As Shaw and Lee (2006: 10) convincingly say, in a world without feminism: ‘If you are a woman, you would not be in college. You would not be able to vote. You could not play sports. Contraception is illegal. So is abortion. You’re expected to marry and raise a family. If you must work, the only jobs available to you are in cleaning, clerical services, or teaching. And you have no legal protection on the job if your boss pressures you for sex or makes lewd comments. Your husband can force you to have sex, and, if you were sexually abused as a child, most likely no one will believe you if you tell.’ ‘Doing Gender’ in Geography J 57 set gender diversity over space in the context of other diversities, human and environmental, and to create maps that can reveal spatial divisions of labour. These spatial divisions of labour, she admits, are not merely patterns of employment but outcomes of struggles linked to changes — in class relations, economic and political, national and international (Townsend 1991: 28). Gender relations then are also the objects of struggle, thus merging any possible division between feminist geography and the geography of gender.

Studying Women or Studying Gender?

‘Women’s studies’ had charted a path of marked ascent during the last few years in India. Consequently, geographers too have turned their attention to studying gender and some processes are underway to integrate gender into the mainstream geography curricula at the Masters level. In the global north, geographical studies of gender followed the ‘cultural turn’ that renewed interest in meaning and representation, and the material manifestations of power relations that construct women as subordinates. In major universities, as Linda McDowell observes (1997: 381–82), ‘women as the subjects of the geographical gaze’ have moved from invisibility to if not quite the centre, then at least ‘onto the stage’ and intellectual debates amongst a growing number of women and men have produced ‘a respectably sized literature about women, gender relations, and the social construction of masculinity and femininity and their links to space and place’. Looking at India, one may fi nd that a similar expansion in geographical studies of gender is underway. If not sizeable in volume, at least a growing body of research is being produced on different spatial aspects of women’s lives. Yet, some studies have left important conceptual areas unexplored or have been reluctant to engage in important methodological debates infl uencing feminist geographical research. For example, although many of these studies address women’s condition as compared to men, their salient feature is that, methodologically, they tend to generally follow the well-trodden paths leading to choropleth- mapping models established by earlier geographers. This implies that studies of women by geographers were not useful or did not increase knowledge of the geographical aspects of gender: they expanded 58 J Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt the horizon of geographical knowledge in India. However, newer approaches have provided more detailed insights into factors impacting and infl uencing the conditions of women in human society as have new methodologies shaped geographers’ understanding of space and place. Except for a handful, Indian geographers working on gender have been slow to take up these new methodological developments. Hazra (1997) wrote about the ‘literacy gap’ between rural and urban areas from a gender perspective using gender statistics that easily lend themselves to correlational analyses and cartographical representation. Her 1998 work was on women and health, linking the latter with a range of demographical indicators such as life expectancy, maternal mortality and infant mortality.15 My work on gender began in a similar way: exploring offi cial statistics pertaining to specifi c geographical units such as administrative blocks or districts. It was ‘interesting’ to investigate, through quantitative indicators tracing the changing mode of resource production, the variations over space of the approximate nature of social phenomena such as the role and status of women in a mining community in eastern India as compared to those of men (Lahiri-Dutt and Ghosh 1997). A study was also undertaken to investigate how women assess the quality of their rapidly degrading environment in a mining belt (Lahiri-Dutt and Jana 1999). From articles featuring in Geographical Review of India, it is clear that the same approach is being used in new areas and new case studies by other geographers, for example, in the works of Kumari (2007) and Shukla (2006). Kumari uses Gender Related Educational Development Index (GEDI), then uses the indices as ISOGEDI as lines to give a cartographic expression. Shukla, with the help of census data, describes the levels of fertility of rural women in administrative districts of central India (outlined duly with latitudes and longitudes) and with the help of bargraphs and pie charts, concludes that ‘achievements so far are not at all satisfactory’ and that ‘if the targets are to be sincerely achieved, the Department

15 I thank Professor Jayati Hazra for providing copies of her papers. She was one of my geography teachers when I joined Lady Brabourne College in 1973. ‘Doing Gender’ in Geography J 59 of Health, Government of MP [Madhya Pradesh], should launch a special programme with the help of [non-government organisations] NGOs and local authorities to accelerate the activities of family welfare specially in rural areas of the district’ (Shukla 2006: 434). Similar examples of research publications describing aspects of women’s conditions — as elicited from available quantitative data from offi cial sources — are not hard to draw from other journals (for example, see Kar and Sharma 1994). I now traverse the tricky ground of trying to briefl y elucidate the continuity of use of conventional methodologies. The fi rst explanation of this obviously lies in the relative isolation of the larger segment of Indian geographers from international developments. Whilst we were being trained in Central Place Theory and choropleth mapping techniques, the rest of the world was exploring the nuances of poststructuralist theory, understandably leading to a lack of dialogue. This mutual lack of awareness is most acutely felt in gender research. There has yet to be an effective, institutionalised effort to establish a dialogue between Indian and Anglophone feminist geographers through greater interaction and effective dispersal of contemporary research and publications in international journals. Except individual interactions, neither the Indian geography establishment nor the Anglophone geographers has seriously tried to overcome this lack of communication. One aspect of this is the diffi cult and dense text used by Anglophone feminist geographers that preclude those with English as their second language to enter and benefi t from an enabling and enlightening conversation. Although India is the second- largest English-speaking country, it should not be looked down upon. Another reason is the different agendas; not all Eurocentric theoretical traditions may even be relevant to Indian geographers (they are more engaged with local issues). The lack of interest of those based in the ‘global north’ in research publications in the marginal locations is probably one of the key factors that results in blissful ignorance.16 There is a need for ‘world travelling’ and ‘listening in’

16 Linda Tuhiwai Smith, in her book, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (1999: 71) says that the question is not so much: ‘Who should speak?’ as ‘Who will listen?’ — [Other women] should be listened to seriously, not with that kind of benevolent imperialism’. I will expand this point later in this chapter. 60 J Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt by many feminists based in the global north. For example, few people are aware of the thriving publishing industry in India that makes books published there actually more accessible to common readers.17 People working ‘on India’ would not even dream of publishing in Indian journals, and unfortunately this is particularly true of those working on gender. On the rare occasion that a paper from the ‘global south’ presenting a compelling (or relevant) case study is seen as fi t to be published in an international feminist journal, it fi nds itself accompanied by reference-rich ‘commentaries’ made by scholars based in the ‘global north’.18 A simplistic view of the north–south dynamic ails geographical relations and determines who gets heard; all Third World women trained from institutions based in the global north are taken as representative of ‘Third World women’. Internal politics of knowledge-creation are either ignored or misunderstood; for example, even when the search for ‘an authentic southern voice’ succeeds and professional connections are made with Indian scholars, these connections do not reach beyond the metro-based universities. Poor attention to the internal inequities within the fi eld means that those working at the margins have only a rare opportunity to gain a voice to ‘talk back’ to those located at the top of the pile. There are also widely known structural limitations and logistic diffi culties

17 India boasts of a number of feminist publishers, Ritu Menon of Women Unlimited, Mandira Sen of Stree and Urvashi Butalia, originally of Kali for Women, devoted entirely to publishing work on women and gender. There are also a number of women in publishing in India (such as Gita Dharmarajan of Katha or Arpita Das of Yoda Press), and a look at their websites would indicate the rich literature that has been published in-country. 18 My fi rst encounter with Gender, Place and Culture (GPC), one of the leading feminist geographical journals, took place when in 2000 a respite from teaching through a Career Award from the University Grants Commission allowed me to take up an invitation to visit the Australian National University. The fi rst issue of GPC I picked up was a 1999 publication (vol. 6, no. 4), carrying an article close to my interest of how large- scale resource development projects have impacted on the environment, and how these changes have infl uenced women’s lives in the Niger delta. I was fl abbergasted to see that the article was accompanied by three highly theorised responses from women based in the Anglophone ‘north’ directing the big pictures where the Nigerian work could be fi tted in. Whilst the main article (Okoko 1999) was only fi ve pages long with a modest number of eight references, the fi rst commentary, by a veteran Nigeria expert (Robson 1999), ‘Doing Gender’ in Geography J 61 of resource constraints and the poverty of material. Whilst institutionalised changes have been slow to respond to these limitations, Information Technology (IT) has enabled those in the margins. Google and other Internet search engines have in recent years made access possible to this ‘world of knowledge’ opening up in the process new ways of thinking and seeing the world.19 The extensive use of IT is precisely how those in remote and non-metro locations have been able to challenge the metropolitan hegemony within Indian gender geography, but the time has certainly arrived for those at global centres to change the gross inequities within the disciplinary fi eld. The other reason of the continued usage of positivist techniques in Indian geography lies in the data itself — the availability pertaining to specifi c geographical units, and the ease with which such data lend themselves to conventional choropleth mapping and statistical regression. Many doctoral students, for example, would fi rst look into the ‘availability of data’, with offi cial statistics in mind, before taking up a research project. However, the use of complex statistical techniques in some of this body of research in Indian geography also was six pages with another four and a half pages of notes and references, comparing the case with other international examples, and containing ideas and refl ections that benefi ted from a conference at St Antony’s College at Oxford. Not only was this commentary process on an empirical case study by someone in the ‘south’ by those who know better about the theories and other cases obscenely patronising, it revealed precisely the kind of tensions within feminist geography that intends to be refl exive and open to voices from the margin. Largely, feminists based in the ‘north’ who were and still remain the primary contributors and readers of the journal chose not to refl ect on the politics of this curious incident. A long-time editor of the journal, refl ecting on her years of editing, cites this incident to justify her use of ‘material of a more experimental form’ that ‘made it through to print’, but does not cite Okoko individually (Bondi 2002: 85). She brings this up as an example of how the journal has successfully created a ‘paradoxical’ or even ‘absurd’ space in embodying highly conventional academic practices with contradictory feminist practices. Only recently, such blind insensitivity has been reported more authentically and formally commented upon in a negative manner in a journal article refl ecting on the 15 years of GPC (Johnson 2008: 569). 19 I see myself as one who has benefi ted immensely from the enabling aspects of IT, and been able to establish contacts far beyond ‘my reach’ or the rigid boundary line ascribed to me by my previous location. 62 J Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt has a complicated history that explains the geographical tradition in India. Geography in India has had a long-drawn affair with approaches rooted in spatial and regional science. Therefore, even when Indian geographers research on women, they tend to fall back upon these techniques. The use of qualitative methods still arouses contempt and their validity is held under suspicion.20 As a result, students depend on trusted techniques like questionnaire surveys to generate primary data which is then turned into bargraphs and pie graphs — statistics; such techniques allow comparisons to be made between jurisdictions and populations over time — all being specifi c areas of research within geography continuing to produce such visual depictions (Seager 2008). This genre of research has created its own fi eld and has now produced voluminous literature. There is no quandary in using quantitative techniques as they are useful in their own right. However, quantitative data is often underpinned by significant qualitative assumptions, and thus may not accurately refl ect their interests or problems as the perceptions of their status may vary according to their experiences. Austen et al. (2003) observe that a great reliance upon gender breakdown of existing statistical bases (such as the men–women classification in Indian census data) may cause researchers to benchmark women’s experiences against those of men. The uncritical application of existing quantitative data and statistical indicators derived thereof to new areas such as unpaid work by women may also contribute to the validation of existing theoretical constructs to the areas where they are ill-suited. This growing body of research cannot be easily dismissed as this is the point where one can start understanding women’s condition within the disciplinary fold of geography. Feminist economists have begun to appreciate the limitations of traditional econometric-style methods and traditional statistical indicators, and have initiated a process of exploration to broaden economic data and methods (see Pujol 1997). Some important questions asked are: How can the range and focus of economic research

20 A debate in an open seminar in Kolkata threw the challenges — what are these qualitative methods? How can they be applied in geographical ﬁ eld research? I thus published a response-article giving an expose of recent non-positivist ﬁ eld-based methods (Lahiri-Dutt 1998). ‘Doing Gender’ in Geography J 63 questions or agendas be broadened? How would economic research be enriched or transformed by the use of new methods? It is possible that through these early stirrings, gender specialist geographers in India would begin to ask these questions and explore ways to overcome the limitations of many conventional social and economic indicators? It is time for them to move beyond the traditional means of assessing women’s status and look for measures of men and women’s lives hitherto unobserved. The international perspectives on gender issues have now been reviewed by Indian geographers more than once (Kumar’s early 1994 work being an example). Regrettably, only a very few India-based geographers have questioned either these methods or their outcomes. However, this mysterious silence can partly be resolved if one looked at the male monolith that Indian geography is.21

Indian Geography and Indian Feminism(s)

In India, it took many years to produce ‘our own’ geographers in spite of, and probably because of, the great colonial institutions such as the Survey of India and the Geological Survey of India. It was not till the return of Professors S. P. Chatterjee and R. L. Singh from their doctoral training abroad that an ‘Indianised’ geography began its journey. Yet, their geographical studies largely reﬂ ected their European training. In comparison, disciplines like history had a much earlier start in India, resulting in a more proliﬁ c intellectual growth by the time geography made its start after the Second World War. Since then, the journey of geography in India has been marked with ambivalence unparalleled by any other discipline. India has had its own geographers, but very little of its ‘own geography’. Indian geographers have been engaged in self-analysis early on, as is evident

21 I use the description following the precedence of other geographers; Datta and De (2008: 607) described how the ‘dominantly masculinist perspective’ determines ‘what is geography and how geographical space shall be consumed, conquered and studied’. 22 These early volumes offer interesting reading and important insights into the early beginnings of later manifestations of Indian geographers’ obsessions. In the very fi rst issue, Binoy Bhushan Nag in his article described geography as the ‘sick man’ of the school curriculum in India: ‘To-day geography is the most despised and worst treated member in the family of subjects 64 J Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt from Chatterjee’s paper ‘The Teaching of Geography’ in 1936.22 However, its close association with the project of modernity has given good fortune to Indian geography which has fared better than other social science disciplines in conversing with state policies. The proximity to power attributed Indian geographers with a prescriptive worldview and visibility not commonly achieved by geographers elsewhere. The increased demand for higher education in geography, now established as a ‘spatial science’, turned this social science into a quintessential discipline rooted in India’s quest for modernity (Lahiri- Dutt 1990). The use of technology using Geographic Information System (GIS) within the fraternity is just a part of it. The other part is that Indian geographers came to recognise only the fi nite, meas- urable, absolute and the highly visible space. Such positivist, numerical datacentric and technocentric nature of Indian geography has marginalised geographers from other practicing social scientists in India. Of all areas, the heightened interest of social scientists in gender and their experiments on feminist methodology have largely failed to excite the geographical imagination. It is possible that the continued incorporation of ‘women’ as subjects of study in Indian geography, without going beyond conventional statistical techniques, refl ects this mutual lack of interest. A question arises: Has the nature of Indian feminism been such that it did not fundamentally change Indian geography unlike the situation in the Anglophone world? A good understanding of the nature of gender studies in Indian geography can be obtained through a better appreciation of the multiple strands of Indian feminism, including the ‘Western impact–Indian response’ paradigm in which women’s roles changed in response to those in colonial India. It is argued that improvements in the status of women in India came about from the nineteenth century, not as the product of a process of conscious assertion on the part of Indian women, but through

claiming a place in the curriculum of schools and colleges in India’ (1936: 33). Many years later, Mukherji (1991) asked in a similar vein: ‘What ails Indian Geography?’ Mukherji made a poetic plea to investigate the cultural roots and current status of Indian geography, indicating the extent to which such queries have been the hallmark of Indian geographical research and pedagogy. ‘Doing Gender’ in Geography J 65 programmes of social reform devised and carried out by Indian men and the colonial state. If this strand of argument is extended into geography, it would imply that women academics inherited their rights without fi ghting for them. The inherited liberal tradition23 is, however, over-emphasised, and evident in mainly earlier works on Indian feminism: Meredith Borthwick’s (1984b) work can be cited as a classical example of this view. She studied the changing conditions of women in Bengal during 1850 to 1905, and showed that the category of bhadramahila (‘respectable’ middle-class Bengali woman) was emerging as a response to the bhadralok (middle-class genteel man), who in turn were reacting to British rule, and did not display any ‘feminist consciousness’.24 The picture of Indian women emerges, in this paradigm, as passive recipients of the social reform processes predetermined by others, and as a monolithic and oppressed entity reduced to mere benefi ciaries of the ‘awakening’ experienced generally by men through contact with enlightenment values. Several Indian scholars have critiqued the defi nition of what it means to be an Indian feminist by using a ‘Western lens’. Karlekar’s Voices from Within (1991), treated autobiographical writings as ‘personal narratives’ to show that women in India were neither without autonomy nor were these previous approaches used to understand the colonial Indian woman able to produce a deep understanding of their agency. Besides critiquing this Eurocentric bias in charting agency, the so-called involvement of Indian feminists with the ‘reconstitution and reproduction of patriarchy’ has also been debated. Anagol (2005: 5) argued that women’s participation in modern movements such as education or social reforms in India did not necessarily re-create patriarchal paradigm in India. Indeed, examples of powerful women scholars can be given from the ancient texts to the

23 It has been noted that liberal thought has been central to Indian feminism, the liberalism being manifested through the relationship of Indian men and women to the modern rule of law, in gaining recognition in the eyes of the state irrespective of gender, caste or creed, in the enjoyment of freedom of religion (Majumdar 2007: 435). 24 Borthwick (1984a: 22) states: ‘When I began my study I was interested in locating a “feminist consciousness”. The possibility still interests me, but as I understand more about the lives of women at that time, the more misguided I feel it is to expect that kind of perception then.’ 66 J Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt colonial period; many women in India entered academia as early on as in the second half of the 1800s.25 Education, in particular English education, enabled them to legitimise their presence within the public sphere and by blurring the public–private divide, created roles for themselves that differed from male perceptions (see Forbes 1996). Similarly nationalist movements — in particular women’s involvement in the freedom struggle led by the Indian National Congress — and in later years the Communist movement gave birth to powerful fi gures of women leaders particularly in Bengal.26 Within the fi eld of geography, such prominent women were initially few, and mostly located within strict gender norms of behaviour.27 My own teachers — during my education in the 1970s in an all-girls’ college in Kolkata — were such early pioneers in academic geography. These women geographers broke into a male- dominated fi eld and paved the way for others like us to follow in the future. Although it is true that for each woman geographer going abroad to pursue a Ph.D., there were many women geographers who had to give up further studies or pursuance of a career. However, it

25 I can only speak about women in my family, which has a very long history of education and participation in white-collar jobs. My great grandmother passed out of Calcutta University in the last quarter of the 1800s. She, Kumudini Das, became the principal of Bethune College in Calcutta, a tertiary education institution meant for the education of (mostly) upper-class women in the years between 1891 and 1902. Whether in India or elsewhere, these were indeed very early years for formal workforce participation by middle-class women. One has also to remember that besides the likes of Kumudini Das, large numbers of indigenous women were during this time joining work — often as part of family labour units — in colonial plantations and ‘modern’ manufacturing industries such as jute mills and coal mines. 26 Both my parents were actively involved in the Communist movement in the early 1940s, which exposed me to the fact that different worlds are possible, and might have ingrained in me the critical thinking to challenge hegemonic power. 27 Some academic women even remained spinsters, either haloed for their sacrifi ce for their families or loathed for their bad temper or looks. If married, they had to work overtime to prove their loyalty to their families as good wives and mothers, putting their teaching careers always in the background. ‘Doing Gender’ in Geography J 67 is also true that generally women in academic geography remained concentrated within the lower rungs of the disciplinary pedagogy: teaching only in schools and degree colleges.28 Many women scholars have widened the fi eld of geography in India, in spite of their allegiance to what is seen as the ‘Patriarchal, Patronizing and Paternal’ discipline (Datta and De 2008: 608). Contributions made by such women need to be assessed with different yardsticks than those offered by the Research Quality Framework or such other criteria. It is incorrect to say that Indian women received their rights rather than achieving them because in the process of fi ghting personal battles to be recognised as competent geographers, they lost a lot. However, by staying on in the system, they also carved the way for other women geographers in the future to do research in the fi eld of gender in Indian geography. The lack of interest by women academics to study gender is not particular to Indian geography; Monk et al. (2003) have noted a similar disjuncture in other countries. In India, in my opinion, the pre-eminent reason for this is that gender geography does not fi gure prominently in the contemporary course outlines. Earlier, Monk (1983) observed the need for stylistic changes in language enabling the recognition of women’s contributions and experiences and integrating gender as a variable in the geography curriculum in the English-speaking world. This proved to be an impossible task in India. Geriatric rule in Indian geography ensures the dictatorship of the curriculum by senior professors, mostly men.29 The fl ipside of the coin is also true; to prove their worth as ‘true’ geographers, most women geographers chose to take up specialisations such as geomorphology or pedology which conventionally belonged to the ‘core’ of geography. There is a relentless pressure on the researcher working on any human or social geographical specialisation to

28 Again, some rose to prominent positions such as the principals of colleges, or in geographical societies. 29 A personal anecdote will elaborate this. In the early 1990s, in my previous university, during one of the ‘syllabus meetings’ a senior professor commented on my proposal that feminist geography be included in the new course (which had included ‘radical approaches in geography’ — but then the state I lived in was ruled by the Communist Party since the late 1970s), that ‘there does not exist either a good amount of literature on this emergent branch’ nor is it ‘culturally appropriate’ for the students. 68 J Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

‘prove it is geography’,30 that recognition as a geographer came only if one worked on conventional geographical topics with accepted techniques and data.31 As a result, no model of research and personal achievement has been presented to encourage younger women academics/geographers. One could, of course, predictably invoke market forces and berate contemporary attention to gender in some geographical research in India by claiming it as a response to ‘popular demand’. Rather than undermining the feminist cause, researching women with offi cial statistics could constitute the fi eld of gender studies in academic geography in India and help re-create or re-balance the existing curriculum. In Indian geography, the entry of ‘women’ as subjects of study was facilitated by the nature of offi cial data. The Indian census offered a rich and reliable source of quantitative material, conveniently classed into separate and distinctive categories32 — a source

30 Again, I cannot help but share another personal anecdote. My late 1980s research on McCluskiegunge, the utopian homeland plan that a group of Anglo-Indians embarked upon in the 1930s, depended heavily on archival material of the ‘Colonisation Society’ salvaged from a dilapidated house in the then dying settlement itself. Besides these, I also undertook interviews amongst contemporary younger generation Anglo-Indians to explore if members of this mixed race community still felt the need for a separate homeland. The manuscript, submitted to my university press for consideration of publication, was returned by one of my old teachers with the comment that ‘this is a journalistic work, without any geographical element’. Although I added a questionnaire-based survey to it then, my teacher (and other geographers) refused to see it as a contribution to geography. 31 When the Ministry of Environment and Forests sanctioned a major grant to me to study women’s perceptions of environmental changes in a coal-mining region, one of my older male colleagues commented, ‘Indeed, it is easy for women with good looks to get funds from Delhi’. The comment of course did neither convince me of my physical appearance nor was it found objectionable by my other colleagues when I raised it in a ‘Departmental Committee’ (staff) meeting. But alas, such sexually-based harassment was not uncommon in Indian universities till the early 1990s. In retrospect, it might have actually strengthened me to instil more courage amongst my own students who would certainly expect — and receive a better deal from their colleagues. 32 The ‘general populations’ were, for example, classed into ‘male’ and ‘female’, ‘rural’ and ‘urban’, ‘Scheduled Castes’ and ‘Scheduled Tribes’, workers, ‘Doing Gender’ in Geography J 69 of data for geographical studies that looked at ‘spatial and temporal’ variations. Using the census and the male–female classiﬁ cation, one can bring forth a nuanced understanding of gender by making them visible in the academic agenda. As shown later, the use of quantitative data is not necessarily against the grain of feminist geography. Some of these researchers have asked critical questions that go beyond the pure descriptive. Only a handful of work in this genre of research has transcended the limits of traditional data and techniques, and cartography was overshadowed by the gross gender inequities that were revealed by them (see Raju et al. 1999). A focus on ‘women’ also characterised the early feminist research in geography in the global north, although there was an ‘easy association’ of the ‘geography of women’ with women academics and students — based on an assumption that this type of research was by women, for women (McDowell 1997: 384). However, to reach conclusions about women, there was a need to view men not as ungendered, disembodied individuals, but in terms of gender relations.

Women doing geography or women doing ‘women’s business’?

Whilst there were incipient beginnings of women studying Indian geography, the tendency of remaining within the science faculties in academic institutions left its indelible mark on the critical development of the discipline.33 Whether or not geography is a ‘legitimate

marginal workers and so on. The ‘working population’ was then put into ten ‘occupational’ categories which had male–female, rural–urban differences. Although the results of each census were published later, and were often diffi cult for smaller universities to access, this reserve provided a ready data source lending itself to choropleth mapping. 33 Bannerjee-Guha notes (2002: 4508) ‘the problem of geography as a discipline has always been its search for an “essence” with an exclusively defi ned nature ... A wide gap hence has developed between the ensuing problematics of the social, economic and environmental areas and the subject matter of geography in general. Crucial social, cultural or environmental issues, thrown up from time to time as a part of the larger discourses and practices, have rarely been addressed by geographers except in a general manner, in both teaching and research.’ 70 J Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt social science’ in India has recently given rise to some debates.34 Whilst geographers elsewhere have been colonising the fi eld of social science and humanities, geography in India has chosen to remain within science faculties in universities in response to the need for funding the small ‘practical’ aspects of geography research and training, such as funding a laboratory for research students. Such an orientation to science has involved the creation of an ‘other’ in human geographical studies, which receives a lower preference in both teaching and research. Prasad observed (2005: 79) that ‘the physical geographer is wary of the human geographer and feels that the latter’s (study) is not “rigorous, analytical and objective”, while the human geographer believes that the former is weak on theory and interpretation.’ This ‘scientifi c’ approach to geographical studies has serious gender implications. The science community — including some women scientists — in India tends to believe that gender is not a criterion to decide job division and achievement in science. Subramanian (2007) showed that within universities, the perception and production of merit are gendered notions about academic competence, and these shape the career of women scientists in India. The division of labour between men and women in Indian academia, as Nair, a noted historian observes (2006: 138), tends to ‘ghettoise’ women into softer options and keep them ‘out of the forums that make decisions about recruitment, syllabi and course content, and seminars’. Whilst geography chooses to remain within the science faculties, this segregation forces a feminisation of human geography teaching and research, or trains women geographers who teach in ‘women’s

34 The discussion took place in one of the journals between Kapur, Prasad and Lahiri-Dutt in 2005. Kapur (2004) laments that geography is not recognised in India by social scientists. She blames Indian geographers for not contributing adequately to the social science knowledge — the journals launched mostly in the 1960s and the 1970s have generally become irregular and are ‘anaemic in nature’ with a small number of articles per publication, and books by geographers are few and far between. My comment (2005: 691) stated: ‘Unfortunately, it is most unlikely that this debate will reach those involved in teaching–research in the intellectual isolation of innumerable rural colleges and regional universities.’ It was proved true when the response to this exchange came from University of Paris, France, where it was commented that the situation is similar (Landy 2005). ‘Doing Gender’ in Geography J 71 colleges’ which in turn produce a large number of women graduates trained in the humanities.35 Ultimately, the question arises that if gender studies are to assume a place within Indian geography, what kind of methodologies and epistemological practices should it take up. As observed earlier, an Indian geography of gender would be fi rmly contextualised with the broader discipline in India in tune with Indian feminism. Non-English-speaking geographers in Europe have attempted to similarly contextualise their different approaches to gender studies, and from their vantage point have posed signifi cant challenges to Anglophone hegemony within the international geography of gender. Garcia-Ramon and Monk (2007: 253–54), comment: ‘What is new and at issue is the constitution of Anglophone journals as an “international” writing space and the limited acknowledgement of their own locatedness’. This statement brings home the importance of contextuality. However, whilst they emphasise the importance of context, the uneven development of gender studies in geography over time may not be the main reason for the late development of gender studies in these countries. If context and history are important, and we recognise them as such, then following the challenges thrown up from Europe to the Anglophone hegemony within feminist geography would not be the path for Indian geographers working on gender. English-speaking geographers’ soul-searching has at times touched on and critiqued the hegemony; for example, Berg and Kearns (1998) fi nd it ironic that whilst geography, including feminist geography, has focused on ideas about exclusion, marginality, periphery, situated knowledge and the politics of identity and place, Anglophone geography has marginalised research work undertaken elsewhere. It is the uniqueness of a country’s context, its historical trajectory of geography and unique arguments within the feminist movements that produce a distinctively contextualised geography of gender. Consequently, research approaches vary between the two geographical studies of gender. Whilst Anglophone feminists have been obsessed with ‘the body’, Indian geographers have engaged with regional variations in women’s access to some basic resources to enable poor households

35 By using discourse analysis, Riska (2008) has examined more closely the phenomenon of feminisation of the profession of medicine, and locates the texts within a wider social context of discursive production. 72 J Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt live a better life. Raju (2002), in response to why ‘geography of the body’ has not matured in India says that it is an ‘academic luxury’ that we ‘cannot afford’, and observes that for the time being, research in the tradition is likely to be driven by priorities of uneven economic development. Anglophone geographers are thus beginning to notice the growing amount of research being undertaken in non-English speaking countries. An ‘anti-anthology’ of writings that brings forth these different voices from different contexts has been edited jointly by a Canadian and an American geographer (Moss and Falconer Al-Hindi 2008).

Part II: Feminist Methodology for a Geography of Gender Feminist Methodology, Method and Epistemology

It is important to point out the differences between method and methodology. Sandra Harding’s 1987 book is useful for this purpose. The book began with the questions: Is there a unique feminist method of enquiry?36 If so, what is it? If not, how should one describe what is it that is responsible for the many startling challenges to established beliefs in different branches of the social sciences? Harding put forth a collection of papers that explored these questions and provided a range of examples of feminist approaches to research methods and issues of methodology. Following Harding (1987), I use the term ‘methodology’ to imply a theory and analysis of how research should proceed. Although method and methodology are often used synonymously, Harding differentiated the two. According to her, ‘method’ stands for the techniques for gathering evidence whereas ‘methodology’ is ‘a theory and analysis of how research does or should proceed’ (1987: 3). Such a demarcation is important to start with if clarity is to be achieved with regard to what is meant by feminist research in geography. In feminist geographical studies, this would

36 DeVault (1999) pointed out that defi ning feminist methodology is not an easy task. To defi ne feminist methodology risks distorting what feminist methodologists actually do. ‘Doing Gender’ in Geography J 73 mean a way of proceeding to gather evidence in a gender-differentiated manner to refl ect realities over space. However, elsewhere, Harding and Hintikka (1983) noted that it is important to remember that methods and methodologies are interconnected with epistemological issues of ‘discovering reality’ or the theory of knowledge. A closely connected but separate concept is epistemology, a theory of knowledge. Harding writes (1987: 3): ‘It [epistemology] answers questions about who can be a “knower” (can women?); what tests beliefs must pass in order to be legitimated as knowledge (only tests against men’s experiences and observations?); what kinds of things can be known (can “subjective truths” count as knowledge?) ....’ Questioning the very nature of knowledge is closely related to how such knowledge is expressed and retrieved by feminist researchers. If we critique the claim that knowledge can be universal and objective with evidence that such knowledge is in reality based on men’s knowledge, we need to also look for new ways of accessing and exploring.37 J. K. Gibson-Graham, the joint pen-personae of Katherine Gibson and Julie Graham, compared mining and social research intervening and disturbing a landscape by ‘probing and digging for a rich lode of ore or layer of stratum that has hitherto lain covered, or unknown, perhaps until now unvalued’. Like the minerals, women’s knowledge has lain as part of the surfi cial landscape, ‘for centuries untouched by the technical intervention of dynamite and front-end loader, tape-recorder and questionnaire, simply because society has had no use for it. Today, bauxite is mined by aluminium can makers and women’s knowledge is mined by feminist researchers’ (Gibson-Graham 1994: 206–207). Their 1996 work provides a completely new feminist epistemology of developing a critique of political economy, and provides a major challenge to the way the metaphor of ‘capital’ is used even in envisioning non- capitalist futures. The argument that feminists have put forth against traditional epistemologies is that they systematically exclude the possibility that

37 Another critique of conventional research is based on its gender insensitivity: what is often presented as gender-neutral is actually sexist, written not only by men from their points of view but is also dominated by male stereotypes created through socialisation and professional training of majority male social scientists. 74 J Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt women can be agents of knowledge. To justify their argument, they have shown that every fi eld, be it science, history or traditional social enquiry is dominated by men resulting in a masculine voice. A major feature of the rethinking of research methodology was the feminist critique of one of the most far-reaching paradigms in social sciences — positivism.38 Positivism originated in the late 1800s and evolved out of the European rationalist and empiricist movements. Positivist social scientists assert the existence of an objective reality is ready to be discovered, and advocate the accurate illumination of that objective reality. Positivism also believes in the universal and unchanging truth that objective and value-free researchers aimed to achieve. Monk and Hansom (2005) give extensive examples of sexist bias in the content, methods and purposes of geographic research, and show that the damage is that ‘half of the human’ is excluded in human geography as a result. The methods to know the so-called universal and ultimate knowledge are quantitative methods; according to Brooks and Hesse-Biber (2007: 7) ‘positivism continues to provide an epistemological grounding for quantitative research’. Quantitative researchers often use survey data and statistical analyses to test hypotheses and causal relationships, to produce fi ndings that are considered generalisable. Some feminist researchers — described as feminist empiricists — continue to fi nd quantitative data useful, but advocate reworking traditional positivist approaches to include women’s experiences. Others started by highlighting women’s previously invisible experiences, exposed the under-representation of these experiences within the positivist research paradigm, and highlighted the ways in which women’s experiences often contradicted mainstream research fi ndings (Hesse-Biber et al. 2007). This shift in the defi nition of ‘data’ on gender poses a serious threat to the so- called value-neutrality of positivist social research. Objectivity, or the perceived lack of it, has always been a crux of controversy in feminist research. Feminist researchers criticise the so-called objectivity

38 According to Brooks and Hesse-Biber (2007: 22) a paradigm implies a particular worldview, model or approach to knowledge-building. The positivist paradigm includes an epistemological set of assumptions, in other words an approach to knowledge building or enquiry, and the theoretical and methodological models that accompany that approach (see Kuhn 1962 for a more detailed explanation of the term ‘paradigm’). ‘Doing Gender’ in Geography J 75 of social research, of detachment and the lack of passion that is claimed by conventional researchers to be ideal. They show that social researchers cannot be objective without devaluing, manipulating and exploiting the respondents, and that there are important power inequalities in the relationship of a researcher and the researched ‘subject’. Thus, feminists choose to believe in certain social values rather than committing themselves to value-neutrality. To counter the limitations of conventional positivism-based quantitative methods, feminists do not necessarily offer ‘alternative’ research methods, but illuminate alternative origins of problematics, explanatory hypotheses and evidence, alternative purposes of enquiry, and a new prescription for the appropriate relationship between the inquirer and her/his subject of inquiry (Harding 1987: vii). For example, a feminist geographical inquiry into women’s work would not entirely rely upon the statistical data offered by ofﬁ cial sources as the data present a distorted view of the world and are not representative due to non-response, incomplete sampling frames or the hired hand effects. Instead, feminist researchers go beyond the standardised ideals and unidirectional instruments (such as rigidly structured questionnaires) to encourage subjectivity and intensive dialogue between equals. Harding (1995) while taking on the critiques of feminist enquiry on their point of objectivity argued that value-neutrality can only lead to ‘weak objectivity’ and although it may appear paradoxical, ‘strong objectivity’ requires a conscientious socially situated production of knowledge characteristic of feminist work in economics.

Epistemology and Women in Conventional Research

It is clear that feminist research is generally different from — or even incompatible with — and critical of conventional social research and science and the way gender is treated by these disciplines. Harding critiqued the efforts to ‘add women’ to existing research methods — the attempts by early feminists as inherently problematic. She observes (1987: 4–5) that early researchers used three approaches in their attempts to rectify the androcentrism of traditional analyses. First, they tried to ‘add women’ to existing modes of analyses, ‘recovering’ and re-appreciating hitherto neglected work by women in fi elds of science and social science. She reckons that adopting this approach cannot be the only way to eliminate androcentrism from social science. Having entered the domain of men, women were 76 J Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt confi rmed to ‘act like men’; they did not benefi t from the feminist theoretical breakthroughs that took place since the 1970s. The second revisionist genre of work examines women’s contributions to the public world, as wage or non-wage workers, social reformers, high achievers, revolutionaries and so on. A good amount of literature in the mode of ‘uncovering’ or ‘recovering’ women’s histories in public life exists today. However, even this approach leads to a partial or distorted understanding that only public activities constitute and shape social life, and does not ask what the meanings of women’s contributions could have been for women themselves. A third genre of research focuses on women as victims of male dominance — victims of economic exploitation and political discrimination, dowry deaths, rape, pornography, sex-work and domestic violence. Harding says that such victimologies are limited because they tend to create the false impression that women have only been victims and never had the agency to challenge or to fi ght back. To counter these views, Harding calls for the use of feminist analysis, which is essentially trans-disciplinary and political because it seeks to understand the unequal gender hierarchies that stem from various other hierarchies of societal power. A feminist perspective is located both within a discipline and outside the rigid disciplinary framework as a critique of it, but it is important to remember that feminist inquiry is a dialectical process. At the same time, its goal is to transform these disciplines. Feminist knowledge is thus essentially eclectic, whereas mainstream scientifi c knowledge presents itself as universal, value-free and neutral in its relentless pursuit of truth. Feminist geographers — influenced by both feminist theory and geographic knowledge — have intensely debated these issues. According to Moss (2005: 45), their deliberations can be placed in three broad areas — epistemology, fi eldwork and choice of methods. According to her, questions relating to epistemology were addressed by feminist geographers through discussions about refl exivity and positionality, located in a web of power relations, in which the researcher commands a certain position. They raised issues of transparency of research and called for introspection and self- criticism as essential tasks for the researcher to come to terms with her own position. On the topic of the ‘fi eld’ as a site of research, feminist geographers followed issues raised by cultural anthropologists, and pointed out the various ‘spaces of interaction’ such as interview settings, ethnographic fi eld settings and constructing difference, ‘Doing Gender’ in Geography J 77 along with masculinities that were deeply entrenched in ‘doing fi eldwork’ in geography in colonialism and imperialism. Moss (2005: 46) shows that within these writings, ‘there is a recognition that the boundaries of what constitutes the fi eld are in a fl ux’, as one is always, everywhere in the ‘fi eld’. To others, a feminist epistemology would involve forming research questions that raise issues of signifi - cance of gender right from the start, collecting data, choosing methods, analysis and interpretation of data, and representation of results through a gender lens (Cope 2002). On the choice of method, feminist geographers have been markedly divided between quantitative and qualitative methods in their research. They are either ‘enchanted’ by qualitative methods or are ‘alienated’ (Davies and Dwyer 2007). Rejecting positivist claims of objectivity, value-free inquiry and rational logic forms the core of feminist methodology in geography. Quantitative methods are generally seen as belonging to the positivist domain, and most feminists based in the north tend to use some sort of qualitative method. The choice of method is closely intertwined with the question of what is counted as ‘geographical data’. Feminist scholars use diverse sources such as diaries, letters, photographs, songs and artwork to broaden the understanding of women’s lives. However, the methods of qualitative research in human geography comprise studying texts, conducting interviews, convening focus groups and engaging in ethnography. The actual practice of such data-collection through fi eldwork has given rise to intense debates on positionality and power, collaboration and team research. A group of scholars has pointed out that using qualitative methods can be exploitative: giving up the use of numbers entirely would only enhance the masculinist claim that ‘women cannot count’. Another view is that the oppositional stance to hold qualitative methods as opposed to quantitative methods perpetuates yet another dualist thinking and ignores the possibility of post-positivist, critical quantitative methods that are consistent with feminist epistemologies and politics (Lawson 1995). According to Moss (2007: 47), we are still working on ‘the rationale for choice of method remained largely unresolved’ in feminist geography. The following section gives an idea of the nature of feminist thinking in integrating positivist techniques in geographical research. Cope suggests that (2002: 50) both qualitative and quantitative methods can be imbued with a feminist epistemology that shapes all aspects of the research process — shaping the research questions, seeing 78 J Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt gender as an important set of relations with deep repercussions on the lives of both men and women and considering the ways that gender infl uences the production of knowledge. A feminist epistemology would thus encourage the researcher to engage in feminist politics of unequal power whilst undertaking the tasks of collection and analysis of data.

Turning GIS into a Feminist Tool

An important concern is whether feminist geography contributes to alternative ways of using new geographical tools such as GIS. Kwan (2002: 646) advocates the truth of this concern and suggests that ‘GIS can be re-envisioned and used in feminist geography in ways that are congenial to feminist epistemology and politics’. GIS literature has largely remained concentrated within technology and methods; it is a quantitative spatial analysis which tends to avoid the use of critical social theories. However, in India, within the ﬁ eld of international geography, GIS has been severely criticised because of its inadequate representation of space and subjectivity, positivist epistemology, instrumental rationality, technique-driven and data-led methods and its role as surveillance or military technology deployed by the state.39 GIS tends to avoid engagement with critical social theories in its selective use of social data. Whilst Johnston (1999) has called for the integration of GIS practices with critical social theories, there has yet to be a reconciliation. GIS and critical geography have remained two separate, even antagonistic worlds, leading to ‘the binary split of two solitudes’ (Schuurman and Pratt 2002: 392). A feminist critique of GIS focuses on the lack of inclusion of women and feminist technical experts in the development of GIS

39 An example would be suffi cient to highlight how relevant many of these critiques are in the Indian context. In one of the GIS and Remote Sensing training sessions organised by the National Remote Sensing Agency during the mid-1990s, I experienced a fantastic GIS analysis by an expert of ‘outbreaks of violence’ in Indian cities as being related purely to population density and economic poverty. Obviously the technically-oriented professor did not care about what sociologists have long known — that the occurrences of violence in Indian cities have a close association with the clustering of religious and ethnic characteristics of the urban populations in distinct pockets. ‘Doing Gender’ in Geography J 79 projects, and how this creates a technocracy that connects itself to a dominant positivist philosophy. Gilbert and Masucci (2008: 308–10) think that the two issues are interconnected, and that greater access to GIS, can empower not just women but also men hitherto marginalised with regard to access to GIS technology. GIS has assumed great signifi cance in Indian geography, and the technology has easily fi tted itself with its modernist projection. How- ever, as compared to men, fewer women tend to use GIS in India; if they do, they use it for socially-oriented research rather than studying physical, environmental or geomorphological changes. Women researchers using GIS technology in India for application in gender studies would need to break the historically constructed positivist/masculinist connection or the assumption of subject–object dualism built around it. Instead of searching for universal truths or generalisations about the world and natural laws, they should engage in exploring the gendered experience of the individual across multiple axes of difference. The rewards from such an engagement will be the illumination of those aspects of everyday life that can meaningfully be depicted by using GIS methods.

Practising Feminist Geography

Fieldwork occupies a major part in developing a geographical understanding of the world as also in geography teaching and geographical research: this is where the ‘doing’ part of feminist research occurs. One area of feminist contribution in geography is in the area of fi eldwork and fi eld-based studies.40 In fi eldwork, geographical ‘data’ is generated and knowledge is created, leading feminist geographers to devote considerable attention to the politics of research, emphasising issues of refl exivity, relations with research ‘subjects’, representations, power and voice, and above all what it means to be ‘in the fi eld’ (Sharp 2005; Sutherland 2004). Their main efforts have been to situate theory in research practices and situate politics in the research process having shown that theory and practice, knowledge

40 Feminists working in other social science disciplines have also prob- lematised the researcher’s position within the research process. For example, see Wolf’s (1996) edited volume. 80 J Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and politics are interconnected. Power hierarchies are unavoidable in research settings and conventional research enquiries — aimed at the generation of qualitative and quantitative data — have neglected to explore the different positionalities of the researcher and the subjects of research. Often, middle-class, urban-based researchers are expected to go into villages in search of data — using questionnaire surveys, interviews and interacting with focus groups.41 Power can be exerted on ‘research subjects’ during the research process and also afterwards, particularly if voices are selectively brought out in the research results. Gibson-Graham (1994: 214) observed, ‘knowledge and its production [is] always already [a] political process’. If feminist research challenges ‘research orthodoxies’ of traditional geography, it must also recognise the intense political nature of those research practices (Nairn 2002: 146). To gain inside knowledge, a researcher must secure access to a group of people or a community; since then, does the outsider exert the power freely or build a relationship of empathy to relate to the researched on a non-hierarchical plane? Power relations between the researched and the researcher are ﬂ uid and mark an ethical territory, especially when individual experiences are offered for public consumption. Three ethical principles guiding research are prior informed consent, conﬁ dentiality and the conduct of research. They are more relevant in feminist research which begins with recognition of unequal power relations within the context of research. Are research subjects and interviewees passive sources of information? Are the research assistants conduits in the passage of information to researchers? Are they engaged in conversational performances which have implications for the ways in which questions

41 Here is what a researcher refl ected on her fi eld-based research amongst women in Turkey: ‘While I was a Turkish woman, and an outsider, I was also middle-class, university-educated and living in the U.S., therefore an outsider.… [Consequently] I felt the power hierarchies strongest during the structured survey questionnaires. The dynamics of asking specifi c questions and demanding concrete answers were very constraining. During the qualitative interviews, such as the focus group interviews, the women who were the subjects of research had more voice and brought out issues of importance to them such as child care facilities and mobility outside the house. Approaching the research with a certain sense of responsibility has also helped in reducing the power hierarchies in the research setting’ (Esim 1997: 137–38). ‘Doing Gender’ in Geography J 81 are asked and answered? Asking these questions, paying attention to maintenance of the integrity of representation of subjects’ views and experiences and openness about research aims have an ethical mutuality inherent in the research process by feminist geographers by adding interesting theoretical insights to fi eldwork in geography. Positioning research ‘subjects’ only in terms of their usefulness or utilitarian value to the research could be exploitation or harm to innocent subjects. To ‘give something back’ to the informants is one of the commitments of feminist researchers, but in working with women who do not identify with feminist aims, the resistance gives rise to dilemmas (Watts 2008: 386–87). Some feminist researchers have committed themselves to equality and justice. Working in transnational settings or across boundaries of class and race has presented challenges that have also generated creative alternative research practices that are committed to their core values. Such alternative practices are illustrated by the research of Gibson-Graham (1994) who involves the subjects of research in the construction and destabilisation of the research process itself. In her research exploring alternative subjectivities of women in Australian mining towns, she draws from feminist politics an awareness of a personal location in research projects, a desire to work with others to deconstruct inequitable relationships and a strategic awareness of what resources an academic brings to a project. However, the research also encourages her to refl ect on her own involvement and roles in the research, thereby identifying with women. In her later work, she observed how engaging subjectivity as a relational construct can also offer a lens through which to understand how global and local processes are constituted in everyday life and through embodied spatial practice (Gibson-Graham 2002). ‘Working together’ is at the core of alternative research practices offered by feminists to enrich the fi eld of geography. Monk et al. (2003: 93) give an outline of current insights on collaborative feminist research. For example, the joint persona of Julie Graham based in the US and Katherine Gibson based in Australia at the margin of the English-speaking world present a challenge to the male tradition of geography, speaking with a singular authorial voice (see Gibson- Graham 1996). Such a singularity of voice precludes questions of the positionality of researchers. However, collaborators working as a research team have also refl ected — through individual and collective writings — on how they produced knowledge. Team research 82 J Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt introduces yet another layer of complex relationships, not hierarchical, to fi eldwork where decision-making, communication and data-collection are problematic. Mountz et al. (2003: 42) discuss their own team formation and observe: ‘As geographers laud mixed methodology, we also must mind methods for the successful enact- ment of a diverse research team. Each member must be empowered, knowing that their contributions are valued and utilised. Though equal participation may not be possible, forms of collaboration that destabilises power relations are. Team organisation requires collaborative tending to communication, expectations, division of labour, networks of support, distribution of fi nances, geographical location, language, personality, position and so on, none of which can be taken for granted.’ They refl ect that in the research process, their identities as researchers are constituted refl exively in relation to the shifting identities of participants. Feminist researchers have developed creative research processes in which all parties contribute to the production of knowledge. Networking is seen as a powerful tool to mobilise mutual support amongst researchers with similar interests (Hanson 2000). However, in today’s globalised research involving north–south collaborations, the unequal power relationships may become acute, necessitating attention on the politics of the fi eld, and the relationship between the researcher and the researched. Third World women have questioned whether narratives of Western-trained, middle-class women are superimposed on the women who are being researched, and whether the research process objectifi es them as ‘raw’ data sources (Mohanty 1991). Consequently, some feminist geographers have urged to identify such power imbalances and to rectify them. Nagar (2002: 179) identifi ed three main issues in expressing her concern about the utility of theory and theoretical languages in transnational feminist praxis: the question of accountability and the specifi c nature of our political commitments, the meaning of the co-production of knowledge across geographical, institutional and/or cultural borders, and more explicit interrogation of the structure of the academy and the constraints and values embedded therein as well as our desire and ability to reshape them. Her work clearly shows that the dynamic between the researcher and the researched is far more complex; it is not just that feminists working in the north are ‘talking to’ women based in the south. Many southern women in the north are now researching either their own countries or others. To articulate across ‘Doing Gender’ in Geography J 83 worlds, Pratt (2002: 198) suggested that feminists begin, once again, to look at the similarities of exclusion and sexist practices to organise alliances of women across their differences. In her fi eld research in Mexico as an Irani woman, Miraftab observed that her positionality as ‘between’ (the fi rst and third worlds, outsider and insider) eased fi eld dynamics, but invited other stereotypes. She (2004: 601–602) notes: ‘Feminist thought should consider the implications of this increased transnationalism of researchers, hence revisit and extend its methodological debate about insider/outsider positioning to include an explicit focus on transnational/transborder feminist praxis.’ Working across boundaries — of class or race — may present challenges that even widely accepted and used processes like Participatory Action Research need to negotiate the mismatch between theory and practice of participation. Cahill’s (2007) description of her participatory research with six young black women in a disadvantaged neighbourhood in New York City brings these issues of power, scale and the politics of location, and contributes to feminist understandings of spatial praxis. Given the heterogeneity and complexity of the social milieu of the country, gender research within the fi eld of geography in India should be aware of these debates and some of these feminist praxis in fi eld-based research. Indian geographers ignore the power issues within the fi eldwork framing it as a politically neutral act as part of geographical research and training. Most Indian geographers have so far treated fi eldwork as part of the curriculum or have preferred to use more data-based research at a higher degree level. Except in the physical branches of geography, fi eld-based research has almost died out in recent decades. In an inherently hierarchical society like India, caste, class and religious and ethnic divides are enormous. Yet, it is also true that some women have sought out and collaborated with other women — some of these relationships might have risen out of ‘old style’ research relationships between teachers and students, but in some cases, there are also close and non-hierarchical engagements and teamwork. The Indian feminist movement has had close ties with activist groups, and a number of women geographers have been associated with this grassroots activism. It is possible that the collaborative work with community groups that Indian feminist geographers have engaged in has yet to come to attention of international feminist circles. 84 J Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

Conclusion

I have addressed a range of issues in this chapter, some of which are relevant to international readers while some are to Indian geographers; some are meaningful to those working with a geographical lens on India and some to those working within Indian geography. I have also critically refl ected on the politics of knowledge- production internationally, within India and Indian geography, and brought out the inequities and hierarchies that continue to structure mutual dialogues and collaborative relations. To Indian readers, I hope I have been able to provide a glimpse of contemporary methodologies that can be applied to enrich the geographical studies of gender in India. Summing up, one must acknowledge that with increased traffi c along the highways of IT and the opening up of the Indian economy, not only is the Indian mind looking outside its borders, but even internally, there are signs of institutional change towards more positive outcomes. Some of these changes have not only occurred spontaneously using the Internet, but have actually been initiated by the University Grants Commission, rethinking academic performance and tying it with a reward system that has resulted in a fl urry of research into new and unconventional areas of enquiry, interdisciplinary collaborations and publication of such cross- disciplinary thematic research. There are several academics from the global south now working within and contributing to international geography; these women are bringing their southern ‘accent’ to the English-speaking world of feminist geography. Many of these scholars maintain close connections with their roots, creating growing networks that may generate the potential to subvert the established hegemony of Anglophone feminism, and fully fl ourish newer ways of thinking about gender in geography that are rooted in their lived experiences. The north–south research relationships so far have been one-way; researchers based in the global north subjecting the cultures, practices and politics of the south. Feminist geographers dealing with collaborative relationships in their research tend to hail from the north or are based in the north. It would now be interesting to switch to the other side and hear their voices. A telescopic gaze from the far north, interpretations and analyses of ‘mutual’ collaborations, when made from positions of super- ordinate power refl ects the global political order that the discipline ‘Doing Gender’ in Geography J 85 of geography belongs to. The chapters in this book provide not only ‘the southern voice’ that is truly arising ‘from the margins’, but may indicate to an even greater transformation that one has desired for long. There is a great need now to reverse the gaze, and to compare women and men’s lives based both in the north and south. Such a comparison renders visible important differences — as well as commonalities — issues of power, violence and multidimensional identities. This book is the fi rst step towards a real transformation within geography — and feminist geography — that would bring a different set of voices onto the global stage for the fi rst time.

Acknowledgements

This paper could not have been written without the generous love I have received over the years from Katherine Gibson. I say a very big ‘thank you’ to you in ‘my way’ through this paper, Katherine. Another person who has been a pillar of support and a great mentor since I moved to Australia is Janice Monk. I am grateful to these two for reading this paper at its different stages and for their thoughtful comments. All errors are mine. 86 J Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt Part I

World of Work 88 J Arpita Banerjee 3 Mobilities and Spaces: Gendered Dimension of Migration in Urban India

ARPITA BANERJEE

Migration is about people moving from one politically well-defi ned area to another. In this process, one generally leaves behind a familiar world to explore the unexplored and unseen. Several factors like culture, ethnic boundary and structural restriction may, however, constrain people’s mobility. At the same time, mobility may also bring enhanced opportunities for improved living in the new world through extra-local work more feasibly available to migrants, especially for the marginalised. They can also transfer their experiences of new ways of being into local contexts as consumers and for labour deployment (Gidwani and Sivaramakrishnan 2003). Earlier, migration was mainly explained in dual terms of ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors, that is, push from the areas of origin and pull of the destination or in terms of structural interdependencies of central and peripheral areas. However, these approaches fail to take into account individuals’ or households’ decisions to migrate as well as the infl uence of several socio-demographic factors affecting their mobility. Moreover, the push–pull theories essentially frame migration in terms of work opportunities. As conventional bread earners, men’s profi les often get much greater attention in migration studies at the expense of women who are summarily clubbed as associational/ dependent — moving on account of marriage — treating their working status, if there is one, as of secondary importance (Agrawal 2006; Seth 2001). Recent literature (Ghosh 2002; Shanti 1991; Yang and Guo 1999; Zhang 1999), however, suggests women’s increased participation in the urban labour market due to the opening up of new avenues of employment that have generated a gender-specifi c pattern of labour demand. For example, a rising tendency towards nuclear families in 90 J Arpita Banerjee cities, increased participation of educated women in the formal labour market and changing patterns of consumption have generated a demand for services such as domestic help, childcare and full-time-based caretakers (Majumdar 1980; Raghuram 2001). Apart from labour–migration, some women also migrate to resist structural impositions that curtail their mobility or to break away from existing caste taboos (Gidwani and Sivaramakrishnan 2003; Karan 2003); in certain cases their movement is motivated by the desire to adopt a ‘modern lifestyle’ (Brody 2006: 139) and/or to fulfi l family obligations. Migration can thus be perceived as a process through which women can fulfi l their needs and aspirations. It is this dimension which takes feminist migration studies beyond the mere economics of migration to pivot around social and spatial dimensions of mobility in order to explore the gender/class/caste and religion overlap, their intersecting relationships and how they are navigated through spatial mobility (Neetha 2004; Silvey 2006). Overall, urban environs can be liberating, yet cities, by virtue of their specifi c characteristics and varying opportunities, may play out differentially in terms of labour market dynamics. In 2001, every 28 in 100 persons in India resided in urban areas as compared to every 20 persons in 1971. In spite of an absolute increase in the urban population, the growth rate shows a declining trend over the years — from about 3.8 per cent in the 1970s to 2.9 per cent in 1991– 2001, respectively (Kundu 2006; Mitra 1994; Sivaramakrishnan et al. 2005). Class I cities (with a population over 100,000) have been growing faster than other smaller urban settlements in India accounting for nearly 69 per cent of the total urban population. Intermediate cities (population between 20,000 and 99,999) remained fairly constant over the years.1 The phenomenal growth in class I cities has been attributed to a combination of factors including reclassifi cation of lower-order towns into the class I category, rural–urban migration,

1 According to the Census of India, 2001, towns and cities are classifi ed on the basis of their population. The categories are: class VI—less than 5,000; class V—5,000–9,999; class IV—10,000–19,999; class III—20,000–49,999; class II—50,000–99,999 and class I—100,000 and above. Mobilities and Spaces J 91 satellite growth in the vicinity of large cities and expansion municipal boundaries (Kundu 2006; Sivaramakrishnan et al. 2005). Although urban migration has increased over the decades — from 26 per cent in 1971 to 33 per cent in 2001 — rural–urban migration accounts for one-fourth of urban growth (Kosambi 2000; Kundu and Gupta 2000; Mitra and Murayama 2008). Recently, women’s mobility towards urban areas has gained prominence. Figures from Census 2001, suggest that the average annual growth rate of the urban migrant — male, female2 — and the population as a whole stood at 2.6 per cent, 3.2 per cent, and 2.9 per cent, respectively, from 1971 to 2001. With this framework as a backdrop, the objective of this study is to explore how expanded and anonymous urban environments provide various opportunities to women in various size–class cities. More specifi cally, the study looks at how economic and socio- demographic attributes of women migrants undergo changes with a transition from lower to higher order towns/cities. Since women are guided more by customs and ascribed gender roles than men, I argue that city size — a proxy for varying normative encoding for women — would have a stronger bearing on their employment profi les and patterns as compared to men. The nature of quantitative data in this chapter necessarily limits the issues which could be captured, and yet the study throws open certain pointers regarding caste/class/social intersections affecting women’s work and raises questions that can be taken up for further research. The chapter is divided into three sections. Following the introduction, the fi rst is about the sources of data, conceptual clarifi cation and methodology. This is followed by a discussion on the analytical framework, profi ling of the gendered nature of work by migrants across urban centres as well as the interplay of several sociological and ideological constructs affecting labour market outcomes for both women and men in the second section. The fi nal section sums up the study.

2 The terms ‘male’ and ‘female’ have been used when all age groups are taken into consideration whereas ‘men’ and ‘women’ denote 15–59 age cohorts. 92 J Arpita Banerjee

Data Source3 and Methodology

This study uses data on individual attributes (unit level) for urban areas by the National Sample Survey (NSS) for the year 1999–2000, the latest available data on migration. Urban areas can broadly be classifi ed into three categories: small towns (population less than 50,000); medium towns/cities (population between 50,000 and 1,000,000) and million-plus cities (population more than 1,000,000). The migrants covered in the study are those moving from rural to urban and urban to urban locations. Most urban-ward migration involves a search for employment opportunities. Therefore, much of the relocation occurs in the 15–59 age group, that is, nearly 78 per cent of men. Cities of various sizes, however, offer differential opportunities — in million-plus cities, this percentage goes up as high as 82 per cent as compared to 77 per cent and 74 per cent in medium and small towns, respectively. The situation is not very different for women migrants, although there is not much variation across size–classes. The age group of migrants in this study (15–59) is not only the dominant group in the migration stream, but it also happens to be the working-age population. As stated earlier, women’s married status takes precedence over their working status in offi cial records.4 To overcome this limitation, this study takes into account women (and men) who were working both prior to and after migration as well as those who entered the labour market after migrating to cities, irrespective of their marital status. While economic factors are basic to migration decisions for men, socio-cultural factors shape the migration pattern of women, particularly in the Indian context. Mobility over space is a gendered phenomenon and distances over which women move differ signifi cantly

3 The ﬁ gures used in this chapter are calculated from unit level data of National Sample Survey (NSS), Employment and Unemployment (Schedule 10 and 10.1) 55th Round, 1999–2000. 4 This is evident from the available statistics: about 9 per cent of total urban women were working prior to migration which had increased to about 21 per cent in the post-migration period, but only 3 per cent of the women reported ‘employment’ as the reason of movement. Some of this invisibility is also because of data limitations as the question on ‘reasons for migration’ does not allow for multiple responses (Raju 2006; Srivastava and Bhattacharyya 2003). Mobilities and Spaces J 93 as compared to men (see Chapter 1 in this volume for more on this). Also, whether migration would be family or male-selective depends upon spaces available at the destination. Apart from these factors, educational attainments, marital status and caste/class locations have an important bearing on women’s mobility. Some of these issues are explored later in this chapter.

Spaces of Constraints and Opportunities

By and large, more women than men migrate to cities essentially on account of marriage as they move predominantly because of the practice of partilocality. However, this almost universal practice gets disrupted in million-plus cities largely because of ever-shrinking residential spaces as reﬂ ected through skewed sex ratios (SR = number of women per 1,000 men) in favour of men in million-plus cities (SR 1,179) relative to ‘women-friendly’ medium (SR 1,531) and small- size towns (SR 2,099).5 However, time changes this equation and with longer duration and a feeling of ‘settling down’, migrants bring their families with them, thus changing the sex composition therein (see Table 3.1; see also Premi 1980). The intersection of time and space is thus evident.

TABLE 3.1 Sex Ratio among Migrants by Duration of Residence across Urban Centres

Sex ratio Duration Million-plus Medium of residence (in years) India cities towns/cities Small towns Less than 1 1,202 1,164 1,161 1,297 1 to 4 1,215 926 1,182 1,636 5 to 9 1,513 1,240 1,479 1,860 10 to 20 1,697 1,235 1,677 2,331 20 and above 1,954 1,275 1,952 3,184 Total 1,563 1,179 1,531 2,099 Source: NSS (1999–2000).

5 As conﬁ rmed by several studies (Basu 2001; de Haan 1997), a distinction can be made about the migration pattern exhibited by women based on regions. Culture plays a crucial role in the male-selective migration characteristic of north India of leaving their women behind. This is in contrast with south India where entire families move. 94 J Arpita Banerjee

Movement on account of employment among recent women migrants (those who moved to urban centres within the last ﬁ ve years) seems to have gone up (5 per cent) as compared to those who had moved prior to that (2 per cent). Million-plus cities provide better opportunities for work as about 7 per cent of recent women migrants had moved for work. Constraints also appear in the form of spatial distances which a migrant has to traverse to seek fresher pastures. This particular aspect has been one of the least researched areas as far as migration amongst women is concerned with the exception of Ravenstein’s ‘Law of Migration’ (1885) which states that women travel more frequently than men, but they move over shorter distances. Several contemporary studies on migration also point to women’s restricted mobility over short distances (Premi 1980; Singh 2007). In this study, migrants are classiﬁ ed into intra-district (within the same district); inter-district (between different districts) and inter-state (between different states) based on source regions. Though these are ambiguous categories,6 in the absence of a better alternative the study uses them as proxy for distance covered by the migrants (see Table 3.2). In general, migration within the state is dominant in rural and urban streams and for men and women (Singh and Aggarwal 1998; Srivastava and Sasikumar 2003), but the million-plus cities are marked by male-selective migration (see Table 3.2). Most of these inter-state migrants, particularly men coming from rural areas (85 per cent), are pulled towards larger cities for livelihood purposes. The mobility pattern of women is somewhat different — urban women are mobile over greater distances as compared to their rural counterparts. This chapter is concerned with women and work, but at the risk of digression, I turn to women who move to urban centres for education because educational acquisition, in a way, contributes

6 Equating inter-district and inter-state with distance is problematic as the location between two places can be shorter even if they are located in two different states as compared to two places within a single state. But still it can be used as a proxy variable to denote ‘distance’ because it is not always the physical distance involved; an inter-state move may mean overcoming ethnic, cultural, language and other barriers. Mobilities and Spaces J 95 Small towns cities Medium towns/ cities Million-plus India Small towns TABLE 3.2 Medium towns/cities Rural–Urban Urban–Urban Migrants by Source Regions and Sex across Urban Centres cities Million-plus India NSS (1999–2000). Intra-districtInter-districtInter-stateTotal 33.0Women 37.9Intra-district 29.1Inter-district 8.9Inter-state 48.2Total 100.0 49.0 42.9Source: 35.8 39.0 34.6 100.0 15.2 20.2 26.4 51.9 100.0 100.0 53.8 27.9 30.2 53.0 33.0 100.0 16.0 100.0 30.7 14.0 46.0 100.0 62.1 23.4 29.2 100.0 20.5 45.9 8.7 39.3 100.0 42.7 100.0 33.0 32.2 100.0 18.0 46.0 32.8 43.2 100.0 21.8 100.0 37.9 24.0 45.3 39.5 100.0 43.6 16.8 100.0 16.9 44.0 40.9 100.0 15.1 Men 96 J Arpita Banerjee to expanding opportunities and activity spaces, thereby promoting self-confi dence and greater autonomy (Duraisamy 2002; Stecklov et al. 2008). It would be of interest to see how gendered identities limit a social good as elementary as education. In India, education is often valued for its instrumental content — employability. Women lose in terms of access to education because the tangible outcomes in the form of their employment, if any, are likely to accrue at distant places away from their natal home (Fan 2003). Moreover, women’s mobility often gets restricted by real and imagined dangers for their safety (and religious expectations), confi ning them to the home and domestic responsibilities. Though contemporary migration is taking place in a world marked by a deeper belief in the importance of equality of opportunity across a socio-political divide (Bhatt 2009), women’s restricted mobility is still refl ected even if they move for educational purposes. In India, very few women move to acquire education (1 per cent as compared to 6 per cent for men). As will be seen later, educated migrant women seem to have an advantage compared to their illiterate or lowly- educated counterparts in that the former category is usually salaried. Ironically, however, the salaried jobs are primarily in teaching and health services, customarily seen as ‘feminine’ in nature. Possession of education and skills has increased people’s mobility by opening up new vistas of employment where their skills are valued. Whether this happens in the case of women and how gender/caste/ class dynamics play out are some of the issues that I take up. In doing so, I propose that different size–class cities, by virtue of their variegated occupational opportunities and social milieu, be seen as differentiated social spaces for women. The movement of illiterate men to urban centres does not vary across different size–class cities, and yet, million-plus cities seem to offer more employment opportunities for them: 81 per cent moving on account of employment related reasons as compared to 71 per cent and 57 per cent in medium and small towns, respectively. In contrast, illiterate women are mostly present in small towns. An intriguing inference can perhaps be made: male selective migration combined with the absence of women in million-plus cities and to some extent in medium towns/cities seem to indicate that they are not ‘women-friendly’ if they are illiterate, particularly so if they do not belong to underprivileged groups! This is conjectured because those illiterate women who do migrate to million-plus cities come from Mobilities and Spaces J 97 poor socio-economic backgrounds (72 per cent from scheduled and other backward castes). What is being hinted at is that the metros have occupational avenues which the low caste, illiterate and poor women can access without threat to their social hierarchies, whereas for illiterate and higher-caste women, job opportunities are rather limited withholding them from migrating. Even fewer highly educated women — those with graduate degrees and above — migrate relative to men with a similar level of educational qualifi cations, that is, 10 per cent of women as compared to 20 per cent of men. Interestingly, however, although the overall quantum of educated women migrants to small towns is half of those migrating to medium and million-plus cities, more women in small towns have migrated there on account of employment. It seems that highly educated women moving to million-plus cities somehow have a longer gestation period in terms of waiting for the oppor- tune moment to fi nd jobs that are suited to them (Das 2006), an assumption which needs further probing.

Migrant Women and Work: Limited Options

Women may face a double-edged consequence as a result of migration. In some cases, mobility may force them to give up their working status, while in some other cases migration may bring in more opportunities for them to enter the labour market. In order to capture both these possibilities, this chapter deals with a comparative analysis of the ‘continuing workers’ (those working both prior to and after migration) and ‘fresh entrants’ to the labour market after migrating to cities. More than half the migrant men and nearly one-tenth of the migrant women were workers at the time of moving to urban centres. Around 17 per cent of the women (those who were non-workers at the time of migration) started working after they migrated. In general, migration seems to enhance work opportunities (32 percentage points for men as compared to 16 percentage points for women); while million-plus cities fare better for men, it is the small towns in the case of women. This is essentially because small towns ofter many agricultural activities where women predominate within the town limits. Work done by migrants is divided into three broad categories: self- employed, regular salaried and casual labour. Although the diversities 98 J Arpita Banerjee within these categories make it diffi cult to assign any hierarchal order to the type of work, casual work can be considered the most erratic sort of employment with low bargaining power and no social security, leading to uncertainties. This category is followed by self-employment in household enterprises as paid or unpaid labour. Here, the risk associated with the nature of employment is borne entirely by the person. It is often argued, particularly in offi cial and masculine discourses, that self-employed women, mainly working in household enterprises, are protected from the outside world and are, therefore, safer. However, scholars have routinely pointed out the work insecurities they face (Srivastava 2005; Srivastava and Sasikumar 2003). Thus, regular salaried jobs remain the best option available, with assured wages and various social security schemes. A classifi cation of women, both continuing workers and fresh entrants, by their work status shows that self-employment emerges as the main avenue of employment (33 per cent for continuing workers and 52 per cent for fresh entrants). The all-India pattern is refl ected in medium and small-sized towns. But million-plus cities have a comparatively lower proportion of women in self-employment, particularly among fresh entrants. Self-employment is not that important in the case of men. That this should be the case should not come as a surprise as women’s primary location has customarily been seen to be within the domestic sphere (Mitra 2005). In the Indian context, this construct continues to be so pervasive that even high-end women workers do not seem able to escape it. Regular salaried jobs show an increase in the case of working women migrants, particularly in million-plus cities. However, it may be pointed out that as many as 42 per cent of fresh entrants in regular salaried jobs are illiterate and slightly less than work as housemaids. Women working prior to migration to urban centres and who continue to work have lower illiteracy (18 per cent) and about one-tenth of them are domestic servants. This seems to suggest that working women with some level of literacy are more likely to move as compared to illiterate women and also fi nd jobs other than working in someone’s home. This general observation can be extended to urban centres across size. Self-employment has been the largest avenue for workers in urban India. Interestingly, where such avenues are restricted, women’s participation in the labour market drops. Conversely, if their workforce participation is high, they are mostly self-employed. Migrant Mobilities and Spaces J 99 women workers are no exception barring those in million-plus cities. This is because agriculture, which absorbs most of the self-employed women, is conspicuous by its absence in these cities. This is not the case in medium and small towns where fresh entrants with no prior work experience fi nd some work in agriculture. Besides agriculture, manufacturing activities provide migrant workers, both men and women, with jobs. Within manufacturing, certain industries such as food processing, textile and machine building are more attractive options. Once again, million-plus cites, by virtue of their diversifi ed economic base, offer more options in manufacturing whereas workers in medium and small towns are mainly in food processing and textile industries. Regular salaried jobs are much valued for obvious reasons. How- ever, women in this category are mainly in the educational sector, especially in medium and small towns (30 per cent and 40 per cent, respectively, as compared to around 20 per cent in million-plus cities). The health sector is another important avenue for women workers in small and medium towns/cities. It is well-documented in the literature that teaching and health-related jobs are particularly suited for women as they are the market extension of the caring activities. Limited in its exposition, this observation suggests that in million- plus cities/metros women have been able to move away from roles stereotypically assigned to them (Agrawal 2006). One of the issues which has not received much attention in Indian scholarship, but is crucial to understand why gendered labour division continues to prevail, is the phenomenon of domestic workers. A prominent phenomenon in million-plus cities, domestic work does not follow a conventional model. The presence of domestic workers in the job market is not only on account of their illiterate and unskilled status, but also because of lack of work experience. The share of post-migration fresh entrants to the labour market as domestic workers was much higher, at 16 per cent, as compared to those who had some work experience and who accounted for 10 per cent. As one group of women gets replaced by another, there is little threat to the status quo. In other words, as hired maidservants meet the gender-specifi c pattern of labour demand in cities for household work and childcare on payment, the prevailing distribution of work between men and women remains unquestioned. Ironically, it is the same housework when performed within the confi nes of home which carries no value, but becomes ‘work’ and paid for when removed from its original location (Gulati 1997, 2006). 100 J Arpita Banerjee

Women, Marriage and Work: Shrinking Activity Spaces

Most migration studies show that a non-trivial proportion of women’s mobility is associated with marriage (Bilsborrow 1992; Fan and Huang 1998). In urban areas also, the main reason for women’s mobility continues to be on account of marriage (as per 1999–2000 data, about 89 per cent of rural women migrated for marriage as compared to 59 per cent urban women). Given the essential construct of marriage and responsibilities associated with it, although urban migration enables women to expand their activity spaces in many ways, they cannot escape household responsibilities routinely assigned to them. If so, it can be argued that if women have to join the paid workforce, they would opt for employment which can be carried out at home — self-employed in household enterprises as compared to those who are unmarried. More than 70 per cent migrant men and 87 per cent migrant women in India are married. However, more unmarried men are migrants (28 per cent) as compared to their female counterparts (7 per cent). This can probably be explained by the safety and security concerns of their families, lowering their propensity to move. In contrast, more widowed and divorced or separated women in India are mobile as compared to men — about 6 per cent widowed and divorced or separated women and 1 per cent men are migrants in India. As pointed out earlier, marriage makes its own demands on how it intersects pathways to work patterns. As marriage is almost universal, most workers would also be married. But there is an interesting observation — in million-plus cities, more unmarried women are in the workforce (25 per cent as compared to 17 per cent married women) as compared to medium (15 per cent as compared to 17 per cent married women) and small towns (15 per cent as compared to 26 per cent married women). Out of unmarried women workers in million-plus cities, about three-fourths are in regular salaried jobs as compared to about half in medium and small towns. Thus, million- plus cities appear more open to unmarried women working in regular jobs in places located outside their homes. Also, work demands and responsibilities in million-plus cities may be such that it requires a more clearly demarcated home/workplace division — a proposition which requires further probe. That this may be the case can be conjectured through another observation. That is, self-employment Mobilities and Spaces J 101 among married women in small towns is much higher — 56 per cent as compared to 47 per cent and 48 per cent in million-plus and medium towns/cities, respectively. Though million-plus cities provide a somewhat higher proportion of regular salaried jobs to married women, the contribution of medium and small towns in this respect is minimal. In the absence of the main earning member in the family, widowed and divorced or separated women have to work more. As many as 48 per cent women belonging to this category are workers in India. No marked variation is observed across different size–class cities. Overall, these women are almost equally engaged in three different kinds of work. As self-employed, they are mainly agricultural workers (23 per cent), while as regular salaried workers they are mainly engaged as domestic servants (55 per cent). In the case of men, their marital status does not hinder either the level of their workforce participation or where they work — most of them are in regular salaried jobs working outside the home.

Migrant Workers: Caste/Class Intercepts

Historically, caste has been the key axis of social and economic stratifi cation in India and responsible for major inequalities in access to education, health and jobs. This variable is used in this study to analyse how social status enhances or restricts mobility over geographical space, how caste affi liations structure work status, and how these dynamics vary across different size–class cities. Socially, migrants are divided into four categories: Scheduled Tribe, Scheduled Caste, Other Backward Castes and others. As far as mobility is concerned, more than half the women and one-third of the men in each social group are migrants. Scheduled Tribe men and women generally migrate towards million-plus cities. It is often argued that higher-caste women’s entry into the labour market is constrained by their caste status because in some cases behavioural roles are more restrictive for them. For example, the norms of seclusion, their location within the home and non-participation in employment activities are regarded as a matter of family honour (Das 2006; Srinivas 1977). One can also argue that women from higher castes are likely to belong to well-to-do families and may not be compelled to work as much as the others. The construct of men as the primary bread-winner overrides caste and other social barriers for them; it 102 J Arpita Banerjee is observed that work participation for them does not vary across caste groups and urban centres. These observations are substantiated by data, however limited it may be, as the so-called ‘higher’-caste women’s workforce participation rate is not only much lower (16 per cent) as compared to women belonging to the rest of the categories (around 30 per cent), their proportion does not vary much across size–class cities. Though higher work participation rates are observed among the backward classes, they tend to dominate in categories of lower work in the job hierarchy — overall, 43 per cent of higher-caste women are in regular salaried jobs, whereas this share is reduced to 20 per cent in the case of Scheduled Tribe, Scheduled Caste and Other Back- ward Castes. Since million-plus cities have a relatively higher share of salaried jobs, all castes are represented in that category. More importantly, however, while women from higher castes are generally in the educational sector, women from backward castes are mainly employed as domestic maids. Caste thus has a signifi cant bearing on access to opportunities which is rather limited as far as women from disadvantaged sections of society are concerned who occupy marginal spaces in the labour market in terms of protection, labour rights, wages and so on. Although the relationship between poverty and women’s participation in the labour market is ambivalent, it has increasingly been recognised that women too migrate for economic reasons, a departure from the usual relegation of their migration to the private sphere of marriage. Most often, women migrate to earn a living for their families in order to reduce poverty and increase the level of productivity, education and health of their own and their families (Omelaniuk 2005). Thus, even if women migrate for economic reasons, it may not always be seen as voluntary or for upward mobility. Instead, it can be a compulsion generated in the interest of capital (Vijay 2005). This section tries to look into some of the inter-linkages between poverty, migration and work. In the absence of direct measurement of poverty, Monthly Per Capita Consumption Expenditure classes (MPCE) have been used as a proxy variable. The lowest two and the highest two consumption classes have been clubbed together to estimate the ‘poorest of the poor’ and the ‘richest of the rich’ components of migrants. Rural and urban nomenclature in Table 3.3 denotes the source region from where men and women had migrated. Mobilities and Spaces J 103 Men TABLE 3.3 Migrants by Source Regions and MPCE Classes India Million-plus cities Medium towns/cities Small towns Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban ) ` NSS (1999–2000). Monthly per capita consumption expenditure ( 0–3501500 and aboveRestTotalWomen 4.90–3501500 and above 28.6RestTotal 15.4Source: 66.5 100 26.0 4.2 4.0 41.7 58.6 24.2 100 17.7 54.1 71.8 100 21.9 100 30.0 21.1 5.7 5.3 52.3 37.1 100 29.8 57.0 100 57.2 27.2 64.9 100 14.3 100 21.5 27.8 5.8 5.3 38.1 51.3 57.9 31.9 100 100 56.1 62.8 17.8 100 12.2 29.8 26.8 100 2.3 52.4 46.3 61.0 100 100 51.4 12.1 35.0 100 52.9 100 104 J Arpita Banerjee

The analysis seems to suggest that as compared to the highest consumption classes, poorer people were likely to migrate to urban areas. Whereas the differences between rural and urban men were not signifi cant in the poorest consumption classes, the highest end of consumption classes is dominated by the urban to urban fl ow rather than from rural to urban areas. Moreover, million-plus cities record a greater infl ow of affl uent urban migrants as compared to the rest of the urban centres. This may be due to a combination of factors such as employment venues available to them, other infrastructural facilities and also because only the relatively more affl uent sections can afford to bear the higher living expense in cities (Kundu and Sarengi 2007). As compared with their urban counterparts, poorer women migrating to urban areas are from rural backgrounds, but these women do not necessarily move to million-plus cities; they migrate to smaller towns. This seems to reiterate what has been observed earlier, that million-plus cities are women-friendly, particularly if they are educated and belong to affl uent classes. Poverty works as a trigger for poor men to work — their proportion is higher than the non-poor, especially in million-plus cities. About 83 per cent of the poor men in India are in the workforce. The corresponding fi gures in million-plus cities, medium and small towns are 88 per cent, 82 per cent and 80 per cent, respectively. The poverty–work link is not so direct in the case of poor women. No variation in work participation rates is observed among the poor and rich women migrants in million-plus and medium towns/cities. In contrast, small towns have varying workforce participation rates for poor women (30 per cent) as compared to those who are rich (23 per cent). This also has to do with the kind of possibilities small towns offer to poor, illiterate women. It may be recalled that small towns still have some agricultural activity which is carried out by self-employed women. Since the poor in general have lower or no access to other human capital resources such as education and skill attainment, most poor migrants, especially women, also work as casual labour. A much lower proportion of them are in regular salaried jobs. City size makes a difference, although around 40 per cent of poor women in million-plus cities are in regular salaried jobs as compared to 24 per cent and 14 per cent in medium and small towns, respectively. These women, as discussed earlier, mainly work as domestic servants. Mobilities and Spaces J 105

Socio-economic Interdependencies in Migration

The discussion so far identifi es several socio-economic factors that seem to affect how migrants get integrated/isolated in the labour market, independent of each other. The logistic regression7 attempted here (see Table 3.4) looks at these factors in an interdependent manner controlling for several socio-economic parameters. This is done mainly to see that the nature of work done by the migrants, especially by women, is determined not only by their status as migrants, but also by several factors such as education, marital status and social grouping. The multinomial regression results confi rm what has been pointed out earlier. The relationship between literacy/education and the scope for better employment is clear as the probability of literates to work as casual labour is much lower than illiterates and educated workers who are more likely to be in regular salaried jobs. This holds true for both the sexes at an all-India level and in small towns in particular. As discussed earlier, the metros can absorb even illiterate workers to a greater extent because of the diverse job/menial tasks base. As compared to men, educated women’s chances to be in regular salaried jobs are much higher across the city/town sizes — return on education thus seems to be much higher for them (Duraiswamy 2002). Marital status does not constrain men as much as it does married women, yet an interesting relationship emerges — currently married, widowed and divorced or separated men are less likely to be in casual work (46 per cent and 38 per cent, respectively) than unmarried men at all-India level as well as in small, medium and million-plus cities. This may be refl ective of longer work experience of married, widowed and divorced or separated men who may have graduated from casual work to regular salaried jobs over a period of time — an issue which the available data could not address.

7 Multinomial logistic regressions are done in cases where the dependent variable is not in a binary form, that is, the dependent variable is not restricted to two categories. In the present analysis, the dependent variable is the migrant workforce, categorised into self-employed, regular salaried and casual labour. Self-employment is taken as the reference category and regular salaried work or casual labour is placed as a function of independent variables such as education, marital status, social group and so on. 106 J Arpita Banerjee ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ – 3.37 3.36 0.51 0.39 1.75 Women Odds ratio ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ Men 3.22 3.45 0.51 1.96 Odds ratio ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ 1.41 4.82 4.92 0.60 0.63 0.46 Women Odds ratio ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ ––– Men 1.75 3.77 3.26 0.37 Odds ratio ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ – 2.62 3.76 1.19 0.639.00 1.26 0.95 0.79 0.43 0.52 0.45 Women Odds ratio ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ TABLE 3.4 – Men 2.25 3.51 0.17 3.69 0.49 Odds ratio ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ – 1.67 3.97 0.53 4.55 1.03 0.45 0.43 Women Odds ratio India Million-plus cities Medium towns/cities Small towns ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗

– Men 0.62 Odds ratio Migrants and Associated Characteristics: Multinomial Logistic Regression Other Backward Class 1.91 Scheduled Caste 3.49 Widowed and Divorced/Separated Never Married (ref.)Social Group –Scheduled Tribe 3.43 – – – – – – Illiterate (ref.)Marital Status Currently Married 0.54 – – – – – – – – Educational Standard Literate 0.43 Others (ref.) Casual labourers Factors Mobilities and Spaces J 107 ∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗ ∗∗ 0.60 2.02 0.29 6.30 ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ 0.79 1.16 1.04 1.63 3.06 ∗∗ ∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ 0.43 1.32 0.96 2.85 0.38 4.51 ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗ ∗∗ 0.89 0.87 0.85 1.62 0.58 1.18 2.78 ∗∗ ∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ 0.27 2.06 ∗∗ ∗∗ 0.88 0.68 0.78 0.48 0.60 1.81 ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ 1.15 1.18 1.18 1.39 1.27 1.25 1.08 2.26 0.30 4.42 ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗ ∗∗

0.99 0.64 Others (ref.) – – – – – – – – Other BackwardClass 0.85 0.50 Scheduled Caste 1.24 Widowed and Divorced/Separated Never Married (ref.)Social Group –Scheduled Tribe 2.20 – – – – – – – Illiterate (ref.)Marital Status Currently Married 1.11 – – – – – – – – Educational Standard Literate 2.52 Signifi cance level is less than equal to 0.001. Signifi Signifi cance level is less than equal to 0.05. Signifi NSS (1999–2000). ∗ Source: Notes: ∗∗ Regular Salaried 108 J Arpita Banerjee

In the case of women migrants as casual labour, most of the statistical results are not signiﬁ cant. Only in two cases, the prob- abilities of widowed, divorced or separated and married women to be in casual labour, particularly in small towns, are half that of unmarried women. However, the regression conﬁ rms, as already hypothesised, that unmarried women are less burdened with household work. Without any size-wise variation across urban centres, the probability of married, widowed and divorced or separated women to be in regular salaried jobs is lower than that of unmarried women. Membership in a particular social group determines the work status of women migrants. For example, the regression result shows that as compared to ‘high-caste women’ (others), women belonging to lower castes including the tribes were more likely to work as casual labourers at the all-India level and in million-plus cities in particular. In the case of regular salaried jobs, the results are not in sync with what was expected. At an all-India level, the probability of Other Backward Caste women to be in regular salaried jobs is nearly half that of other ‘high caste’ women, but city/town sizes do not follow any particular pattern.

Conclusion

This chapter draws from secondary sources and focuses on those who continued to be in the workforce prior to and after migration, and fresh entrants to the labour market after migration in different size– class urban settlements. The underlying argument that rural to urban and urban to urban migration is not to be seen as an undifferentiated event. The opportunities and occupational avenues available in different urban settings intercept some of the conventionally hypothesised inter-linkages between determining factors in terms of gendered responses to the labour market. While the million-plus cities seem to be more women-friendly, particularly if they are educated and without the familial baggage of domestic responsibilities, small towns seem to be more traditional in their acceptance of single- women migrants. Million-plus cities have diversiﬁ ed activities and can absorb illiterate and unskilled labour whereas this is not the case with small towns. Even as urban spaces are liberating for women in general, the caste/class nexus and the gendered constructs about what women are ideally suited for — teaching and (health) — continue to affect market outcomes. Mobilities and Spaces J 109

To conclude, working women with prior work experience as well as fresh entrants to the labour market (while destabilising certain established stereotypical gendered codes woven around familial and domestic responsibilities) do not escape the gender/caste/class intercepts and yet different size–class urban sites allow them to negotiate expanded economic as well as social spaces to varying degrees. It is intriguing that despite differentiations in work proﬁ les in urban spaces, self-employment emerges as the most crucial avenue for women to enter the world of (formal) work. As it is, much of the labour pool is largely illiterate or lowly educated and unskilled, suited mainly for petty businesses and self-employed activities. However, workplaces for self-employment, particularly for women, are largely located within home spaces which allow women to participate in labour markets, yet at the same time, not disturb the socially sanctioned stereotypical roles of ‘homemakers’ assigned to them. It can be said that spatial differentiation is not simple acts of innocence. Instead, spatial and social processes often get interwoven in a complex and subtle manner to signify the ideological underpinnings — in this case related to gender — of a given milieu. 4 Creating New ‘Places’: Women and Livelihood in the Globalising Town of Burdwan, West Bengal

PALLABI SIL

Introduction

Neoliberal globalising processes in the Indian economy have dramatically infl uenced its socio-cultural and economic life. Pene- trating deeper into the Indian psyche and social fabric, this neoliberal policy is changing India’s landscape, particularly the urban one. However, there has been a protracted debate amongst scholars over the impact of economic globalisation on gender relations. Some are emphatic about the opening up of new avenues of employment for both women and men, and increase in income, quality of life and status, while others are vocal about the stark inequalities produced by economic reforms within and between nation-states and also about the increasing occupational segregation by gender. The relative position of women in the changing economic regime has been sparsely documented and new gender agreements await research by scholars. According to Ganguly-Scrase (2003), it has now become necessary for globalisation to be theoretically understood on the basis of em- pirically tested assumptions regarding its effects on the lives of women at the regional and local levels. While the overall impacts of neoliberal globalisation have been detrimental to women’s interests, some women — particularly those who were better placed in terms of social or economic status — have tried to grab the market-based opportunities thrown up by the new economy. Women in most Indian communities are conventionally trained to accumulate what has been termed as ‘household-specifi c human capital’ as against ‘market- specifi c human capital’ (Pollack 1985: 585). While the latter category augments productivity in the labour market, strengthening earnings Creating New ‘Places’ J 111 skills and upgrading familial and social status, the former can only be used at home, and as wives and mothers, in reproductive labour. Interestingly, many women in urban and middle-class India, irrespective of the size of the urban centre, have emerged as determined to acquire and enhance their marketable skills and add to family incomes. Often, they have resorted to or taken advantage of opportunities thrown up by an expanding informal sector, and new jobs and businesses that are loosely regulated. This chapter aims at understanding women’s changing position in society and family in the context of expanding market opportunities. It explores how ordinary women are converting and utilising new opportunities created by macro processes through particular activities and agencies at the local level and also producing new versions of their identities. The question I specifi cally ask here is: How are new forms of place being produced by middle-class women who are engaged in informal activities as a direct or indirect response to the globalising process? Gender analyses in India have emphasised either the growing gender inequalities under the new regime, particularly as they relate to poor women (Arora 1999; Basu 1996; Centre for Women’s Development Studies 2000; Dewan 1999; Ghosh 2002) or on the changing lifestyle and increasing consumerism of upper and upper middle-class professional women in organised sectors of the metro cities (Brooks 2006; Dietrich 2007; Kaila 2005; Thapan 2007). These two major and contrasting approaches overlook the differential impacts of globalisation on middle-class women of small and medium-sized urban centres. Signifi cantly, this study fi lls this gap by focusing on changing gender relations in middle-class families in a large-sized mofussil town like Burdwan in West Bengal and explores how the entry of women of these families into various modern types of self-fi nanced informal income-generating activities reconstruct space and place. This chapter begins by briefl y outlining the conceptual framework of the study, which is followed by a discussion on the methodology and database. The next section presents the impacts of neo- globalisation on middle-class women in general and in the study area in particular. The rest of the chapter discusses fi ndings from my survey on regeneration of place by middle-class women engaged in informal activities that come into being as a direct or indirect result of globalisation. The concluding section summarises the 112 J Pallabi Sil overall fi ndings. Through place-based questions of experience, culture and identity, the gender analyses in the present study, it is hoped, would contribute to explaining the interlocking of the local and the global in shifting terrains of ‘new’ geography.

‘Place’ in a Globalising Context

Post-modernism and post-structuralism have witnessed the emergence of what can be termed as ‘new’ geography that has been articulated through cultural turn and ‘performative movement’ (Dyck 2005: 233). This re-branding of geography has resulted in a growing attention to the fl uidities of identities and places of diversities and differences as well as opening up of spaces to re-evaluate geographical discourses, particularly in the context of South Asian geography. The everyday lives and restructuring of the ‘local’ by the wider globalising processes require critical revisiting. The literature on globalisation in geography (Kelly 1999, 2000) has laid emphasis on theorisations of globalisation that view local people and places as trapped in macro processes without agency, which is often associated with globalising processes; as Escober (2001: 141) puts it, the ‘global is usually concerned with space and agency while the “local” is restricted to place’. Rather than limiting global and local to straitjacketed categories, Prazniak and Dirlik (2001) and Gibson- Graham (2003) view global processes as reshaped by actions and choices made at the local level. Overall, global fl ows of capital, product, service, information and people of the third phase of globalisation are creating new forms of place that stretch across national boundaries, macro–micro cities and rural–urban distinctions. There are contrary views in the debate and yet it is generally accepted that conventional conceptions of place and space have been constantly questioned giving way to new theorisations of place and space. Here, Appadurai’s (1995: 204) idea of translocal places may be referred to, theorising locality as the key characteristic of place. Despite extensive literature on space and place as independently identifi able attributes, for geographers, the existential reality of a locale is what makes space into place. Locality is imbued with a series of attachments, commitments, a sense of neighbourhood and communities having reproducible potentiality that lead to subjectivities of a particular locality. This locality can be inhabited Creating New ‘Places’ J 113 by both a ‘traditional’ or ‘place-based’ community and a ‘virtual’ Internet-based community or a combination of both. Locality has recently been modifi ed by new phenomena of translocal places, places that describe a space where non-local economic transactions and relations infl uence people’s activities and social interdependence (Appadurai 1995: 216). This does not necessarily mean that the particular material or local context is irrelevant; the discussion gets intertwined with expanding spaces and the focus shifts from the existing neighbourhood infrastructure, economy and apparent livelihood strategy of the community to new networks, new fl ows of information and cash from outside. This new form of translocality is thus a result of economic globalisation and the process of economic change that have followed it. It may be contended that globalising is a twin process encompassing ways in which the global economy is entrenched in local economies and work cultures as well as micro processes within localised economies through which it exists (Brooks 2006). The nature of a place changes with the global movements of people, information and money fl ows. Escober (2001) describes globalisation as the process that creates de-territorialised cultures and places, but as the process where place itself has not vanished (Gibson-Graham 2003; Prazniak and Dirlik 2001). Hence, more dynamic ways of investigating transnationally connected places are required (Castree 2004: 134). In these places, locality and community are no longer obvious and rooted or are natural identities, but produced by complex relations of culture and power. Globalisation as a macro process takes shape through the particular activities of people in place and their agency. The regional and global scope of actions are reshaped by local agents. There is no doubt that most of the urban social transformation is anchored in the middle class emerging all over India including the smaller urban places comprising those who may be rechristened as the ‘consumer class’. This group of people constitutes a new and different breed of entrepreneurs and consumers seeking a lifestyle that compels middle-class women to seek new economic opportunities. This is so because their male counterparts often lose formal employment. Thus, at the lowest economic levels of society where women are getting drawn into more insecure forms of work, middle- class women are adopting new opportunities of earnings provided 114 J Pallabi Sil by new economic forces. Hence, middle-class women have become informal actors, as mediated by neo-globalisation. In this process, they are continually redefi ning gender roles within families and outside, and transforming their social spaces. It is against this backdrop that this theme has been taken up which shows how women of a certain place are re-territorialising in new forms, occupying virtual spaces and continuing to produce new versions of rooted identities. It is argued that in the globalising process, the lives of women have become multiple, contradictory, inclusionary and exclusionary at the same time (Afshar and Barrientos 1999). According to Rege (2007), gender analysis of globalisation is linked with how we think (meaning and ideology) and who we are (subjectivity, agency, self and collective identity). This close attention to spaces of everyday life is indispensable to keep women visible in fast-changing world conditions. A glance into women’s informal income-generating activities helps to ascertain the local–global relationship and ‘provides a methodological entry point to theorising the operation of processes at various scales — from the body to the global’ (Dyck 2005: 233). Following Ford and Parker (2008: 8), the meaning of women’s work for women themselves is focused upon and this way an attempt has been made to examine how globalisation and local socio-cultural conditions have together produced gendered patterns of work with particular statuses and identities. This study adopts what can be termed as the ‘interpretive approach’ advocated by Barker (2005: 2199) in terms of interlinking the conceptual aspects of gender and the empirical matters such as relative access to and control of resources. But why the middle class of Burdwan? Both the ‘feminisation’ and ‘informalisation’ of the workforce, which seems to be the fallout of globalising processes, have driven women, irrespective of ethnicity, class and caste, towards involvement into various informal economic activities. It can be proposed that the wave of economic globalisation has created and shaken the rooted socio-cultural and economic traditions of rural, urban, semi-urban and ‘rurban’ places to a large extent. The ingenuity and embeddedness in the older livelihood strategies of the people of a particular place are restructured by the fresh fl ow of capital, service and product. More importantly, large-sized mofussil urban places like Burdwan have not been excluded from being affected by the global process of openness although the manifestation of changes therein may not be similar to metro cities such as Kolkata or Delhi. Creating New ‘Places’ J 115

Methodology and Data

I have used ethnographic methods that have been widely used by feminist geographers, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world. It involved in-depth, face-to-face existential interaction and detailed conversations without any structured schedules (Freeman 2001). The participants used their native language and were located in their natural habitat as opposed to the unnatural setting of a formal interview or laboratory (Groot and Maynard 1993: 150). The interviews were recorded and transcribed later. Often, there were differences in over responses and the actual behaviour of respondents. Therefore, there were several follow-ups on statements made by individuals in a sustained and regular manner. Overall, there were 25 women in the study. These women were not selected in any systematic order to ‘represent’ a particular population (Darlington and Scott 2002: 8). It was more of a purposive sample based on my familiarity with the subject and extended pool of acquaintances. I have formulated as operational or functional deﬁ nition of my researched women on the basis of some social characteristics as I have considered the middle class as primarily a social class. The women in the study were engaged in self-initiated home-based or non-home-based income generating activities with no ﬁ xed income/ pension/gratuity or any other old age provision. They were somewhat educated and came from ‘general’ caste backgrounds as against the lower castes and who were psychologically within the norms of bhadrata1 (gentleness), see themselves as bhadramahilas2 (gentle women) and perceive themselves as madhyabitta shreni3 (middle class). Among the 25 participants, 15 women were married, six were unmarried, and four were widows. A comparable study among these three categories of women has been made to know their differential interaction with places. Their ages and educational level vary from 30 to 65 years and from tenth class to post-graduation level, respectively. The mean monthly household income of the respondents

1 Respectful way of life, a certain code of conduct. 2 Literate middle-class women of the19th century. 3 Literally, it means middle class, who are between the upper and lower classes. It has a social construction. 116 J Pallabi Sil was between ` 10,000 (US$ 200) and ` 40,000 (US$ 1,000). I turn next to the impacts of economic globalisation on middle-class people of Burdwan, followed by the major ﬁ ndings of my research.

Globalisation as a Mixed Blessing for the Middle Class in Burdwan

The concept of the middle class is rather amorphous and no two scholars are equivocal on its meaning, implication and dimension (Debi 1988: 21). As against social category, class has often carried an economic connotation. In the historical ﬁ eld of class discourse, however, the most familiar construct of class has been seen as a social ranking in the hierarchy of upper, middle and lower classes with gradation in between (Gibson-Graham et al. 1998: 3). In recent years, the middle class in India has increasingly been seen as a ‘social’ rather than ‘economic’ construct emphasising education and style of life as two important dimensions for deﬁ ning it. However, cities and towns are now experiencing growth in the middle class based not only on traditionally ascribed sources of wealth, but on acquired education and professional and technical skills. Lifestyle preferences and altered attitudes and behaviour are what distinguish them from their rural counterparts (De 2001: 17). In metropolitan cities, the consumerism of the new middle class is quite clearly obvious in transforming the urban milieu; this consumerism and lifestyle are the direct result of economic and cultural globalisation. It may be argued that the emergence of this ‘new’ middle class is an outcome of disappearing boundaries between spaces that once demarcated conventional class boundaries in so far as lifestyle becoming the hallmark of the middle class. This has a dual role to perform — market logic and individual-led growth ushering in consumerism and consumerism, in turn prompting new types of job opportunities particularly for those providing the ill-paid, low- skilled marginal activities at the tail end of the production process, that is, women. Nevertheless, it is also the reality that this process has brought immense scope of income-generating activities albeit in the informal sector. This is expanded in the case of Burdwan. Historically, the culture of Burdwan is rooted in the feudal Raj culture as the region was reigned over by a migrant business family of rajas from Punjab (now in Pakistan) for more than 250 years Creating New ‘Places’ J 117

(1689–1953). Consequently, Burdwan developed unique social and cultural characteristics that differ with other urban centres of Bengal. However, the city, characterised by an agricultural economic background and a traditional and conservative lifestyle, has been fast changing during the last one or two decades in terms of the perceptions and reality of the middle class as they aspire for signiﬁ ers of modern living.

Bhadramahilas of Burdwan in the Historical Past

Locating women in this profi le is a complex issue. Since the 19th century, the women of Bengal were exposed to social reform and the Bengali bhadramahilas or educated middle-class gentlewomen emerged. As Bannerji (2001) states, these middle class bhadramahilas attempted to go beyond the moral signs or representational fi gures of the bhadramahila and her gendered elite consciousness at the service of her caste or class. The Tagore family of Jorasanko had contributed signifi cantly in this. This family, along with the British, was the pioneer in the process of the enlightenment of Bengali women (Deb 2000: 5). However, in Burdwan, the Raj family did not take such initiative towards female emancipation. Their associates, who were large zamindars from conservative aguri families, were also reluctant to bring about any changes in the status and roles of women. This feudal enclosure continued to express the sense of family ‘honour’ to be protected by women only till the fi rst half of the 20th century. To this upper and middle caste family, a woman’s public presence was considered an inversion of the norm. The andarmahal or ghar and bahir were segregated; these spheres of the domestic and outside world were mutually exclusive even for a long period after its fading away in the metropolitan city of Kolkata. The social and moral norms for the bhadramahilas were strict in Burdwan town, where people used to live a cloistered life even till two decades ago. The effects of openness and liberalisation were felt less in this medium-sized town. However, in spite of the subordinate, subservient and oppressed condition of the bhadramahilas, many literate middle-class women was psychologically strong enough to overcome these obstacles and step into the bahir or outer world. In the fi rst phase, the only capital of these bhadramahilas was their education. Educated middle-class women played a signifi cant role 118 J Pallabi Sil in establishing girls’ schools and expanding women’s education in Burdwan. Other groups of literate women also took leading roles in socio-cultural and political emancipation of women of Burdwan through political and social activities. Nevertheless, the number of these socially-reformed bhadramahilas was limited till India’s independence. After independence, economic pressure motivated some middle-class women to cross their socially ascribed boundaries. It was only to sustain their families or supplement their familial income, but their inner wish of self-fulfi lment and establishing their self-identity still remained unsatisfi ed.

Changes among the Bhadramahilas of Globalising Burdwan

In a place like Burdwan, deeply rooted in tradition and heritage, many typical middle-class values are being rewritten by the sweep- ing changes brought about by the economic process associated with globalisation. Women of the middle class, who were in the past cast in the traditional mode of bhadramahila, are changing — they are no longer bound by the norms of so-called bhadrata or civility. Many middle-class women are engaged in different informal activities — at home or outside — leaving their ‘domestic’ selves behind. They are grabbing new opportunities thrown up by the booming market and transformed habits and lifestyles. As against the bhadra (respectable) formal activities in the fi elds of care and teaching, health and so on suitable for bhadramahilas, they are now into beauty businesses of all kinds including boutiques, cosmetics shops and the like. They are also entering non-conventional spaces of Internet kiosks, telephone booths, shops, computer training centres and so on. Many of these activities require little or no fi nancial capital, but involve extensive networking and social capital. Hence, the place of middle-class women in home and in society is being redefi ned and re-drawn, in which globalising processes are playing a signifi cant role.

Counting the Experiences: From the Field

The group that I studied largely includes white-collar workers. What come out very clearly are the multiple avenues that women tap for enhancing their income-generating capabilities — a feature Creating New ‘Places’ J 119 conspicuous by its absence in offi cial statistics. Among the 25 respondents, most are engaged in more than one type of work: three are fi nancial agents; one has her own beauty clinic and also decorates bridal gifts and imparts yoga training; one is a yoga trainer; one coaches kids and also has a telephone booth and mobile handsets- selling centre at her residence; one has a boutique; one keeps paying guests and also has a personal networking business; two respondents run a gym of their own; one runs a kindergarten school and crèche; one makes designer clothes to sell in regional and foreign markets; two have computer-training centres; two are soft toy makers; three have computer training and sell computers and run service centres; one participant delivers food to homes; two have cosmetics shops; three researched women run beauty parlours and skin therapy centres. As observed earlier, all these economic activities are linked to increased consumerism and transforming lifestyles owing to liberalisation policies. I also observed that the decisive factors shaping the lives of women within middle-class families are not only their engagement with employment, but also their access to education and exposure to the electronic media. These too are not independent of the process of economic liberalisation. Education is the medium through which knowledge and information are acquired. Education has equipped some middle-class women with the awareness and knowledge required to make benefi cial life choices and to grab economic opportunities. One of my respondents commented:

… at present the parents frequently provide positive encouragement for girls to study so that a good education would better equip them to enter the modern service sector. In my case, I did not give up my study after my marriage. Now I put utmost priority to my daughters’ education so that they can be fit for the contemporary world. (Participant aged 38, boutique shop owner)

Such a thought and such actions would have been unheard of in small urban centres like Burdwan even a few decades earlier. This conservative town always fi rmly upheld the emphasis on sons in middle-class families, assigning to women a place within the home. Education at college and even university level is now extended to daughters, and a job, if it can be found, is not an impossibility. All the respondents in the present study were more or less educated and their education has enabled them to attain the skills that are necessary to 120 J Pallabi Sil take advantage of the rapidly changing social and economic scenario. Another participant, a beautician aged 30, added, ‘education and career-oriented training has increased my ability to access resources and modern services’. For many women, paid work has brought renewed confi dence and a sense of autonomy. Kishor (2000: 199) pointed out that employment can not only be a source of economic independence, but can also help to give women a sense of self-worth. However, for middle-class women in Burdwan with conservative family backgrounds, it was not easy to take the fi rst step towards the outer world without hampering their familial roles. And very often, income-generating work, albeit in homes which were less capital-oriented and needed lesser time opened up spaces for them although they also carried out and managed the domestic chores, so as not to threaten the traditional norms of bhadrata ascribed to them. Whether such compliance with normative strictures has any real meaning may be a matter of debate in feminist discourses, but for these women it was a strategy whereby they not only expanded their inner spaces, but also entered the interactive public space, however small that may be. Moreover, in terms of selecting the types of work they should undertake, the respondents had picked up activities that suited the recent changes in the style of consumption, that is, beauty and fi tness centres. One participant commented, ‘nowadays all the young and middle-aged women want their eyebrows plucked, complexion fairer, lips coloured and their hair cut in trendy fashion; this changed outlook helps me in using the opportunity to indulge in the business of beauty’ (participant aged 42, beautician). Enhanced work and increased interaction with clients and the outside world in general also meant that the modern women of Burdwan are becoming conscious of fashions leading to opening up of boutiques. One respondent commented, ‘as tastes change in the city, women are asking for fashionable and exclusive designer dresses as replacement for traditional wear. I am trying to cater to these changes to some extent’ (participant aged 38, boutique shop owner). According to another participant, women and men of all ages are more conscious today about their health and fi gure, thanks to the exposure to various satellite channels. Moreover, during current times of excessive stress, women should keep themselves fi t and hence she has opened a multi-gym in her residence. Along with the health, beauty and fashion aspects, technological advancements, rising demand for service-oriented business and new Creating New ‘Places’ J 121 communication technologies have also opened up newer economic opportunities for women. A number of middle-class women are engaged in fi nancial agencies, which have gained momentum in our new economic era of liberalisation and investment. One fi nancial agent says, ‘many national and international fi nancial companies are opening branches in Burdwan now and the spending and savings habits of the people here have also changed. People now have more cash than they had earlier. Middle-class women like us are grabbing this opportunity to fulfi l our aims in life.’ Advancement in tele- communication and information technology also has provided them means of autonomy. One of the participants, owner of a computer training and sale and servicing store, knows well that computer knowledge is essential in almost every aspect of our life and, hence, it is in high demand by the present generation of boys and girls. She trains 60 students herself at her centre. Making arrangements for paying guests or setting up kindergarten schools or running crèches are also meeting contemporary needs which have been emerging as society develops. Children are being sent very early to nursery schools, babies are kept in crèches as both parents work; also an increasing number of women are coming out of their houses and living at distant places as paying guests to take up formal and informal jobs. Many other middle-class women are organising home delivery of meals. One respondent, who runs a nursery school and a crèche, explains, ‘I have opened my school because of my desire to make the kids disciplined, well behaved, smart, and English speaking from their very childhood that are urgent for today.’ About her crèche, she opines, ‘the residents of Burdwan are not yet used to this new concept. They hesitate to keep their babies here. Nevertheless, I think, its utility will soon be realised as more and more couples are getting out of their home for work purpose.’ Another trend among teens and middle-aged upper- and middle- class women of using handcrafted exclusive designer clothes and branded consumer goods has motivated some of the respondents to set up cosmetics shops or make handcrafted dress materials and other decorative articles. One consumer goods selling respondent adds, ‘at present all women are using more cosmetics and consumer goods to make them stunning and elegant. Hence, I decided to open a cosmetic shop to carry out this mounting demand.’ The rising demand of handcrafted decorative articles in national and international markets has steered some middle-class women to start this type of 122 J Pallabi Sil business. One such researched woman says that through foreign tourists visiting fairs and exhibitions in our country, she gets orders from different countries. Like education and employment, electronic media that equips women with information of the outer world has also become a part of our life today. It is an important medium for exposing them to the exterior world and building awareness. For the researched women, visual media is not just a source of entertainment but it also plays a signifi cant role in building their information base by providing them with latest fashion trends, new techniques of aerobics and changing style of consumerism; these are useful both for their entrepreneurial activities and for building a concept of the gradually changing image of modern women. One of the informants who runs a business of home delivery of food says, ‘I frequently follow the programmes on cooking in television channels as I get newer recipe from these. I try these new items myself to satisfy my cus- tomers.’ Another one who is a yoga trainer adds that she keeps her eye on health- and fi gure-oriented programmes while another participant, who is a fashion designer, watches fashion channels on television to obtain ideas of contemporary fashion trends. It is obvious that new networks, new services as well as new fl ows of information in Burdwan are bringing about changes in how middle-class women are reconfi guring their spaces in sync with the livelihood strategies they adopt. The following section discusses the re-creation of places by these women in their own individualistic manner by correlating global processes with the local.

Place-making and Globalisation

Control over one’s own income is important for women making their own place. On examining the monetary allocation of the respondents’ income, it was seen that male control over their income was minimal, particularly in the case of widows and unmarried women. How- ever, the situation of married women was slightly different. Although they had control over their income in general, occasionally, either their male partners or other family members made demands on their earnings. Still, there were a few women who themselves offered their husbands the opportunity to access their earnings. Relative contribution to family expenditure is another indicator of changing gender roles in the family. In keeping with the fi ndings Creating New ‘Places’ J 123 of other studies (Ghosh 1996; Kantor 2003), this study also reveals that women spend their earnings relatively more on their families than their male partners. Married women, for example, put aside a signifi cant amount from their income for children’s studies, day-today domestic requirements, purchasing household appliances and so on. Expenditure on consumer goods like designer dresses, jewellery, cosmetics and others was limited in most cases. Married working women shared household expenses with their male partners — men’s incomes were spent on food, electronic gadgets, travel and housing whereas women shared expenses with their spouses on household necessities and clothing and for children’s education. However, buying gifts and family recreational activities were the prime responsibilities of the women respondents. Among the widow respondents, a major part of their income was spent on the household. Their grown-up sons shared with them mainly in recreational, ceremonial and travelling expenses. After meeting household expenses, these women invested the remaining money in their entrepreneurial activities. However, unmarried women were not expected to assist in household expenses as middle- class families saw dependence on a daughter’s income as disgraceful for a father except in acute economic crises. Unmarried women could thus spend on clothes and gifts. Also, having some money to spare facilitated the expansion of their business or in developing personal skills or in making further investments. Married women and widows thus had a differential pattern of spending as compared to unmarried women who in turn could use the spare money for the expansion of their businesses. It also meant that the former group used a major part of their income to provide economic support or supplement the inadequate income of their male partners in overall upgradation of their standard of living or, in some cases, even to sustain their families. Hence, they spend very little on consumer products like designer dresses, jewellery, cosmetics, etc. One can see how familial constraints played themselves out in space/place-making processes in otherwise expanding opportunities for women in general. Earning money or signifi cant economic contribution to the family does not always offer a woman the freedom of expressing her desires and wishes. The mobility of women was restricted as they were not permitted late nights out even for the sake of economic activities. Among the 19 married women and widows in the study, only six had 124 J Pallabi Sil unconditional freedom to be mobile. Of these six, four were widows who were also de facto heads of their families. The six stated that their freedom has signifi cantly increased after taking up work. There is partial an increase in the case of 10 married women and widows while for three others there was no change in terms of freedom of mobility even after attaining economic self-reliance. Hypothetically, there can be situations when women can be out late at night, have freedom to go to the market and visit friends and relatives without seeking permission. Among the married women and widows, only three could do that including going out at night. 13 of 19 women did not need permission to go to the market. In contrast, among the six unmarried women, three had full and the other three had partial freedom of mobility. Moreover, four among them were not allowed to be out late at night even for work. However, except for one, all of them could go to the market without permission. Essentially, it is not movement per se that is restricted, but the purpose for which women were mobile. Thus, if women were free to visit market places, it was because these visits were connected with their domestic responsibilities such as purchase of vegetables and groceries. This limited freedom is what Chatterjee (1994) terms reconfi guration of ‘new patriarchy’ whereby old rules, customs and prescriptions get altered, even relaxed, albeit with subtle controls in place to accommodate women in the changed conditions of life. It is not surprising, therefore, to see that when these women visit their friends/relatives, all of them, except two had to take permission from their elders. To this extent, only two respondents felt that their freedom had increased signifi cantly after they started earning. In case of other unmarried women, there was this partial increase in freedom of movement post their participation in the labour market. Degree of participation in domestic decision-making, whether they were able to take decisions alone or jointly with their husbands or someone else, or were not able to do so at all measures women’s status in their respective families. What was the situation? To what extent were they able to establish their power to take household decisions? Had there been any change in the decision-making process after these women took up paid work? These questions will be addressed now. As for decision-making, six women had a signifi cant say as far as the education of their daughters and sons was concerned while Creating New ‘Places’ J 125 three respondents said that they shared this process with their husbands. In the case of the four other women, either their male partners or their daughters and sons themselves took decisions. More or less the same trend was observed in the case of decisions on the medium of education of their children. While six women could take decisions on this by themselves, three others had to make it jointly with their husbands and six had no hand in deciding which medium school/college their children should attend as their husbands took these decisions solely. Intriguingly, most women in the study were responsible for keeping their daughters and sons engaged in cultural activities, sports and games. Out of 15 married women, 12 encouraged their daughters and sons to nurture different cultural activities and only three let their daughters and sons decide for themselves. This shows the essentialising construct of women as custodians of all that which symbolises Indian values and as child minders (see Chapter 10). Women had very little say in crucial matters such as selection of jobs or suitable matches for sons/daughters. Only one respondent could decide over these matters; in the case of the others, fathers mainly took the decisions, particularly when it came to daughters. However, for sons, they gave them freedom to choose their life partners. As observed in general, women could take independent decisions on inconsequential or practical matters such as everyday menus, purchase of small gifts, clothes, decorative articles and other minor necessities. In contrast, like other studies show of Kabeer (1999: 452), strategic or major decisions such as construction of a house and major purchase/investments were within the sole purview of the males of the family. And yet, any purchases relating to kitchen gadgets or sanctioning house plans, or deciding on travelling had to have women’s sanction although in most cases women would make decisions jointly either with their husbands, or with their sons (in the case of widows) or with their fathers or elder brothers (in the case of unmarried women). To summarise, women were primary decision makers in some cases — mostly when the domain concerned familial chores of home and hearth. In other cases they were joint or marginal decision makers. The overtly public domain of political participation/knowledge and the ability to exercise the right to vote judiciously without being infl uenced by the political ideology of father or male partner are 126 J Pallabi Sil indicators of changes in women’s perceptions and of their ability to think independently. These two indicators have been focused upon because they carry special signifi cance in a society like India where ordinary middle-class women are generally not interested in the political system, their political participation is not high and they even do not cast their votes at their own will. This lack of political perception may be due to their reluctance, but also because they are kept away from being involved in the political system by their men counterparts. Women in my sample were not all that ignorant about the political system. Some even showed a deep interest in the political affairs of the country while many others showed a moderate interest. Only fi ve women showed no interest in politics. Most respondents pointed out that they regularly collected information on the nation’s and state’s political scenario from newspapers and television and discussed political matters with their husbands or other members of their families. However, at the time of casting their vote some are infl uenced by the political ideology traditionally followed by their families. For example, 10 out of 25 women had cast their votes for the political party their spouses had followed whereas 15 women used their franchise as per their own conviction. They said they are enlightened enough to make independent and right political choices. Two informants have been regularly participating in political rallies and meetings. The politically better informed women in this part of India have been documented elsewhere (Raju et al. 1999). In a generally politically charged West Bengal, middle-class women also play a proactive role. To this extent, they have been increasingly interacting with the outer world. However, it may also be said that the women whose family members are politically active are politically better informed than the others. Moreover, many women did follow stereo- type roles largely infl uenced by their men. So far the parameters used were to measure changes in the lives, status, and roles of women which may be externally manifested. There were other concerns, that is, is there any change in women’s thoughts, perceptions and feelings which were more directly linked with their self-esteem, self-effi cacy and psychological well-being; do they feel that a positional change has occurred in their household and community after their involvement in work; do they consider themselves as somewhat different from other women of their family and locality; are they now psychologically better off than before? Creating New ‘Places’ J 127

These are very diffi cult questions and not amenable to simple explanation and hence the following fi ndings should be seen as suggestive and generalised in nature. Some women felt that there was not much change in their esteem either in their families or community after their started working and yet they had a sense of independence. In contrast, others saw a defi nite change in their status, at least amongst the people of their community. Interestingly, they did not see their working status linked with any degree of independence. On a deeper probe, it came out that these women themselves were so conditioned that they did not attach much importance to their being in the labour market. Overall, working women felt that their activity spaces had become expansive and they had attained some spatial freedom. One participant pointed out,

… my lifestyle has changed ever since I have been working. Now I can afford to have my own wish, but previously, I was just like a doll with whom my family played with. I am now breathing fresh air out of the conﬁ nes of household chores.

Another respondent felt as if she had become a new woman and was seen as silently redrawing her space and modifying the pre- assigned gender role. Still another expressed herself in this way,

… my social status is now elevated and I am conﬁ dent that my creativity is being widely appreciated. It gives me a lot of joy and satisfaction. I am successful in fulﬁ lling the aim in my life and also in changing my attitude and lifestyle and recent reforms in economic policies have offered me this opportunity.

Eight out of the 25 interviewees felt that their status had improved, both in their families and community. Three believed that they were now receiving more respect than before from their family members, while four felt that they were now respected more by community members than their families. As many as eight women, however, perceived no change in their status, either in the family or in the community. To what extent these perceptions were moulded by the women’s own conditioning or denial to see themselves as agents of change is difﬁ cult to predict. Withholding this apprehension, however, most — 19 out of 25 women — were vocal about their economic independence ‘to some extent’ leading to greater conﬁ dence and self-esteem. 128 J Pallabi Sil

It may thus be said that the middle-class women of Burdwan were potentially gaining what it takes to change their lives, status and roles. Access to an independent income was a facilitating factor towards the empowering process to a considerable extent. And yet, marriage had a constraining role in curtailing spatial freedom, free access to income, and also more control over their lives. Decision-making power also varied if a woman had a husband with whom she had to consult over different matters. Married women had to succumb to social norms that sustain the power inequality on the basis of gender in a conjugal relationship. Women who had entered the labour market years after their marriage were scared to question the entrenched societal norms and also of their families. They were also constrained by the normative codes of seclusion and did not always protest against them for fear of disturbing the status quo. Nonetheless, there were examples in the sample where women challenged their invisibilities over household matters, made independent decisions not only in terms of spending their own income, but also on other household matters. They were gradually gaining respect in their families and communities as well and a sense of self-worth and psychological well-being in them could be easily discerned. The processes of internal and external changes are slow, but it is with the opening up of the market economy and globalising processes for the last several years that the middle classes have come in closer contact with the outside world and have experienced rapid changes, with the tempo picking up. Women who are supposed to stay within the folds of the family too have been impacted by these changes as expressed by their increasing desire to participate in the expanding local economy in response to global changes. Women acting on their own as economic agents while remaining largely within the domestic or informal sphere are phenomena manifesting themselves within a relatively smaller urban centre like Burdwan — a process creating new social spaces as well as redrawing existing boundaries (Appadurai 1995; Massey 1995).

Conclusion

From the early 1990s, medium sized and provincial towns like Burdwan have been experiencing the effects of economic restructuring. The process of globalisation has enhanced the range of trade and capital investment and also increased the consumerism and mobility of the Creating New ‘Places’ J 129 upper and middle classes. This new economy has formed the context for middle-class women to emerge as willing and ready to acquire ‘market-specifi c human capital’ instead of being only ‘household- specifi c human capital. The direct as well as indirect effects of globalising processes and innumerable job opportunities, mostly in the informal sector, have created, though small, waves in Burdwan offering a translocal situation that is motivating middle-class women to recreate and redefi ne their space and places. Restructured by the newer forms of economic transactions, city women are gradually replacing their older livelihood strategies with newer one and in this way they are adopting ways of earning according to their individual skills, ability to invest and familial positionality. The case studies presented here comprise the tip of the iceberg, and represent a sizeable magnitude of middle-class women who are now rearticulating their roles in the family and in society. In the process, they are also crossing predefi ned boundaries imposed on them by the conservative and patriarchal familial structures of the bhadralok (gentle folk) of Burdwan. Although these are predominantly in the informal service sector, women of middle-class families were using these opportunities to get recognition and a sense of achievement which had in turn facilitated an improved standard of living and economic autonomy. Utilising the various economic opportunities, middle-class women in Burdwan were making inroads to create an identity of their own. The motivating forces behind these women’s engagement in paid work had both economic and emotional roots. Some women were guided by economic reasons to sustain their families or to add to family incomes or improve their standard of living or simply to earn an additional disposable income. Some had taken up jobs only for the sake of keeping themselves engaged in some activity. For many, paid work provided relief from the drudgery of routine household work. Still some others worked in order to satisfy their personal desire for self-assertion and self-expression. However, these processes had expanded the activity spaces for them as also their personal spaces in terms of capitalising on their education, skills, and creativity leading to a sense of independence. Although freedom to interact with the outside world continued to be framed by women’s essentialising roles as homemakers, earning cash income had helped the middle-class women of Burdwan to initiate the process of changing gender relations within the household. They were also slowly 130 J Pallabi Sil enhancing their potentiality to infl uence the micro level institutions, that is, those of family, marriage and household. Women in Burdwan were able to shake off some of the traditional shackles and yet, at the same time, have retained their cultural continuity. During my survey, the ambivalent positioning of women as being free and constrained at the same time was quite apparent. Overall, however, middle-class women by virtue of their education and skills were able to appropriate the emerging opportunities and in the process succeeded in expanding, rewriting and refashioning their roles and place and in interweaving the globalising changes with their individual life. 5 Gender, Poverty and Microfi nance: Interrogating Women SHGs in West Bengal

GOPA SAMANTA

Introduction

In India, since the 1990s, group-based microfi nance strategies have come up under both government and private agencies in rural areas with the multiple objectives of poverty alleviation, developing awareness towards health and education and livelihood generation. In the case of women groups, the additional objective is to empower them and bring about changes in their traditional subordinate position in the family as well as in society. However, these strategies target the poor rural women of developing countries as a homogeneous category belonging to a particular class without taking into account the socio-spatial specifi cities of individual locations. Moreover, globalising processes that include opening up of markets to the outside world sometimes guide the selection of non-farm activities without considering local market opportunities. It can be seen that in some cases, group-based activities have succeeded whereas in some areas they have not. Even in successful cases, the failure of generating sustainable livelihoods and accumulated debts to repay have increased the stress and suffering of women within the family, sometimes leading to increased domestic violence against them. The variations in the impact of microfi nance on the lives of poor women remain an intriguing question. Drawing from research in Burdwan district of West Bengal, this chapter looks at the viability of microfi nance and group approach as poverty-alleviating strategies for rural women as well as the problems underlying the functioning of such groups. The author contends 132 J Gopa Samanta that geographical factors specifi c to a given location become signifi - cant in infl uencing the outcomes of microfi nance activities. For example, variations in transport facilities, availability of local markets and/or mismatch of indigenous skill and acquired skill of women for livelihood activities may have a bearing upon how such activities work out. The major issues addressed in this chapter include the nature of livelihood activities, work space, training and development of skills, and marketing of fi nished products, which are a constituent part of sustainable livelihood generation. The access, utilisation and repayment of credit, the levels of profi t and their distribution, income, debt bondage, work burdens and overall change in the economic status of women are also discussed in order to evaluate the role of the Swarnajayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana (SGSY) to raise women above the poverty level. This chapter is based on data and information collected from an extensive fi eld survey undertaken in fi ve rural development blocks of Burdwan district, West Bengal in 2005–2006, covering 43 SGSY women groups and 382 individual women. The selection of groups was done from the list of block-wise SGSY groups provided by the District Rural Development Council (DRDC). Groups with at least three years of work experience were selected for the study to understand the impact of SGSY schemes on self-employed livelihood generation and poverty alleviation for rural women. These groups were selected from fi ve rural development blocks namely Burdwan-I, Burdwan-II, Memari-I, Kanksa and Khandaghosh. The fi eld survey combined quantitative and qualitative methods: while quantitative information was gathered through a structured questionnaire survey, qualitative data were obtained through participatory research methods such as in-depth informal interviews and focused group discussions. A series of interviews was also conducted with different offi cials directly engaged with the process of forming and functioning of SGSY groups at panchayat, development block and district levels.

Gender, Poverty and Microﬁ nance

Poverty and gender discrimination have become core issues of concern in the development literature of the globalising world. Since the 1990s, especially as part of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), more emphasis has been given to the development Gender, Poverty and Microfi nance J 133 of women and their empowerment in the developing countries of the world. Microfi nance, in that context, has become the catchword of present-day development strategies especially in the poor countries of Asia. It is viewed as a key strategy in addressing both poverty alleviation and women’s empowerment. There is a range of microfi nance models with varying philosophies and target groups. The word ‘microfi nance’ has a wider connotation than microcredit and, therefore, includes many things such as insurance and awareness building besides providing credit to the poor. In contrast, ‘microcredit’ is small credit given at the level of a group or an individual for purposes of development. However, microcredit has now transcended its limited boundaries of being perceived as a means of credit accessible to the poor to being viewed as a comprehensive strategy for poverty alleviation. Microcredit initiatives have become increasingly popular as a way to mobilise poor communities through the provision of loans through specialised fi nancial institutions (Mosley and Hulme 1998). Small groups are formed and loans allocated to members based on group solidarity instead of formal collateral (Montgomery 1996). Microcredit schemes have been particularly targeted at poor women, who are often discriminated against not only by institutions but also within their own households (Mohindra 2003). The provision of loans to women may then serve the dual goals of increasing household wealth and empowering females (Amin et al. 1998; Kabeer 2000b). Numerous strategies exist for the disbursement of microcredit through many mediums, but the most prevalent one now is through women at an individual or group level. Governments are promoting microcredit on a large scale as a strategy not only for poverty alleviation, but also as a means for women’s empowerment. Development agencies also run microfi nance programmes for women as an effective anti-poverty intervention, with a positive impact on economic growth and a range of social development indicators (World Bank 2000). High repayment rates are interpreted to mean that women are using loans productively, and controlling credit. It is widely assumed that there is a clear and direct relationship between access to credit and an increase in the status of women within their households and communities (Hunt and Kasyanathan 2001). Microcredit programmes are often seen as signifi cant agents in building civil society institutions, institutions that claim to help improve the economic well-being of people while providing women opportunities to participate in the functioning of democratic societies. 134 J Gopa Samanta

According to Kannaviran (2005), alienation of land, lack of work and accompanying hunger cannot be set right by revolving funds. Even household consumption cannot (and often does not) automatically improve because of availability of credit. However, in India, apart from microcredit-based solutions, little effort is being made to explore other strategies to combat poverty and unemployment. Instead, claims are made that microcredit is the most effi cient means for poverty alleviation and to make the poor self- reliant. Governments are attempting to resolve the complex structural problem of poverty through microcredit alone without recourse to any other supporting activity or investment in capacity development that would enable the poor to challenge their conditions. To try to alleviate poverty and its related problems without any analysis of the social and economic issues of unequal water distribution, forests, land and so on, is a superfi cial exercise, much like applying Band-aid on a deep wound (Sanchis 2004). Alfonso (2004) identifi ed four paradigms that should be an integral part of any development programme based on microfi nance. These are: (a) education; (b) microcredit; (c) capacity-building for production; and (d) market economy (awareness and linkages). A combination of these elements in a programme will prove to be more useful than merely microcredit wherein economic issues are paramount.

Feminisation of Microﬁ nance

The feminisation of poverty, a serious concern so far, is now giving way to the feminisation of microfi nance. The basic proposition on which microfi nance is conceived for the well-being of poor women is that it empowers women by putting capital in their hands to help them earn an independent income and contribute fi nancially to their households and communities. However, microfinance experience shows that this equation may not always hold true and that complacency in these assumptions can lead microfi nance institutions (MFIs) to overlook both opportunities to empower women more profoundly and failures in empowerment (Cheston and Kuhn 2002). The reasons for targeting women are themselves subjects for debate. Leach and Sitaram (2002: 575) identifi ed fi ve rationales for providing women with loans. These are: Gender, Poverty and Microfi nance J 135

(a) Women are disproportionately represented among the poorest in society and need more help than men to secure sustainable livelihoods. (b) Women are discriminated against in the formal labour market and usually obliged to seek an income on the margins of the economy in the informal sector. (c) Women-headed households are on the increase as a result of economic recession, changing labour needs, increasing urbanisation and the break-up of extended family structures. (d) Women-headed households are usually more vulnerable in times of crisis, as they have fewer resources to draw upon. (e) Repayment rates on loans and contributions to family well- being are often higher among women that among men.

The Grameen Bank experience of Bangladesh revealed that women are consistently better in promptness and reliability of repayment, thus making them favoured targets of microcredit programmes in South Asian countries (Yunus 2004). It is assumed that this will ensure that the beneﬁ ts of increased income will accrue to the general welfare of the family, and, particularly, the children. At the same time, women’s status would improve when they contribute to the family income. However, Kannaviran (2005) believes that women are preferred clients because they can be persuaded to operate on gendered notions of shame, decency and discipline. Women are, in fact, under extreme pressure to maintain their social prestige, and the fear of social ostracisation when not returning credit forces them to be ideal credit utilisers (Sanchis 2004). Sanchis (2004) also observed that everyone has different reasons to associate women with microcredit. Voluntary organisations speak of the ease of forming and sustaining women’s groups with credit as the binding activity; such groups based on credit also receive social sanction easily. Financial institutions focus on women based on the evidence that they are better at repayment and therefore have better credibility than men. Governments, on the other hand, seek to achieve a double target — that of alleviating poverty as well as empowering women, through a single intervention, using women as the medium. However, none of those types of MFIs address their fundamental oppressions or transform their status in relation to the access or control of resources. 136 J Gopa Samanta

Alfonso (2004) strongly criticised the overwhelming emphasis of MFIs to cover women by their projects:

The focus of such micro-credit programmes is profi t and not women’s empowerment. The primary objective of micro-credit is to promote credit and benefi ts for the individual while being in a collective. This weakens collective efforts and gives preference to individual needs. This process may be benefi cial for the micro-credit companies but certainly not for the women. (Alfonso 2004: 10)

Arguments are sometimes made by scholars for feminisation of microcredit. The whole family is more likely to beneﬁ t from credit targeted at women, compared with credit targeted at men (Kabeer 1998a; Khandker 1998; United Nations 1995). Kelkar (2005) explained the reason behind this trend in the following words:

Perhaps because of women’s gender responsibility of provisioning the household (acquiring and processing food) women tend to spend more of the income they control for household consumption goods. This is in contrast to the behaviour of men who tend to spend more of the income they control, on themselves, alcohol, entertainment, etc, and consequently neglect the consumption needs of children and others in the household. (Kelkar 2005: 4695)

The idea that households will be more secure if women control decisions related to spending is based on evidence from many different contexts, suggesting that women budget more wisely than men, spending more on household welfare and less on personal items (Endeley 2001). Another study by Endeley (1998) noted this ‘altruism’ amongst women in many households in Cameroon. In spite of critical arguments against the feminisation of microfi nance, it can be said that providing access to credit and income is always a welcome approach for poor women made by microfi nance programmes. Microfi nance can be considered as a stepping stone for poor women on the way to empowerment. Cheston and Kuhn (2002) believe that one of the often articulated rationales for supporting microfi nance and targeting women with microfi nance programmes is that it is an effective means of empowering women. By putting fi nancial resources in the hands of women, microfi nance institutions help level the playing fi eld and promote gender equality. Microfi nance can also provide viable alternatives (Charmes and Wieringa 2003) to women. These alternatives can increase their capability to make Gender, Poverty and Microfi nance J 137 meaningful decisions over critical areas of their lives and help to take them out of their oppressive and subordinate position.

The Indian Context

Despite efforts made by the government over the past few decades, poverty in India continues to be signiﬁ cant. In percentage terms, poverty levels have reduced from around 51 per cent of India’s population in 1977–78 to around 26 per cent in 1999–2000. This high rate of poverty reduction can be attributed to the growth of real income at an annual average rate of 6 per cent (Bhagwati 2003). However, there are rural–urban differentials in the levels of poverty in India. In 1999–2000, the rural poverty level in India was 74.3 per cent, whereas the urban poverty level was 25.7 per cent (Kapur Mehta and Shah 2001). Since 2000, the poverty level of India has become more or less stagnant in spite of a continued high rate of economic growth. The World Development Report of 2001 estimates that out of 79.9 per cent of India’s 1.1 billion population, approximately 175,000 families live on less than US$ 2 per day (purchasing power parity). Of these, approximately 380,000 people live in abject poverty, surviving on less than US$ 1 per day. Fast economic growth in globalising India and the increasing poverty level have resulted in enhancing the existing inequalities between geographical areas, castes, classes and genders. For example, female labour-force participation in India has decreased from 30 per cent in 1990 to 28 per cent in 2000 increasing the gender gap in labour force participation. These inequalities are again more pronounced in rural areas than in urban areas. Privatisation of basic infrastructure and withdrawal of state facilities especially provided to the poor are taking place at a faster rate in globalising India. This strategy of privatising basic needs such as health, education and sanitation is increasing the gap in the real incomes of the rich and the poor. The poorer section of people is sometimes worst affected by this process of privatisation and, as a consequence, unrest and agitation by the local poor is taking place in different parts of India. There is an institutional vacuum at the grassroot level to reduce inequalities and to safeguard the interests of the poor (Galab and Rao 2003). To eliminate this vacuum, MFIs are coming up in rural India to fulﬁ l the needs of poor people for microcredit. The planners and policy makers of the Government of 138 J Gopa Samanta

India are highly encouraging such MFIs to transfer the responsibility of the state to the individual poor. MFIs are targeting women more as they are perceived as better clients in respect of repayment of credit. Thus, microfi nance has become an all-pervasive strategy in India to battle with the aggravating poverty situation and discrimination based on gender. It has also been projected by international development agencies as a tool for empowering women in South Asian countries (Kabeer 2005). The World Bank (2000, 2001) emphasised that organising women around thrift and credit societies is one of the most effective methods of poverty alleviation. International development agencies assumed that empowering poor women through microfi nance is diffi cult without any structural change such as entitlement of resources and equal opportunities for education and skill development.

Introducing the Site

Burdwan, located in the southern part of the state of West Bengal, is one of the richest districts in India with regard to agricultural and industrial-mining growth (Lahiri-Dutt 2001). The fl at alluvial plain of the lower Damodar valley, well integrated irrigation network consisting of canals, small and minor irrigation schemes and high- yielding variety (HYV) package together have brought about a dramatic increase in agricultural production of the region since the late 1980s. The eastern parts of the district have done particularly well in terms of agricultural prosperity and this unusual success story has been intensely scrutinised by experts (for example, Banerjee and Ghatak 1995; Gazdar and Sengupta 1999; Harriss 1993; Rudd 1994; Samanta 2002; Samanta and Lahiri-Dutt 1996; Sanyal et al. 1998; Sen and Sengupta 1995). Burdwan, defi ned as the ‘granary of West Bengal’, has a cropping intensity of 169 per cent. Double and multiple cropping have become a regular practice in the region employing 78–96 per cent of the workforce in the predominantly rural economy of the region. In per capita District Domestic Product, Burdwan ranks third among the districts of West Bengal (GOWB 2004). The district also stands third in rural monthly per capita consumption which is ` 501.58 just after Haora (` 590.19) and North 24 Parganas (` 550.84). The Human Development Index (HDI) of this district is 0.64 and ranks fi fth among the districts of West Bengal. In spite of Gender, Poverty and Microfi nance J 139 its developed agriculture, consequent diversifi cation of rural economy and favourable HDI, poverty still exists at a signifi cant level in the rural areas of Burdwan district, with 26.27 per cent of households living below the poverty line.

Gender Attributes

The rural society of Burdwan is still characterised by a strong gendered division of labour and women’s subordinate position, due to the agriculture base of its economy and feudal structure of society. In spite of its fl ourishing rural economy, Burdwan’s present female–male ratio (FMR) is 942 and the female literacy rate is 61.9 per cent. The condition of women becomes worse when families are poverty stricken. The female work participation rate is only 16.03 per cent. Moreover, their share in informal and marginal work is relatively higher in comparison to formal employment. Women work hard inside and outside the family to earn a livelihood, but they have no power to take decisions regarding familial and personal matters (Samanta and Lahiri-Dutt 2007). They often get married and become mothers at an early age. It affects their health, sometimes very badly (Samanta 2009a). They often suffer from malnutrition as girls get less food and nutrition in comparison to boys. The entitlement of assets is extremely limited among them (Samanta 2009b). All these factors lead to a bad Gender Development Index (GDI) for the district ranking it seventh among the districts of West Bengal (see Table 5.1). Poor women in the rural areas of Burdwan are primarily engaged in informal and marginal work in agricultural fi elds, brick kilns, construction works and local rice processing mills. The year-round cultivation provides jobs in the fi elds and also in processing units and in rich farmers’ homes as domestic help (Nandy 2003). However, the economic opportunities of women in Burdwan are more in agricultural activities than in other occupations. Most of the female workers are agricultural labourers and therefore, belong to the poorest group of population and mostly to rural areas. GOWB (2004) has noted that in West Bengal, the incidence of poverty is the highest among agricultural labourers in comparison to other categories of workers. Female agricultural labourers are again worse off as they get lesser wages than their male counterparts for the same amount of work (Mukhopadhyay 2005). 140 J Gopa Samanta

TABLE 5.1 Development Proﬁ le of Burdwan District

Burdwan Indicators of development district West Bengal Female–male Ratio, 2001 921 934 Female–male Ratio (0–6 age group), 2001 956 960 Female life expectancy at birth, 2004 71 69 Infant mortality rate per 1,000, 2004 54 67 School enrolment rate for females, 2004 (%) 56.8 61 Female literacy rate, 2001 (%) 61.9 51.73 Gender disparity in literacy, 2001 (%) 17.4 17.36 Female work participation rate (main + marginal), 16.03 18.32 2001 Percentage of female main workers, 2001 8.29 9.12 Percentage of female marginal workers, 2001 7.75 9.21 Percentage of female non-workers, 2001 83.97 81.68 Percentage of female cultivators, 2001 6.21 14.08 Percentage of female agricultural labourers, 2001 43.80 32.18 Percentage of female workers in household industry, 12.08 17.69 2001 Percentage of other female workers, 2001 37.91 36.05 Gender Development Index, 2004 0.56 0.55 (Rank–7th) Source: Computed by the author from Census 2001 and GDI from West Bengal Human Development Report, 2004.

The salient features of the marginalisation of rural women are low level of literacy, low purchasing power, poor health status, low participation rates in the formal economy and low level of empowerment. Gender disparity in literacy starts from the very beginning when the girl child does not get access to primary school. A very low level of school enrolment for girls is noted by scholars in rural Bengal (see, for example, Bagchi and Guha 2005; Sengupta and Guha 2002). A high drop-out rate is also visible among girls at all levels, from primary to higher education. Poverty, neglect of the girl child and lack of infrastructure are the three basic reasons behind this high drop-out rate among girls. Burdwan district’s gender disparity in the literacy rate is 17.4 per cent for the total and 19.93 per cent for rural areas. Since 1951, much progress has taken place in the literacy scenario of the district, and the gender disparity decreased by a negligible proportion, that is, from 22.6 per cent in 1951 to 17.4 per cent in 2001 (Samanta 2003). This gender disparity in Gender, Poverty and Microﬁ nance J 141 literacy attainment is positively correlated with female main workforce participation (+0.34). The correlation is strongly positive (+0.85) with the women’s marginal workforce participation as most of the poor, illiterate and marginalised women usually join the marginal workforce.

Situating Women in Rural Poverty Alleviation Programmes

Poverty alleviation programmes, as important components of rural development in post-colonial India, began initially with a sectoral approach that made women invisible to the planners. The absence of a gender perspective in the rural development process was noted by feminist scholars in the 1970s (Agnihotri and Mazumdar 1995; Desai and Krishnaraj 1987, John 1996). A gender approach was fi rst adopted when Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas (DWCRA) was introduced in 1982–83 in India, with the objectives of socio-economic upliftment and empowerment of poor rural women. Since then, the concept of Self-Help Groups (SHG) was adopted for making the economic activities run by resource-poor women viable. Women SHGs have been formed under different development schemes such as Ambedkar Hasta Silpa Vikas Yojana, Integrated Nutrition and Health Programme, Swarnajayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana and others. DWCRA, the fi rst group-based state-sponsored poverty alleviation programme specially meant for women was introduced in Burdwan in 1991–92. Burdwan received its fi rst DWCRA project eight years later of its introduction in 1983–84 in other parts of India and West Bengal. This delayed introduction was due to the relative prosperity of its rural areas. This scheme was essentially based on the philosophy of collectivisation and building social capital through SHGs. DWCRA groups were formed with the multiple objectives of poverty alleviation, livelihood generation through self-employment schemes, improvement of health and nutrition status, and above all, development of women’s awareness and agency (GOWB 1996). The experience of poverty-alleviating programmes for women under the DWCRA scheme was not very successful to bring about changes in the lives of poor rural women (Lahiri-Dutt and Samanta 2002). Between 1991 and 1999, a large number of DWCRA groups 142 J Gopa Samanta were formed in different rural development blocks of the district. However, a majority of those SHGs in DWCRA became defunct by 1999. At last count, Burdwan had about 317 groups in the district (DRDA 2001). None of these groups could generate suffi cient income to get out of poverty. Out of 317 groups, about 99 had totally failed to operate and another 35 had just initiated their primary savings pool, but were unable to start any livelihood-generating activity. The rest of the groups could not generate substantial livelihoods from group activity, but were hanging around with a number of problems and meagre income. An in-depth analysis done by Lahiri-Dutt and Samanta (2006) has explored the reasons behind the failure of DWCRA groups in Burdwan district. Among numerous factors, the most signifi cant are lack of awareness, entrepreneurship and collective spirit among poor women. Thus, without any substantial change in the structural conditions for women, DWCRA failed to fulfi l the objectives of poverty alleviation and empowerment of women. In such a situation, all poverty-alleviating programmes for rural areas including DWCRA were merged under an umbrella programme called the Swarnajayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana (SGSY) in April 1999 (GOI 1999). By the introduction of this programme, group approach became an essential criterion for all development programme meant for poor women in India.

SGSY and Women’s Livelihood Generation in Burdwan

SGSY was introduced to ameliorate the observed drawbacks of previous poverty alleviation programmes especially the Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP) and to restructure the self- employment programmes at the end of the 21st century. According to SGSY guidelines (GOI 1999), there was an absence of desired linkages among the multiple poverty-alleviating programmes, and the implementation was more concerned with achieving individual programme targets rather than focusing on the issue of sustainable income generation. To rectify the situation, SGSY was launched as a holistic programme covering all aspects of self-employment such as organising poor people into SHGs, providing training for income- generating activity, increasing poor people’s access to credit and Gender, Poverty and Microfi nance J 143 technology and, above all, marketing. The process of confi dence- building and community-empowerment are also important aspects of SGSY. The major focus of SGSY is on implementation of the programme through formation of SHGs. As defi ned in the SGSY guidelines, an SHG is a collection of rural poor who have volunteered to organise themselves into a group for improving the standards of living of the members (GOI 1999). The fi rst step of SGSY is the formation of SHGs and generation of microcredit through small savings and thrift. Once the SHG has suffi cient funds, the state facilitates the start-up of group-based micro-enterprises through vocational training in the chosen group activity, and through bank loans and subsidies.

Livelihood Activities

The foremost objective of the SGSY scheme is alleviation of poverty through credit to poor people who have no access to it. In SGSY, emphasis is laid on self-employed livelihood generating schemes rather than only on providing access to credit, so that poor people can get out of poverty permanently. According to SGSY guidelines, the activity of a group must be one and there is no option for bene- ﬁ ciaries to work on individual choices. They can divide the money and work on an individual scale, but that must be under one activity scheme sanctioned by the DRDC (GOI 1999). Among the 43 SGSY groups surveyed for the present study, 33 have started common livelihood-generating activities. The selection of economic activity is a key factor of successful livelihood generation for poverty alleviation (Bagal 2002). SGSY considers that the choice of activity must be governed by possibilities that exist in the resources of the area, available skill and demand of product in the local market. The block-level SGSY committees should ensure that a participative process is involved in identifying the key activities to be taken up to generate local self-employment. However, in this study, it has been observed that the selection of activity is not always done by the women members themselves. In 55 per cent of the cases, women decide their activities together. The group leader takes the decision in 21 per cent of the cases. In the remaining 24 per cent the selection of activity is done either by non-government organisation (NGO) staff or by panchayat members. In a similar study on SGSY in Gandhinagar district of Gujarat, 144 J Gopa Samanta

Sud (2003: 4086) noted that in the selection of livelihood activity ‘a participative process of decision-making has not taken place. Male community elders and village level government functionaries have made the decisions for SHGs.’ The types of livelihood activity taken up by the women SHGs in Burdwan are more or less women-friendly, that is, they are home- based in nature. Rural society is characterised by a strong gendered division of labour making domestic responsibilities such as cooking, washing, house cleaning, caring of children and elderly members and so on, compulsory for women. Therefore, women have to face difﬁ culties to work outside the home as they are usually not allowed by their family to spend much time outside. However, to strike a balance between domestic responsibilities imposed upon them and working for a living, women often choose home-based activities. Oberhauser (1998) noted that in development discourse, women are often ghettoised in traditional ‘women work’ such as sewing and food production. Here, the chief types of activities of SHG groups are agro-processing, livestock rearing, sewing and petty business. The highest percentage of groups (28 per cent) is engaged in petty business (see Table 5.2). The share of livestock rearing and agro- processing is 23 and 21 per cent, respectively. The lowest proportion of groups (5 per cent) is in sewing. Considerable differences of opinion among the members of an SHG group are noted regarding the selection of livelihood activity; however, it is difﬁ cult to measure and quantify the proportion of difference of opinion. For example, in a single group, a few members want to rear cattle, a few want to do tailoring and stitching while others want to do paddy processing and muri (puffed rice) making. These different preferences come from their earlier work experience and their different levels of

TABLE 5.2 Types of Livelihood Activities of SGSY Groups

Types of activity Number Percentage Petty Business 12 27.91 Livestock rearing 10 23.26 Agro-processing 9 20.93 Sewing 2 4.65 Activity not started 10 23.25 Total 43 100 Source: Field Survey, 2005–2006. Gender, Poverty and Microﬁ nance J 145 convenience to work. This problem sometimes puts the SHGs in a ﬁ x in the progress of credit linkage and starting of self-employed productive activity.

Training and Skill Development

An important element of government schemes for microcredit-based livelihood-generating activity is training for running an activity. It is not enough for women to merely attend meetings — they should be trained to have self-conﬁ dence to participate effectively through active speaking and listening. In the case of SHGs, training is not attended by all members of the group. The number and percentage of members attending training programmes per group vary widely. On an average, 57 per cent of women attended training. It has been observed that women who did so work better than those who did not. Skill development and capacity building for sustainable livelihood- generating activities for women should start with an assessment of what women already possess (Garba 1999). However, in this case, no such assessment was done to identify the existing skills of women before arranging training programmes for them. There are cases where elderly women, already adept at making puffed rice try hard to develop the skill of making jute bags. In such cases, they rarely develop the new skill and cannot be work–time efﬁ cient. Therefore, skill development and capacity building have received a serious setback due to implementation of training programmes without proper assessment of the existing skills of women.

Marketing

The distance to the market is a major concern for successful livelihood generation by women SHGs. The urban market, in most cases, is not accessible to these women because of the distance, which sometimes exceed 20–30 km. However, women have access to rural markets in villages located within 1 km in most cases (54 per cent). These markets are often very small and do not have specialised products except for food items. In contrast, 28 per cent of women do not even have any rural market within 5 km of their homes. (see Table 5.3). The remaining 18 per cent have rural markets within a distance of 1–5 km. 146 J Gopa Samanta

TABLE 5.3 Distance to Nearest Market

Distance from home Number of women Percentage Within 1 km 207 54.19 1–2 km 62 16.23 2–3 km 7 1.83 3–5 km 0 0 Above 5 km 106 27.75 Total 382 100 Source: Field Survey 2005–06.

Lack of proper marketing often poses a serious threat to the viability of SHG activities. Access to urban markets with specialised demands is limited for women living in rural areas due to long distance and lack of time. The women cannot go to far to sell their products as social taboos restrict their mobility. Rural markets located in nearby areas, especially periodic markets, therefore, can play a crucial role for women SHGs to survive in the long run. The survey of market opportunities in surrounding rural areas, which is a necessary precondition, is not generally done in Burdwan before the selection of a livelihood activity.

Access to and Utilisation of Microcredit

Government programmes like SGSY attempt to alleviate poverty through generating credit and subsidy-based self-employed livelihood activity. Although there is a craze among MFIs to form women's groups, very little attention is given to their special needs and the feasibility to run a credit-based group activity. According to Mayoux (1998), conditions of such microfi nance delivery should be fl exible to women’s aspirations, needs and existing strategies. This includes considering the types of loans and savings conditions that would maximise women’s control over the use of the income generated. The amount of loan given either to groups or to individuals varies depending on the stage of the functioning of the group. SGSY groups that have passed the second grading, that is, the test for credit linkage, have received a larger loan to start sanctioned collective livelihood activity. The proportion of such groups is 35 per cent among all SGSY groups. About 16 per cent of SGSY groups have received loans varying between ` 50,000 and ` 3,00,000. Another 19 per cent have received amounts varying between ` 25,000 and ` 50,000. Gender, Poverty and Microfi nance J 147

The other SGSY groups have received only the revolving fund from which they can take small loans for individual needs. In such cases, the loan amount varies below ` 25,000. Whatever the amount and types of loans, the availability of credit through microﬁ nance programmes has lessened the overall debt bondage of the poor to local moneylenders.

Purpose of Credit

The purposes for which credit is taken by women of SGSY groups indicate the nature of utilisation. One of the aims of the microcredit programme is the alleviation of poverty through providing credit for productive activities. The funds used to provide loans to members are supposed to be for productive purposes. However, in reality, the credit is hardly used by women for productive activities. In a number of cases, credit is used for daily needs such as food, clothes, education of children and medical treatment (see Table 5.4). About 5 per cent of credit is used for daughter’s marriage. Mohindra (2003) also noted that loans are often used by poor SHG members for consumption, such as health care and marriages. The credit taken for building assets is limited, that is, only among 8 per cent of the women. This is again used for non-productive assets like purchase of homestead land (2 per cent) and construction of houses (6 per cent). Kabeer (1998a), in her study on gender, credit and empowerment, noted that women usually do not have much

TABLE 5.4 Purposes of Loans Taken by Individual Members Arranged from Higher % to Lower

Purposes Number of women Percentage Purchase of cattle 73 38.42 Petty business 52 27.37 Medical treatment 20 10.53 Education of children 13 6.84 Construction of house 12 6.32 Daughter’s marriage 10 5.26 Repayment of debts 4 2.11 Purchase of homestead land 4 2.11 Agriculture 2 1.04 Total 190 100 Source: Field Survey 2005–06. 148 J Gopa Samanta control over their credit and income. When they control these, they tend to spend on household consumption and ‘security-related assets’ such as homestead land more than male borrowers who prefer to invest the credit in further productive activities. According to Mosley and Hulme (1998), due to the preference or need for consumption loans by the poor, members are not gaining productive capacities. However, in our study about 27 per cent of women are using the credit for petty business and another 38 per cent use for purchasing livestock resources (see Table 5.4). This 65 per cent use their credit for productive purposes. In a few instances women have taken credit to repay an earlier loan of the family from moneylenders.

Repayment of Credit Repayment of credit is usually done by women in monthly instalments. The overall repayment rate among SGSY groups is fairly good. The women pay their instalments regularly if they earn by utilising the credit. In cases where their husbands are using the credit money, they take money from them and repay. However, it becomes diffi cult when women use the credit for household consumption. In such cases, if women have any other source of earning, they repay from that source. There are several groups where livestock resources purchased by credit were totally damaged by disease; in such cases, women do not have any other source of income. Repayment becomes diffi cult for them. In fact, there are many dormant or defunct groups in the district that took credit once for individual members and could not repay. Such groups do not run their group savings either. However, no socially damaging peer pressure or exorbitant interest rates with the resultant negative impact on women were encountered, as Montgomery (1996) and Shylendra (2006) observed, respectively. In a study on SHGs of Kerala, Mohindra (2003) also noted that loans were generally repaid on time, without major confl ict. Moreover, in order to maintain their fi nances, many SHGs have integrated fl exible and compassionate transactions, distinct from typical banking procedures.

Savings Monthly savings in a group account is a necessary condition of microcredit schemes under SGSY. This savings account is very Gender, Poverty and Microﬁ nance J 149 signiﬁ cant for the SHGs, as this is the only money from where they can take loans after the credit is repaid. The monthly instalment of these savings varies between ` 10 and ` 50 among groups. This amount depends on the saving capacity of individual women in the group. The instalment is usually higher in groups where women have other sources of income. These sources may be domestic labour, bidi-making or livestock rearing. In contrast, groups with women members who have no other sources of income save smaller amounts per month. The total amount of group saving deposited in the account depends on the monthly instalment, as well as the length of the period over which savings is being done. The highest percentage of groups (51 per cent) has ` 4,000 to ` 6,000 in their savings accounts. About 23 per cent of the groups have savings below ` 4,000. Another 23 per cent have ` 6,000 to ` 10,000. Only one group has savings over ` 10,000. There are a number of groups in the district, that have failed to continue regular savings due to acute poverty.Those groups have become defunct after a few months of their formation.

Income

The SGSY, which seeks to use SHGs as channels of delivery of credit- cum-subsidy assistance to below-poverty-line sections, aims to raise every assisted family above the poverty line in three years by creating a monthly income of at least ` 2,000 from the activity undertaken, after repayment of the bank loan (Kalpana 2005). Over 60 per cent of our surveyed SHGs have crossed that period of three years. However, none of the groups have achieved the target of ` 2,000 income per capita per month. There are a number of groups, which were formed 8–10 years ago. However, most of the SHGs are yet to earn even ` 1,000 per capita per month. The higher levels of income categories noted among the SHGs are ` 700–1,000 and above ` 1,000. However, the proportion of women in these two categories of income levels is very low, 12.2 and 3.3 per cent, respectively (see Table 5.5). On an average, 23 per cent of women have no income from SHGs, as their livelihood activities are yet to start. About 51 per cent of women have monthly incomes up to ` 500. Another 10.6 per cent earn between ` 500–700 per month from their group activities. 150 J Gopa Samanta

TABLE 5.5 Monthly Income of Women from SHG Activities

Monthly income (in `) Number of women Percentage Nil 88 23.04 Below 100 46 12.05 100–300 67 17.50 301–500 81 21.31 501–700 40 10.57 701–1,000 47 12.22 Above 1,000 13 3.31 Total 382 100 Source: Field Survey 2005–06.

Debt Bondage

Instead of generating income through SHG activities, women of several groups have gone into debt bondage. If the credit-based livelihood activities fail to generate any income, then the credit turns into a debt bondage. Examples of such debt bondage are found in many cases where women started livestock rearing as a group activity and their animals died from a sudden attack of disease. The frequent occurrence of such incidents has a negative impact on credit-based livelihood activities. There are many SHG groups in which women continue regular savings, but are unwilling to risk debt in their livelihood activity. Cheston and Kuhn (2002), in their report on empowering women through microfi nance, noted that both men and women assume risks when taking out a loan — which becomes debt with all of its accompanying stresses and responsibilities. The debt bondage through livelihood activity puts the family further down below poverty levels. The loss of credit money through microfi nance programmes sometimes increases violence against women. Examples of such consequences are observed in a few cases in our study. Following Cheston and Kuhn (2002), it can be said that such incidents raise legitimate concerns about the potentially negative impact that microfi nance programmes can have on women, particularly in highly restrictive environments.

Change in Economic Status

Although leadership skills, self-confi dence and solidarity are important in changing women’s role and status in the community, their Gender, Poverty and Microfi nance J 151 economic success also shapes the community’s perception of them (Cheston and Kuhn 2002). Moreover, change in economic status helps women to be empowered in other spheres of life. There is a negligible number of SHGs in Burdwan, where the women have started to earn a successful livelihood income to get out of poverty. Therefore, the change in economic status is measured only in the case of groups that have started to earn some money from their group activity. Formal savings is an important indicator of changed economic status for women. Only 13 per cent of women have their own savings account either in a bank or in a post offi ce. The rest (87 per cent) have neither any savings nor any savings account. Women’s earning capacity does not automatically correlate to their spending capacity. Charmes and Wieringa (2003) observed that in many countries women spend a large part of their income on their children, while men have more disposable income for themselves. The same trend is also observed in our study area. Women start to spend more on children’s education as soon as they earn some money. The increase in expenditure on clothes is another signifi cant indicator of the changed economic status of women, especially in poor communities. About 88 per cent of the women who earn from SHG activities have reported that they spend more money on clothes since they started earning. It has been observed that about 90 per cent of women have perceived positive changes in their levels of self confi dence after working in groups. Many of them have also mentioned that access to credit has enabled them to contribute to household finances which increased their self-respect and self-worth. In an enquiry into the change in the capacity of fi nancial management after joining SHGs, it was found that women’s capacity improved by 68 per cent. Among them, about 60 per cent can operate their bank accounts. However, 32 per cent of women did not progress in terms of fi nancial management. The microcredit-based SGSY programme has created an extra burden for the women in their attempts to alleviate poverty. Work related to livelihood-generating activities has increased their responsibilities in addition to domestic chores. In the rural areas of West Bengal, there is still no change in the traditional gendered division of work within the household. Men are still the main bread earners as well as heads of the family. They work only in the public sphere and remain unwilling to share household responsibilities. Therefore, microfi nance has doubled women’s work responsibility after joining 152 J Gopa Samanta

SHGs, as they now shoulder responsibilities both inside and outside their homes. However, the response of women to this increased work burden is varied, and sometimes mixed in nature. Many women reported stress due to increased workload and responsibilities after joining SHG activities. In several cases, women suffered from ill health and physical exhaustion as a result of overwork. In other cases, women reported that they are more than happy to assume the extra burden because of the respect, personal satisfaction, and improved standard of living they experienced as a result of their income-generating activities. Such responses are common among women who have started to earn from SHG activities and contribute to the family budget. In contrast, the women who have not yet earned money from SHG activities but have an increased workload feel unhappy with the increased work burden. They are often humiliated by their husbands and in-laws for neglecting domestic responsibilities and spending time on non-productive SHG activities.

Problems Faced by Women SHGs

Women SHGs face multiple problems. Some of them related to poverty and livelihood generation, while others related to socio-cultural conditions vis-à-vis mobility, powerlessness, decision making and domestic violence. However, fi nancial problems are more acute than socio-cultural in successful livelihood generation by women SHGs. The signifi cant fi nancial problems are mainly related to insuffi cient and limited credit capital failing to develop successful enterprises, lack of marketing facilities and suffi cient training to develop work skills and absence of insurance cover to minimise risks. In some cases, the non cooperation of bankers regarding the release of credit was also reported. Fixed categories of group size in SGSY (10) and 70 per cent of them being from below poverty households create problems in the formation of women groups. The space for working together, that is, a common workshed, is a necessary precondition for success. However, only 5 per cent of women groups in Burdwan have a workshed for their group livelihood activities and that too only in cases where the work is not possible without one, for example, the making of puffed rice by machine. This lack of workshed poses Gender, Poverty and Microfi nance J 153 serious problems to carry on group activity. In most cases, poor households hardly have any space in their houses to run livelihood projects such as paddy processing or livestock rearing. Illiteracy and lack of professional skills to keep records and maintain accounts is common in women SGSY groups. Aware- ness about state policies for poverty alleviation, especially for poor women, is limited to only 17 per cent of the women because of the prevailing illiteracy. However, this awareness is limited to only the formation of SHGs. The rest of the women (83 per cent) are not aware about state-sponsored programmes for poor women. Most of them do not even know for what purpose the SGSY programme is meant for other than generating income. To a simple query of why women have joined SHGs, they stated interesting reasons. About 17 per cent did not clarify why they had done so. In SHGs, fi nancial decisions must be collective and taken in the presence of the majority of the members. However, only in 48 per cent of the groups were fi nancial decisions taken by all the members. Financial decisions are often taken by the group leader alone, in which other members have no voice. Sometimes, fi nancial decisions are even taken by NGO staff and panchayat members, rather than the women themselves. Lack of collective strength and non cooperation among members has hampered empowerment of women to take fi nancial decisions collectively. Sometimes, it was observed that the group often could not decide on a particular activity. In most cases, DRDC offi cials were required to resolve disputes over choosing the activity. In microcredit and other successful group-approach stories, we fi nd that such key agents have often played a signifi cant role in preparing the tasks, helping women learn a new job and cope with various local cultural factors (see, for example, Beaumont et al. 1992). Power and control dynamics, and cooperation play important roles in the survival of a group. Unless the rewards are suffi cient, the groups are doomed to fail. What comprises ‘suffi cient’ is highly subjective. In a rich agricultural district like Burdwan with well articulated agro-processing and trading businesses as well as caste and religious complexities, the ‘micro’ credit that works elsewhere may not appear to be suffi cient to spur rural women into action. Above all, the group must help to either reinforce or construct a sense of identity among members. Offi cial statistics suggest this has not 154 J Gopa Samanta happened for DWCRA groups in Burdwan (Lahiri-Dutt and Samanta 2006). Therefore, the majority of the groups disappear from the SHG-based microfi nance scenario within a few years of formation. Karlan (2001) explained the reasons behind such fi ndings which are quite common in microfi nance experience in different countries of the world. According to him, in any microfi nance programme, there may be two types of participants — those who benefi t from participation and those who become worse off. Those who benefi t invest the loan proceeds in their business and generate more income than the interest they pay. These people stay on in the programme. Those who become worse off fail to invest the money well and then drop out of the programme.

Conclusion

This detailed case study on women SGSY groups in Burdwan highlights that such poverty-alleviating programmes place more emphasis on the formation of women groups, that is, the inclusion of women in the development discourse. In December 2007, the total number of SGSY groups formed was 13,572 out of which 8,834 were women groups. The proportion of women groups is relatively higher, that is, 65 per cent. By forming women groups, state agencies try to prove their gender sensitive approach towards poverty alleviation as well as development. An impact analysis of women’s livelihood generation programmes for poverty alleviation reveals mixed fi ndings. In most cases, entrepreneurship is promoted without consideration of the livelihood needs and without provision of forward and backward linkages. Serious efforts are seldom made to promote collective enterprises. SGSY is successful in raising women and their families above the poverty line only in cases where planning for livelihood activity is well thought out and well nourished by outside agents such as government offi cers or NGO staff. Among the large number of groups formed in Burdwan, only 5.61 per cent are linked with bank credit. Moreover, 1 per cent of groups generate profi t after repaying the monthly instalment of bank credit. In this, 1 per cent, a few have been able to generate sustainable income but the per capita income is still far below the income proposed in SGSY guidelines, that is, ` 2,000 per month. Besides, there are several cases where women have been engaged in SHG activities for long Gender, Poverty and Microfi nance J 155 but could not generate suffi cient income to contribute to the family and cope with poverty. Increase debt bondages are also observed in cases where women lost their livelihood resources, but have credit to repay with interest. There is very little doubt that microcredit-based SHGs enhance opportunities to earn a livelihood and increase women’s physical space (Rabindranathan 2005). However, empowerment does not necessarily take place when incomes are generated or when livelihoods are enhanced. Therefore, in conclusion, it can be said that the SHG cannot be an all-ameliorative strategy for the development of poor rural women. They must have access to basic infrastructure like health and education, and entitlement of land-based resources such as water forestry or pasture land for livestock. The applicability of microfi nance-based poverty alleviating schemes uniformly over the country in the same form, overlooking regional differences, would not be a right strategy. Credit is only one of the numerous components required to enable women to address their concerns related to justice and equity. It can never be a single-case solution for all problems poor women face. Yet, credit has been magnifi ed to an extent that it is presented as a single solution to myriad problems. It aims to provide relief while masking the causes of the malaise. Therefore, a shift is necessary to focus on savings and its rotation rather than on mere credit in women SHGs. This shift is possible only when microfi nance focuses on women and collective processes rather than on credit-based profi t generation. Such a shift has already been noted in the case of the Union de Esfuerzos para el Campo (UDEC) microfi nance scheme working in rural Mexico. Last, given the socio-cultural environment of a prosperous farm- ing region such as Burdwan, the SGSY scheme must address specifi c contextual needs and requirements rather than act as restrictive instruments. The needs of poor women are diverse depending on the geographical environment of the area. Therefore, microfi nance models need to be designed to address these diversities and remain fl exible. A microfi nance programme should be formulated keeping the ground realities in mind so that it is useful to those who are to benefi t from it. They must also provide a fi nancial and commercial support system, research and training institutions, and extension and consultancy services that are yet to reach rural women adequately 156 J Gopa Samanta and to address their risk factors. Following Raju (2005a), it can be said that given local specifi cities and embedded structures, a spatially contextualised approach has to be in place as there cannot be a meta- narrative or blueprint for women’s empowerment.

Acknowledgement

The author is indebted to ICSSR for funding the research project ‘Women’s Self-help Groups, Poverty Alleviation and Women’s Empowerment: A Case Study of Burdwan District’, from which data has been used in this chapter. 6 Interrogating Temporal and Spatial Negotiations: Home as the Gendered Site for Working Women in Delhi

TANEESHA DEVI MOHAN

Introduction

Women in the formal labour market provide a site to explore the intriguing interplay of entrenched gender codes, space and work. Labour theories on women repeatedly point to how women were traditionally never seen to constitute part of the labour force. Even as they entered the labour market, there were certain preconditions where they were always treated as a reserve army or a supplementary component. This was because women’s responsibilities have been historically and traditionally embedded and constructed in and around the home and hearth. These women remained either indoors or worked near their homes, thereby reducing their activity space in terms of their mobility between the private and the public spaces (Agarwal 1988; Becker 1985; Beechey 1987; Blunt 1999; Bondi and Davidson 2005; Coverman 1983; Desai 2007; Niranjana 2001; Oakley 1979; Sangari 1993; Soja 1989; Spain 1993; West and Zimmerman 1987).1 The result of this social construction of feminine

1 Spain argues this point of knowledge being affected by the way men and women utilise space. It is believed that men and women are spatially segregated in a particular manner so as to reduce women’s access to knowledge. This gives women a lower status, since these ‘gendered spaces separate women from knowledge used by men to produce and reproduce power and privilege’ (Spain 1992: 3). 158 J Taneesha Devi Mohan and masculine roles is an articulation resulting in a contentious concept of ‘separateness’ — the public and the private realm which can also be seen as a control mechanism.2 However, this notion of separateness is no longer seen as ﬁ xed, particularly in the Asian context. Moreover, the spatial binary coinciding with the traditional roles of men as ‘bread-earners’ and women as ‘homemakers’ has also been contested in recent times as there are continuous negotiations around role reversal or extension in the contemporary world. Thus, women’s absence, more so of married women from labour market participation is no longer a given assumption as conceptualised in the sex role model. Rather, women are going through a series of negotiations with their families to make an entry into the labour market (Becker 1985; Beechey 1987; Fernandes 1997; Gopalan 1995; Hanson and Pratt 1995; Potuchek 1992). These negotiations seem to occur along speciﬁ c spaces which remain embedded within the patriarchal setup of the family — in a ‘thus far and no further’ paradigm (Raju 2005b: 194). Under the patriarchal system, what one sees is the functioning of a household dominated by men who are expected to protect and provide for others and also control the disbursement of resources amongst the family. In return, the heads receive service and obedience (Deshmukh-Ranadive 2005). These positions appropriated by various members of a household result in their occupying different kinds of spaces within the domestic sphere which determine an individual’s capacity to act and negotiate, both within and outside the household (Deshmukh-Ranadive 2005). If, however, there is a constriction of space, the ability of the individual may dwindle whereas the reverse is true when expansion of space occurs.3 Spaces are seen to consist of tangible as well as intangible components.

2 As Desai (2007) points out that while space is socially constructed, its appropriation is a political act signifying domination and submission. 3 Spaces in such a case can, therefore, be seen as an end in themselves, upon which negotiations can take place. Hence, ‘in domestic power dynamics, it is the expansion and the contraction of spaces that explain the relative positions of the members’ (Deshmukh-Ranadive 2005: 21). Interrogating Temporal and Spatial Negotiations J 159

Ranadive categorises spaces as physical space,4 economic space,5 socio-cultural space,6 political space7 and metaphorical space. A conjunction of all these spaces determines a woman’s position and her roles and duties8 although it is true that recent times are witnessing dramatic changes in the functioning of families and conventionally accepted gendered roles. Scholars have argued that women’s participation in the public sphere could only be ensured through education which would enhance their chances to access productive means, acquire bargaining power and help them break through stereotypical gendered constructs (Agarwal 1988; Greenstein 1996). At the same time, however, this relationship may not necessarily work so smoothly as gender constructs could be so overwhelming and pervasive that women’s prime place may continue to be framed within the domestic space, symptomatic of socially-sanctioned roles on the one hand and the ‘double burden syndrome’ on the other (Desai 2007). Given that women may have to juggle both public and private spheres, some educated women may in fact opt to function from home instead of challenging much of the prevailing gender construct. However, when ‘home’ becomes the ‘workplace’ for highly qualiﬁ ed women (and men), their educational status may

4 Physical space is the space that constitutes a women’s access to the physical space of her body, of mobility across spaces outside and within her house. 5 Economic space includes movable and immovable property, assets which are both tangible and intangible, income and so on, and all those which allow a woman ownership, access and control of goods and services which enhance economic independence. 6 Socio-cultural space enhances women’s power within the domestic sphere. It deals with kin-based hierarchies within the household. 7 Political space can be divided into two categories. One is the private political space which deals with the political situation within the domestic unit. This is different from the socio-cultural space, as the latter determines the placement within the household and the former looks into the dynamics of the working of those placements. Hence, political space looks into the hierarchical placements of authority and the responsibility which is sanctioned by the socio-cultural space. The second kind of political space pertains to women’s access to and control of the public ofﬁ ce. 8 In this study, political space, as described by Deshmukh-Ranadive (2005), is not looked into. Rather, the emphasis is on the physical, socio-cultural, economic and metaphysical spaces. 160 J Taneesha Devi Mohan create conditions amenable to changes in the conventional gendered codes of behaviour. Alternatively, these codes can be contested and compromised. The interfacing of high-end working women and home as a workplace is the focus of this chapter. Home-based work intercepts gender encoded familial responsibilities resulting in the blurring of the private and public space. To what extent does this take place, and whether, even as a workplace, the home continues to be framed as a private domain associated with conventionally assigned gendered roles and persistent patriarchal structures form the core of my arguments.9 The chapter is divided into two sections: the ﬁ rst section looks at the concept of roles and duties of individuals within the household and the gender-based inequality in the division of household labour. There is an attempt in the second section to see the extent to which gendered constructions of space with respect to women’s roles and duties have undergone transformation.

Data and Methodology This study takes into account professional women and men workers from the upper middle class with a monthly income between ` 60,000 and ` 1,50,000 operating from home. The database in this chapter has been drawn from a primary ﬁ eld survey carried out for my M.Phil. dissertation during 2007–2008. Given the limited time at hand, the samples were selected through a ‘snow-balling’ effect rather than any systematic survey across south Delhi. All the respondents were married with children up to the age group of 18 years10 with properly set regular households. The samples were drawn from three categories of households (a) with only wives working from home — single-earner women; (b) only husbands working from home — single-earner men; and (c) both husbands and wives working from home — dual-earner men and women.11 The

9 Although men also take up paid work at home, the percentage of such cases is extremely small (Osnowitz 2005). 10 Emphasis was laid upon families with children, the maximum age of the child being 18 years, as they were to have more demanding domestic obligations than women and men without children. 11 The term single-earner men and women, used in this context, refers to those who are the only members in the household who work from home. This does not mean that they are also the sole bread earners of their households. Interrogating Temporal and Spatial Negotiations J 161 variety of samples provided ground for exploring gendered ideology in different settings. Information was collected through in-depth and open-ended interviews. Each category had a sample size of 20 respondents. In all, 40 women and 40 men were interviewed. The interviews covered the interviewee’s work history which included reasons for the work chosen, work pattern, work and family demands and perceptions on how family obligations and gendered locations inﬂ uenced their job experiences. Along with interviews, a time disposition activity register in combination with associated spaces was also prepared for select individuals. Since the study is concerned with the spatial negotiations associated with gender-coded normative activities, information on separate spaces assigned for carrying out paid and unpaid work were recorded. In addition, to understand the transgression of boundaries, various activities carried out by men and women were grouped into three categories of the men’s domain, women’s domain and gender-neutral domain. Table 6.1 provides some basic information on the respondents.

Unpaid and Paid Work from Home

The site that is customarily associated with domesticity and household obligations — home — now has a dual role to perform with the coming of fl exible and paid jobs into its confi nes. As paid work enters the home, it blurs the boundaries, transforming the private and the public spheres. Although some ambivalence continues to linger, a reworked set of gender relations are played out, which are in turn implicated in spatial negotiation. However, at this juncture I digress somewhat in the following paragraphs to position the discussion on domestic chores and paid home-based work in the feminist discourses. Despite certain mandatory components of housework such as childcare, there is no clear defi nition of housework. Shelton and John have tried to put forward a defi nition of housework wherein, ‘housework refers to unpaid work done to maintain family members and/or a home’ (1996: 314). However, the way housework is perceived by wives and husbands is very different. According to Shaw’s (1988) time budget study of 60 married couples, women defi ned their household activities or domestic duties as work, whereas men did not consider it as ‘real work’. In addition, the employment status of women did not have much of an effect on the defi nition and perception of household labour. Such perceptions have brought to light the ways 162 J Taneesha Devi Mohan Time spent on present 8 3 7 2 occupation in hours a day Age of youngest child TABLE 6.1 Background Profi les of Respondents Background Profi Age cohorts Number of children Post graduate and above 25–34 35–44 45–54 1 2 >3 <6 7–14 >14 <4 5–8 9–12 >12 Educational qualifi cations qualifi 4 163 1 17 11 0 8 12 4 8 12 4 6 13 1 4 8 5 3 14 514 6 6 12 3 2 9 4 14 8 2 2 5 14 14 4 1 7 1 12 5 1 10 0 4 3 11 6 College graduate women men Women Men Single earner Single earner Dual Earner Dual Earner Source: Field Survey (December 2007 – March 2008). Respondents Interrogating Temporal and Spatial Negotiations J 163 in which household responsibilities are divided between spouses (ibid.: 334). Home-based paid work differs from other kinds of employment as the location of the worksite lies within the house. Since such work is carried out from home, the work done erroneously gets coded as being feminine (Hanson and Pratt 1995). This has resulted in the emergence of contradictory meanings of the relationship between housework and women. Some scholars argue that the establishment of such kind of work has reinforced patriarchal structures in maintaining traditional gender relations. There is another school of thought that believes that housework is holding out the promise of an alternative, even innovative, non-dichotomous organisation of home and work (Edwards and Hendry 2002; Ramu 1989; Silver 1993; Silver and Goldscheider 1994).12 This study suggests that although the gendered meaning of the home and work carried out from it has undergone certain changes with men taking up formal work from home, the process is not simple. Figure 6.1 shows the average number of hours spent in a day by single earners (women and men). It clearly emerges that working women spend a greater number of hours attending to their domestic responsibilities in comparison to working men, who even if at home spend far more time in carrying out their formal work. It can, however, be hypothesised that there would be a more equitable division of labour in households where both parents

12 If one takes a look at G. N. Ramu’s (1989) Women, Work and Marriage in Urban India, his conclusions are quite similar for the dual earner families where the participation of men in domestic duties is quite low; in fact, there is a percentage of men who do not want their wives to work as they believe that the ‘right place for a woman is her home’, and that ‘a working mother is a bad reﬂ ection on her husband’, ‘children are neglected and possibly become delinquents when their mother is at work all day’ or ‘work creates opportunities for a wife to compromise her character’ (1989: 94). Such explanations are used to deter women from leaving the premises of the house, as doing so would disrupt the functioning of the family according to custom. However, what is surprising is that such explanations though not to this degree, are used to deter women moving out to work or even take up paid employment within the household. This study, therefore, reiterates the fact that a woman’s sphere lies within the private domestic realm, and all attempts to try and demarcate paid work from unpaid work tends to be futile. 164 J Taneesha Devi Mohan

FIGURE 6.1 Average Hours Spent on Speciﬁ c Activities in a Day by Single-earner Men and Single-earner Women

Source: Field survey (December 2007–March 2008). work from home. Although men in dual-earner households share certain domestic responsibilities with their spouses, the extent to which this happens depends upon family structure and the relations existing between them (see Figure 6.2). On an average, one sees that in both the cases (single-earner and dual-earner men) men spend a disproportionate number of hours in a day in carrying out formal or paid work (single-earner men, 6.38 hours and dual-earner men, 8.28 hours per day, respectively). Single-earner and dual-earner women, on the other hand, spent an average of 4.6 and 5.40 hours per day respectively. A large body of literature shows that wives spend more time carrying out domestic duties than their husbands (Agarwal 1988; Coverman and Shelly 1986; Kalpagam 1994; Niranjana 2001; Presser 1994; Sangari 1993; Sullivan 2004). In fact, it is this compulsion that has prevented many women from entering the formal labour market and opt for paid work carried out at homes. However, a Interrogating Temporal and Spatial Negotiations J 165

FIGURE 6.2 Average Hours Spent on Speciﬁ c Activities in a Day by Dual-earner Men and Dual-earner Women

Source: Field Survey (December 2007–March 2008). caveat supported by the present study, as can be seen, is in place — household work hinders formal work in the market, but it does not seem to work in the reverse direction. That is, paid work at home does not spare women from performing household and other activities such as childcare and healthcare of the elderly.

Work and Time Disposition

It is clear that the integration of work and home has not dented the gendered division of labour which continues to remain uneven. A look at time disposition on various domestic activities endorses this. The average number of hours per day put into carrying out domestic chores by single-earner women is around 9.50. This is almost double the time spent on single-earner men activities (3.00 hours per day), although childcare is a converging site of cooperative interest. 166 J Taneesha Devi Mohan

A break-up of activities into domestic work and childcare shows that even though single-earner men spend fewer hours in domestic activities, the proportion of time spent on childcare activities is much greater (4.00 hours per day). As mentioned earlier, one would expect a more equitable distribution of household chores in dual-earner families with both spouses working from home but this is not the case. The total number of hours spent by dual-earner women on domestic duties other than childcare is around 4.13 hours per day whereas for dual-earner men it is around 1.20 hours. Despite the fact that men spent fewer hours in household chores as compared to women, almost three-quarters of their time is spent in childcare activities (3.24 hours for dual-earner men).13 There emerges some evidence that women internalise their ‘household responsibilities’ as their duties. The gender-coded responsibilities do not remain confi ned to the physically designated private sphere within the home. It is more of what activities get defi ned as women’s activities that broadly defi nes what can and cannot be treated as the women’s sphere. To that extent, many ‘outside’ activities and spaces that are traversed, primarily by women, during the course of their household work cannot be seen as an external space, but rather as an extension of their domestic spaces (Coltrane 2000; Duvvury 1989; Niranjana 2001; Raju 1993b). Given this, I have tried to look into the pattern of physical mobility out of the home, for both men and women. Continuing with childcare activities, as mentioned earlier, it was noticed that the single earner woman was expected (coupled with the intention of wanting to go) to take her children out for tuitions or any other extra-mural activities even as she was carrying out paid work from home. This also includes picking and dropping children from school to home and vice-versa. This, however, is not the case with single earner men. A reason for

13 With regard to childcare, women of both categories spent much more time or it in comparison to men. If we look at the single earner household category, the amount of time that is spent with children indoors is more or less similar for men (2.33 hours) and women (2.96 hours). However, in the case of dual-earner families, men (2.28 hours) spend fewer hours indoors with their children than their wives (3.03 hours). With regard to childcare activities which required the respondents to move out of the household premises, men spent greater number of hours outside in comparison to women. Interrogating Temporal and Spatial Negotiations J 167 this is that the men would generally send their children off with their drivers. If they would accompany their children this would be at a time when they are not carrying out their formal work. In addition, most of the domestic chores were carried out by women. They would most often try to club their activities when they were going out (for example, grocery work or other related shopping, running an errand for her paid work and so on).

Overlapping Spaces and their Spatial Manifestations

The home and work, throughout history, have been considered as ‘gendered domains’ whereby the outside has typically been associated with men and the inside as the prime location for women. However, with homes becoming a place of work, this dichotomy blurs as both domains can be juxtaposed either as a continuum in terms of an ideal typical integration or segmentation. There is no distinction between the spheres belonging to home or work in integration as both are treated as one category of social existence without a conceptual boundary which separates their content or meaning. At the other end is the segmentation where social existence at home and in the workplace is conceived of and experienced as completely separate worlds whereby the mental boundary which is created between the two realms is clear and impregnable and hence there is no physical or temporal overlap between the two realms. This means that ‘the person works on two very distinct, interpretive and behavioural frameworks’ (Nippert-Eng 1996: 568). One sees that under such a situation, there exists this negotiation between workspace and homespace. Different aspects of time and space are lumped together or split in order to form two distinct realms. Nippert-Eng (1996) argues that these two distinct realms rarely seem to exist in such an ideal typical manner. Rather there seems to be a conjunction of the two, tilting to either extreme based upon the social fabric of the household. Creation of such boundaries between work and home depends on the individual’s perception of these two realms. Thus, the creation and maintenance of the two basic realms rest on the usage and designation’ of space within the household. If gendered location is brought into the domain constructs of integration and segmentation, one can see that the private/inside 168 J Taneesha Devi Mohan and public/outside can coexist as a ‘continuum’. In this study it was observed that a greater percentage of men (100 per cent for single- earner men and 90 per cent for dual-earner men) had separate ofﬁ ce spaces as compared to the women (25 per cent for single-earner women and 5.23 per cent for dual-earner women). The replication of their ofﬁ ce-spaces at home for men shows the presence of a physical boundary between paid work and domestic work what Nippert-Eng calls the ‘boundary placement work’, which draws a very distinct line between the realm of work and the selves. In comparison, women are seen embodying fewer and less visible boundaries between the home and workspace. This is referred to as the ‘boundary transcendence or transition work’ (Nippert-Eng 1996) which is extremely accommodative in nature. It allows, primarily, the women of the household to jump back and forth from the line.14 Figures 6.3–6.6 show that since the respondents work from home, there is a certain amount of time fragmentation which takes place between paid work and household tasks.15 However, for women, the number of fragmentations is much greater than that for men.

14 This mentally-constructed space of women can be termed as the metaphysical space which Deshmukh-Ranadive (2005) tries to explain in her work on space and empowerment of women. 15 The graphs attempt to highlight the time and space fragmentation within the working day of the respondents. The graphs have been plotted along a time line of ten minute intervals (plotted along the central axis). The time space overlap for men has been denoted by a dotted line and for women it has been drawn as a solid line. All major activities taking place within these ten minute intervals have been identiﬁ ed and plotted (for details for the activities being carried out refer to the respective labelling). Activities pertaining to domestic space have been plotted along the left axis and all activities pertaining to the workspace have been plotted along the right axis. Along with this, the area of the house where the activity is being carried out has been mentioned. This has been done so as to understand where the individual respondent is carrying out the respective activity. This highlights the mobility of the respondents between the traditional and contemporary notions of private and public spaces and the subsequent movements between the workspace and the homespace. Since all the respondents are working from home there are bound to be time fragmentations. However, for both the single-earner women and dual-earner women the movement between the two spaces is much greater (as can been seen with greater amounts of meandering between these two spaces) compared to the single-earner men and dual-earner men. Interrogating Temporal and Spatial Negotiations J 169

Men tend to replicate the environments of paid work (originally carried out outside the house) within the house premises in that they spend longer and more continuous hours in their work. Women — single earner woman in particular — in contrast carry out their paid work when their spouse and children are absent from the home. In combining (paid) work and homework, the time of the day also matters for women as their household-related responsibilities vary through the day, an observation noted in many different contexts (Barnett 1994; Calasanti and Bailey 1991; Cohen 2004; Coltrane 1989; Fox and Hesse-Biber 1984; Krishnaraj 1989; Shelton and John 1996). It is also seen that the husbands’ contribution to household tasks increases with their wives increased paid work (Coverman 1985; Jenkins et al. 2000). However, in the Delhi context, this phenomenon seems to be rather insigniﬁ cant in nature where despite the wife’s engagement in paid work outside the home, the husband is still seen to carry out a nominal range of activities across the home space (Figure 6.3). Table 6.2 highlights the fact that women carry out a greater number of domestic duties in comparison to men and men’s movement into the private home space is seen to be primarily for leisure activities.

Domains and Boundaries of Work

One of the issues that has not received much academic attention is that while women have expanded their activity spaces by carrying out tasks associated with the public sphere, which were traditionally the hallmark of the men’s domain, there is little that can be said about the occupation of women’s domain by men. That women have to perform certain domestic duties irrespective of taking up other activities can be seen as relatively more traditional than those egalitarians who believe that work should be shared between spouses. In the present enquiry, most husbands maintained a strict division of labour rarely questioning the dominant paradigm of men being the bread-earners even in dual-earner households, except in childcare (Figures 6.7 and 6.8). The percentage of men who carried out chores that were traditionally placed within the women’s domain was around 40 per cent as compared to as high as 98.6 per cent women who undertook various tasks within this domain. In what can be termed as the 170 J Taneesha Devi Mohan

FIGURE 6.3 Time–Space Overlap of Single-earner Man

Source: Field survey (December 2007–March 2008). Interrogating Temporal and Spatial Negotiations J 171

FIGURE 6.4 Time–Space Overlap of Single-earner Women

Source: Field survey (December 2007–March 2008). 172 J Taneesha Devi Mohan

FIGURE 6.5 Time–Space Overlap of Dual-earner Women

Source: Field survey (December 2007–March 2008). Interrogating Temporal and Spatial Negotiations J 173

FIGURE 6.6 Time–Space Overlap of Dual-earner Men

Home Space Work Space

24.00

23.00

Leisure/Bedroom 22.00

House Care/Bedroom 21.00 Leisure/Bedroom Child Care/Dining Room 20.00 Paid Work/Study 19.00 Care/Child Study 18.00

17.00 Paid Work/Study

16.00 Cooking/Kitchen Leisure/Bedroom 15.00 Child Care/Bedroom Child Care/Dining Room 14.00 Leisure/Bathroom Child Care/Outside 13.00

12.00

11.00 Paid Work/Study

House Work/Outside 10.00 House Work/Bedroom House Work/Kitchen 09.00 Child Care/Outside Child Care/Dining Room 08.00 House Work/Dining Room Leisure/Bathroom Leisure/Living Room 07.00 Leisure/Outside Leisure/Bedroom 06.00 Activities/Space Time Activities/Space

Source: Field Survey (December 2007–March 2008). 174 J Taneesha Devi Mohan

TABLE 6.2 Distribution of Activities across Spaces within the Household

Area and type of activity SM3 SW2 DM5 DW5 Bedroom House Work 1.0 – – 0.66 Paid Work – – – 1.33 Leisure – – – 2.0 Living Room House Work 0.17 – – 0.33 Paid Work 3.0 6.67 – 1.67 Leisure – – – 0.83 Kitchen House Work 0.5 – 0.33 1.67 Paid Work – – – – Leisure 0.5 0.5 0.5 – Dining Room House Work 1.33 1.33 0.66 1.67 Paid Work – – 0.5 – Leisure – 1.0 – – Child’s Study House Work – 1.0 – – Paid Work – – – – Leisure – – – – Ofﬁ ce Area/ Study/ Reading Room House Work – 0.17 – – Paid Work 8.0 3.0 6.67 – Leisure – – – – Bathroom House Work 0.17 0.5 – 0.33 Paid Work – – – – Leisure 0.33 0.5 0.5 0.5 Outside House Work 0.83 1.33 1.33 0.66 Paid Work – – – 0.5 Leisure 0.5 – 1.0 – Source: Field Survey (December 2007–March 2008). Figures represent average number of hours per day. men’s domain, as anticipated, there was a very high participation of men (88 per cent). However, the participation of the women was equally high, at about 82.5 per cent. This endorses what has been stated earlier — more women are carrying out chores traditionally Interrogating Temporal and Spatial Negotiations J 175

FIGURE 6.7 Participation of Men and Women in the Women’s Domain (%)

Source: Field survey (December 2007–March 2008).

FIGURE 6.8 Participation of Men and Women in the Male Domain (%)

Source: Field survey (December 2007–March 2008). deﬁ ned as belonging to the men’s domain. However, the participation of men in the women’s domain is abysmally low. Although some crossing over of the domains is visible in the case of men as well, it is evident that the nature of continued unequal 176 J Taneesha Devi Mohan division of labour in the household places an additional burden on women’s negotiating skills, not only in terms of time but also in terms of particular spaces (Bondi 1991; Boris 1996; Daniels 1987; Kwan 1999; Kwan 2000; Niranjana 2001).16 The constriction over the physical space through the unequal division of labour gets translated across various other places. Within the economic space (though at a superﬁ cial level), it might seem that women have control over their earnings. However, as mentioned previously, in a majority of households women were still not considered primary earners. All important bills including school expenses were paid primarily by husbands whereas women despite carrying out economically productive work were still seen to be the primary contenders for carrying out only those activities which were extensions of their feminine tasks. The next kind of space is the socio-cultural space. Though women were allowed to do as they pleased, their physical movement was restricted by their parents-in-law and at times their husbands’ convenience. The women respondents were seen to have little decision- making power in terms of the jobs they would have opted for. Most of them had taken up paid employment from home either due to restrictions imposed upon them by their family members or due to the birth of their children. Any change in this generalised model was more situational — the demand placed because of a certain situation rather

16 Niranjana (2001) talks about the gendering of bodies and spaces using the example of fi eldwork carried out in a cluster of villages in Karnataka, which she calls Aladapalya. In this study, the household was the centre of a woman’s life, being both the object of and the location of her activities. Women’s household activities are seen to control and choreograph their movements across space. For example, most of the women rarely move out beyond certain conventional boundary markers, such as the line dividing the village and the uncultivated wild spaces. Even when the women go to collect fi rewood and take the cattle out for grazing, they follow fi xed and familiar paths immediately around the village. There is a strong reluctance among women to venture into the bamboo thickets, or cross the surrounding hillocks, fearing exposure to undesirable people, spirits or places. Such perceived dangers defi ne what is out of bounds for women, and in doing so re-enforce the security, informality of the village, as an inner space that is one’s own. Interrogating Temporal and Spatial Negotiations J 177 than processive — from within, putting a question mark on often stated links between gainful employment and empowerment (Perkins and DeMeis 1996; Pinch and Storey 1992; Pratt and Hanson 1997). It is seen that these women were living in paradoxical spaces where they felt trapped and in exile within them (Rose 1993). Though the respondents did not overtly express a sense of being oppressed, there was a tacit acknowledgment that domestic responsibilities, while having an adverse affect upon their paid work, was also constantly being trivialised by their spouses (Coltrane 1989; Mallett 2004; Shelton and John 1996). Moreover, home-based women have added burdens to prove that they are carrying out paid work within a different environment which is quite distinct from the rest of the chores carried out within homes. This said, the internalisation of the gendered division of labour by the women themselves meant that childcare was accepted as the prime responsibility of mothers. For example, according to freelance women writers among the respondents, working from home provided them with greater fl exibility as they could be ‘mothers and do the job assignment at the same time’. Yet childcare emerges as a converging point in terms of ‘domain-crossing’ as quite a few men had also switched over to the ‘working from home’ model in order to be with their children. However, it was largely the ‘fun’ part of being with children that gravitated men in contrast with women who were the carers in day-to-day matters. Even as ‘constraints and freedom’ were the guiding factors in opting for home-based working for both women and men respondents in the study, the constraints women faced were linked essentially with their reproductive responsibilities, including childbirth. One sees that despite having the ability to make decisions with regard to paid work, the experiences of men and women were quite different. The women respondents seemed to prefer working from home rather than having to travel to offi ce. This reaffi rms Harrison’s (Harrison 1983 in Hakim 2004) and Osnowitz’s (2005) arguments that women working from home tend to get disguised in their traditional role of domesticity in terms of its privileging over professional roles. Professional aspirations for women have to be legitimised when deciding to work from home. In the case of men, however, there is a greater aspect of choice involved both in carrying out their formal and domestic duties. It was thus observed that if women took the decision of working from home, it was 178 J Taneesha Devi Mohan not considered something quite out of the ordinary. The complete reverse was true for men where it was believed that men were entering into a new territory wherein they would have to strike a balance between both sets of responsibilities (Firestone and Sheldon 1997; Hakim 2004; Hanson and Pratt 1988; Hessing 1994; Kantor 2003; Nippert-Eng 1996; Osnowitz 2005; Sangari 1993; Sen and Sen 1985; Silver 1993).

Conclusion

The spatial and temporal boundaries that separate public and private spheres conventionally associated with men and women have blurred to a certain degree with the recent trend of carrying out paid work from the home both by women and men (Coole 2000; Ferree 1990). It has introduced some fl exibility allowing working women to strike a balance and resolution of confl icts that they are particularly seen to face when it comes to combining waged work with domestic responsibilities. However, this ‘fl exibility’ has not spared women from their primary location within the private realm as homemakers. Instead, it gets disguised in their ‘working’ status because even as they are in paid work and arguably better equipped to expand their activity spaces, their interaction with the outside world continues to be framed by the customarily assigned ‘feminine’ role such as childcare and other chores. Even though men are seen to participate in these activities, particularly those related to children, the workload-sharing is grossly uneven. For these high- end women workers, working from home means that they also take care of gender-encoded familial responsibilities — often more than women who carry out paid work from outside. For the male counterparts, home or outside as a workplace, does not seem to make any signifi cant difference. Ironically, home-based work seen in popular discourse as ‘fl exible’ and, therefore, more suited to women’s needs, conveniently rearticulates the primary constructs of men as ‘bread-earners’ and women as ‘home-makers’. What makes it worse is that the home, even as a workplace, continues to be framed as a private domain outside the reach of public scrutiny. Part II

Reproduction, Survival and Care 180 J Mohammad Izhar Hassan 7 Expanding Masculine Spaces: Planned Births and Sex Composition of Children in India

MOHAMMAD IZHAR HASSAN

Introduction

Indian society continues to be based on principles of patriarchy which through social and cultural practices subordinate women to men in a variety of ways — in status, rights and power (Alam 2001: 23). Such subordination1 manifests itself through various phases of the lifecycle, and not just ‘in such matters as education, and opportunity to develop talents, but also in more elementary fi elds of nutrition, health and survival’ (Dreze and Sen 1995: 140). In the past, this practice showed itself in a higher mortality rate among females than males in all age groups. This survival disadvantage of females right from early infancy to the reproductive age span was the main reason behind their long-standing defi cit in the population of the country. Over the last two decades, however, trends in Sample Registration System (SRS) estimates indicate a signifi cant improvement in the survival conditions of females vis-à-vis males which has narrowed down sex differentials in mortality rates; in some regions there has been a reversal. Consequently, the average life expectancy of women that remained lower than that of men throughout the past surpassed the latter in the late 1980s.

1 Visaria (2008) has cited several ﬁ eld-based studies (for instance Das Gupta 1987; Miller, 1981; Rastogi and Rajkumari, 1992; Visaria, 1988; Wyon and Gordon, 1971 among others) that have shown the presence of cultural practices which undervalue daughters or women in Indian society. 182 J Mohammad Izhar Hassan

The recent improvement in the overall sex ratio by six points from 927 in 1991 to 933 in 2001 has been attributed to this phenomenon (Krishnaji and James 2002). It may, however, be noted that the improvement in mortality conditions of females vis-à-vis males was mainly confi ned to the adult age group. The survival disadvantage of the girl child particularly during infancy and up to the age of fi ve continues to persist. Strangely, some of the most developed states, e.g., Punjab, Haryana and Gujarat that have reported a drastic reduction in overall mortality rates as well as infant and child mortality rates during the recent past are still characterised by an adverse survival chance for the girl child (Hassan et al. 2008). This disadvantage stems from general neglect refl ected in such practices as abandonment of the girl child, shorter duration of breastfeeding, restricted nurturing, lack of access to proper nutrition, less medical care at the time of illness and so on. The child sex ratio (henceforth CSR), that is, the number of girls per 1,000 boys up to the age of six has deteriorated during the last few decades. During the 1990s alone, CSR declined by 18 points from 945 in 1991 to 927 in 2001. In some of the north and northwestern states, the decline has been of a much greater magnitude. It is argued that this decline cannot be explained in terms of persisting discrimination of the girl child and the resultant sex differential in mortality rates alone. Instead, much of the deterioration in CSR, evidence indicates, is mainly due to a widespread practice of female foeticide or sex selective abortion in the country during the recent past. ‘In the past two decades, with the advent of medical technologies such as portable sonogram, it has become easy for parents to avoid having daughters by knowing the sex of the foetus in mother’s womb, and if found to be a female, resorting to abortion’ (Visaria 2008: 34). Thus, with development, bias against the girl child has not declined; instead now it ‘begins even before the birth of the child’ (Varghese et al. 2008: 116). People now have recourse to a so-called more civilised way of getting rid of unwanted daughters. There is indeed documented evidence of growing pre-birth elimination of girl children in India (Visaria 2002). The practice of female foeticide has been so pervasive that the sex ratio at birth (henceforth SRB), that is, number of male babies per 100 female babies born during a specifi c period is now extremely imbalanced in favour of male babies over a greater part of the Indian sub-continent. Implied in this is the fact that SRB in India is no more a pure biological phenomenon. Expanding Masculine Spaces J 183

Just as the sex differentials in child mortality, the other determinant2 of CSR, sex ratio at birth in India is now closely determined by the value of the girl child prevailing in society. Based on SRS data for India and the major states, Premi (2001) has indicated a rise in the preponderance of male babies at birth in the recent past. This rise in SRB is particularly conspicuous in states like Punjab and Haryana where the practice of female foeticide has been rampant during the last two decades or so. Sudha and Rajan (1999) have also attributed this rise in SRB in north/northwest India to increasing prenatal sex selection. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-based estimates for India and major states also conﬁ rm the increase in the preponderance of male babies at birth and its spatial manifestation during the recent past (Retherford and Roy 2003). Much of our understanding in this regard is based on state-level data whereas India is a vast country with great variation in historical experiences, geography and cultural practices. An adequate understanding of the geography of gender relations in the country, therefore, necessitates an investigation into the determinants of CSR using data at a lower administrative level. However, lack of reliable data on sex differentials in child mortality and number of births according to sex at the district level in the past did not permit such a study. In India, SRS which is the only source of reliable data on vital events provides estimates only at state/union territory level with its urban–rural break-up. The Population Foundation of India (henceforth PFI) has derived estimates on sex differentials in infant and child mortality using 2001 Census data based on reverse survival ratio technique. Likewise, the fertility tables of the 2001 Census enables us to derive estimates on SRB from data on the number of births according to sex of the baby to all currently married women during the year preceding the enumeration. This study endeavours to investigate the geography of gender relations in India as seen through the lenses of CSR and its determinants. The study is organised in ﬁ ve sections. A general introduction

2 Migration, otherwise a very powerful determinant of overall sex ratio (that is, ‘all age’ sex ratio) at regional level, is nearly inconsequential so far as CSR is concerned. This is so because migration among children occurs only when the family moves, and therefore, it is not sex selective. 184 J Mohammad Izhar Hassan of the problem in the present section is followed by the second section, which provides an overview of the nature of the data used, and methodology adopted. An enquiry into the patterns in the determinants of CSR — SRB and sex differentials in child survival — in India using district-level data is presented in the third section. An attempt has also been made in this section to quantify the relative contribution of the two determinants in the spatial variation in CSR across districts. This forms the basis of discussion in the fourth section. Finally, the main ﬁ ndings are summarised in the ﬁ fth section.

Data Base and Methodology

This study is based on district-level census data pertaining to 18 major states of the Indian union, namely, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttaranchal, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. Taken together, they account for over 92 per cent of the population and nearly 95 per cent of the deﬁ cit of female children in the age group of 0–6 years in India as per the 2001 Census. The study is based on census data and PFI estimates. While data on CSR have been drawn from social and cultural tables, estimates on SRB have been derived from data on the number of births according to sex of the baby to all ‘currently married’ women during the preceding year of census enumeration as given in the Fertility Tables. Likewise, the sex differential in the mortality of children is drawn from Infant and Child Mortality in India — District Level Estimates, Population Foundation of India (2008). The study is based on the following indicators:

(a) CSR, 2001 in the age group of 0–6 years; (b) SRB, 2001; and (c) sex differentials in child mortality, 2001: this indicator is deﬁ ned as the ratio between the mortality rates of female and male children.

As is apparent, CSR is the predicted or dependent variable, while SRB and sex differentials in child mortality are predictors or Expanding Masculine Spaces J 185 independent variables. Using suitable cartographic techniques, the patterns in these two determinants are examined. So far as SRB is concerned, it should be noted that in general there is a preponderance of boys over baby girls at birth. Based on data from different populations of the world, it has been seen that the normal sex ratio at birth varies from 103 to 107 male babies per 100 female babies. The average SRB, therefore, is taken as 105. For an investigation into the spatial pattern three categories can be identifi ed: districts with SRB of less than 103, districts with SRB in the normal range of 103 to 107, and districts with SRB above 107. A SRB higher than 107 is highly masculine and indicates the prevalence of ‘weeding out of girls either through prenatal sex selection, or under reporting female birth; both mechanisms are varying forms of bias against girls, denying them physical or social existence’ (Sudha and Rajan 2003: 4364). As already mentioned, the sex differential in child mortality has been examined in terms of a ratio between the mortality rates of female and male children. A ratio of more than unity, therefore, is indicative of survival disadvantage of the girl child and vice versa. Once areas with female disadvantage in survival are identifi ed a map has been drawn showing the districts with both extreme preponderance of male babies at birth (a SRB of 108 or more male babies per 100 female babies) and adverse survival chances for the girl child as compared to their male counterpart (Map 7.1). The latter part of the discussion in the study is based on linear regression analysis between CSR as a predicted variable and one of the two predictors that exhibits a greater impact on CSR. In order to identify the indicator, simple correlation coeffi cients between CSR and the two predictors were worked out separately. The square of the value of correlation coeffi cient, also called the coeffi cient of determination, indicates the percentage of variation in the dependent variable as associated with the variation in the independent variable. Here, as will be seen later, SRB has emerged as the more dominant predictor. The remaining analysis, therefore, pertains to the relationship between CSR as a dependent variable and SRB as an independent variable. Of several statistical techniques available for the analysis of causal association between any two phenomena, linear regression analysis3 is the best suited as it enables us to discern spatiality in the relationship through mapping of the residuals

3 For details see Mahmood (1998). 186 J Mohammad Izhar Hassan

MAP 7.1 Overlapping Marginalisation

(Map 7.2). The form of any linear relationship between a predicted variable ‘Y’ and a predictor ‘X’ is given as

Y = a + b X where, ‘a’ is the intercept of the regression line and is a constant. It indicates the value of the predicted variable when the predictor is ‘zero’. Likewise, ‘b’, also known as regression coefﬁ cient, is the slope Expanding Masculine Spaces J 187

MAP 7.2 Survival Chances for Daughters

of the regression line. The regression coefﬁ cient indicates an average change in the dependent variable for a unit change in the independent variable. The values of ‘a’ and ‘b’ are derived as:

XY∑∑ ∑ XY − aYbX=−, and b = n 2 2 ()∑ X ∑ X − n 188 J Mohammad Izhar Hassan

A test of signifi cance is also carried out to confi rm the strength of the impact of the independent variable on the dependent variable. Another important component of the regression analysis is the coeffi cient of determination. It is conventionally written as ‘R2’ (R square) and indicates the proportion of the variation in the dependent variable as associated with the variation in the independent variable. In this study, therefore, the coeffi cient of determination has also been worked out. As evident, once the values of ‘a’ and ‘b’ are known, by substituting values of ‘X’ in the regression equation, estimated values of the predicted variable ‘Y’ can be derived for all individual observations. The difference between the actual and estimated values of ‘Y’ is known as residual. The residuals indicate the impact of other independent variables not included in the model. Some of these are positive while others are negative. A positive residual means a higher value of the dependent variable on an observation than what is warranted by the value of the independent variable. This would indicate that other factors not taken into account in the model are acting positively on the dependent variable. The negative residual will reveal the con- verse of this. As already noted, the only possible determinant of CSR other than sex ratio at birth is sex differentials in infant and child mortality rates. A positive residual on an observation will, therefore, indicate the presence of factors that tend to reduce the survival disadvantage of the girl child. In other words, positive residuals would come about when discrimination against the girl child is either absent or is of a reasonably lower magnitude and vice-versa. Analysis of the residuals would, thus, provide a very good insight into the spatial dimension of the gender discrimination in India.

Determinants of CSR

The spatial patterns in SRB and sex differentials in child mortality based on district-level data for the year 2001 are discussed here. The descriptive statistics related to CSR and its determinants are given in Table 7.1. It has already been pointed out that Census of India 2001 has for the ﬁ rst time provided data on the number of births during the year preceding the enumeration pertaining to currently married women of all ages. For the period prior to 2001, therefore, no data is available for direct analysis. However, Sudha and Rajan (1999), based on the reverse survival technique, derived district-level Expanding Masculine Spaces J 189

TABLE 7.1 Descriptive Statistics of CSR, SRB and CMR Ratio* in Districts of India, 2001

CSR SRB CMR Ratio Number of Districts 481 481 481 Mean 925 112 1.04 Standard Deviation 47.82 7.66 0.11 Median 937 110 1.02 Minimum Value 766 89 0.69 Maximum Value 1,014 139 1.44 Source: Author. Based on the district-level data from the Census and the PFI. Note: *CMR Ratio is defi ned as the ratio between the female child mortality rate and the male child mortality rate in a district. estimates on SRB for the years 1981 and 1991. According to their estimates, there were only 29 districts in the country with SRB of more than 107 in 1981. This number went up to 117 at the time of the 1991 Census. It is shocking to note that as per the 2001 Census, the number of such districts has gone up to as many as 341. Of course, with a continuous reorganisation of administrative boundaries the number of districts has increased from 1981 to 2001, and with the given nature of data from the two estimates, it is diffi - cult to establish a precise trend in SRB over time. However, it is beyond doubt that the last two decades have witnessed a drastic spread in the practice of elimination of the girl child before birth. Of the 29 districts identifi ed by Sudha and Rajan (1999) with SRB of more than 107 in 1981, as many as 15 were located in the states of Punjab and Haryana alone, and by 1991 the two states were completely engulfed with SRB of more than 107. It is obvious, therefore, that the practice of elimination of the girl child seems to have spread from the north and northwestern parts to almost all over the country. An extremely masculine SRB can be seen over the states of Punjab and Haryana and almost the whole of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. Masculine SRB also penetrates southern India — up to northern Karnataka, and, in patches, can be seen even in central Tamil Nadu. In the east, it extends to much of the Bihar plains, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and coastal Orissa. Here, however, the continuity is broken by inter- mittent patches of less masculine SRB. It is only in the eastern and southern parts of the Indian peninsula that one comes across SRB in or below the normal range. While the former covers the hilly 190 J Mohammad Izhar Hassan districts of southern Orissa and a greater part of Andhra Pradesh, the latter is spread over mainly Kerala and the coastal districts of Tamil Nadu. One comes across a marked similarity between the patterns in SRB and sex differential in child survival. Female disadvantage in child survival is noticed in 259 districts out of the 481 considered. In terms of sex differentials in child mortality also, the north and northwestern parts of the country take the lead. From Gujarat and Rajasthan in the west to Bihar in the east, the whole stretch of the northern plains reports higher mortality among female children than among their male counterpart. Barring the hilly districts, Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal also reveal the same. This belt of greater survival disadvantage for female children penetrates southwards through the central parts of Maharashtra. Even the coastal districts of Kerala, a state that otherwise has been known for a more equal gender relation, are marked with higher death rate among female children than among their male counterpart. In adjacent Tamil Nadu also, some of the districts in the central part can be seen where mortality rates among female children are higher than those among male. As mentioned, the north and northwestern parts of the country report extreme masculinity concurrent with excess mortality among female children (see Map 7.1). This category also included areas in the central parts of the Indian peninsula spread over parts of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. Among the southern states also distinct pockets of female disadvantage can be seen in northern Karnataka and central Tamil Nadu. It is apparent that the conditions of female disadvantage are spread over a vast and diverse area, although a marked dominance of the north is evident. While on the one hand, there are states like Punjab and Haryana that occupy one of the highest positions in terms of levels of development in the country, on the other, there are areas particularly in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh where poverty and lack of basic infrastructure still remain the main problem. This diversity in the nature of social and economic attributes of the areas with apparent gender bias is revealed in most of the available statistics also. As per the 2001 Census, as much as 34 per cent of the population in Punjab lived in urban areas, as against the national average of 28 per cent. At the other extreme, barely 10 per cent of the population in Bihar is urban. It may be noted that of the total 32 districts in the state, as many as 29 have extremely adverse SRB (above 107) along with Expanding Masculine Spaces J 191 excessive female deaths among children. Furthermore, 20 of these 29 districts report an urbanisation level that is lower than the state average. In terms of the incidence of poverty, the contrast is even sharper. As per the estimates of the Modifi ed Expert Group of the Planning Commission, less than one-tenth of the total population in the states of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh lived below the poverty line in 1999–2000. The corresponding fi gures for Gujarat and Rajasthan were 14.1 and 15.3 per cent, respectively. At the other extreme, the population below the poverty line in Bihar constituted only marginally short of 43 per cent. The estimates of the District Level Household Survey of the Repro- ductive and Child Health Survey (2002–2004) make the diversity in the prosperity level in the areas of strong gender bias more evident. According to the survey, more than 66 per cent of households in Bihar are reportedly categorised with ‘low standard of living’, and in as many as 11 districts, households with ‘low standard’ constituted well above three-fourths of the total. Contrarily, in Punjab and Haryana, households with ‘low standard’ account for barely 12 per cent and 19 per cent of the total, respectively. In the former, of the total 10 districts identifi ed with ‘strong gender bias, only two districts report more than 20 per cent households with ‘low standard’ of living and in as many as four, the corresponding fi gure is less than 10 per cent. Female literacy is considered a very powerful agency of women empowerment. The spread of literacy among women in the long run tends to reduce gender bias in society. A wide range of regional variation can also be seen in female literacy rates across the districts with strong gender bias. As the data reveal ‘gender bias’ is prevalent not only in low female literacy areas in Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, but also in areas of considerably high literacy rates among females in states like Punjab and Gujarat. For instance, in Bihar, of the 29 districts with both adverse SRB and greater mortality of the girl child there are as many as 24 districts where the female literacy rate is even less than 40 per cent. There is only one district in the state, that happens to be the state headquarter, where marginally over half of the females are literate. As one moves towards the west, literacy rates undergo sharp improvement. In Punjab, all but one district report a female literacy rate above 50 per cent. It is apparent, therefore, that the incidence of bias towards the girl child is not necessarily a phenomenon associated with areas of low literacy among women alone. 192 J Mohammad Izhar Hassan

To conclude, gender bias in the form of elimination of daughters before birth and differential treatment leading to survival disadvantage for the girl child is prevalent over the entire northern half of the country from Gujarat and Rajasthan in the west to the Bihar plains in the east. Although the entire stretch is marked with a great amount of diversity in terms of socio-economic attributes, the common thing that binds it together is the culture of a strong preference for sons. Located in the Hindi belt of the north, the region has been known for its strong patriarchal structure. It is, however, also true that adjacent parts of Maharashtra also exhibit extreme forms of gender bias. Of late, with the spread of the practice of female foeticide in the south, particularly in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu during the recent past, the divide between north and south in terms of the nature of gender relations has blurred. In countries like China and South Korea, also marked with strong son preference, over time, prenatal sex selection techniques are said to have gradually replaced post-natal methods of elimination of the girl child (Sudha and Rajan 2003: 4366). Evidence indicates that in India, although SRB has grown more masculine during the recent past, sex differentials in infant and child mortality rates continue to persist. In other words, gender bias has only intensifi ed over time in India. The bi-variate correlation coeffi cient between the estimates of SRB and the mortality ratio of female and male children for 481 districts considered in this study, works out to 0.216 that is statistically signifi cant at 0.01 levels. This suggests that districts with a greater preponderance of male babies over female babies at birth are also districts where female mortality rates are higher than males. This necessitates an enquiry as to whether SRB or the differentials in mortality rates is the main determinant of CSR across districts in India. This task can be accomplished by examining the coeffi cient of determination between CSR and the two determinants separately. The coeffi cient of determination is the square of the bi-variate correlation coeffi cient between a dependent and an independent variable. It indicates the percentage variance in the dependent variable associated with the variance in the independent variable. The results are given in Table 7.2. As can be seen, CSR in India is inversely related with both the two independent variables. In both cases, the correlation coeffi cients are signifi cant at 0.01 per cent level. It is once again established that areas with low CSR are also marked with low SRB and unfavourable Expanding Masculine Spaces J 193

TABLE 7.2 Correlates of CSR with SRB and Female–Male Child Mortality Ratio

Simple product moment Independent variables correlation coeffi cients 1. SRB –0.849** (0.721) 2. Female–male child mortality ratio –0.305** (0.093) Number of observations 481 Source: Author. Based on district level data from the Census and the PFI. Note: Figures in parentheses are co-effi cients of determination. ** Signifi cant at 0.01 levels. mortality conditions for female children. However, SRB emerges as the more powerful determinant of the two. Over 72 per cent variation in CSR across districts in India is associated with SRB, while the differential mortality rate explains less than 10 per cent of the variation. Therefore, the next section is based on SRB as the independent variable and CSR as the dependent variable.

Sex Ratio at Birth and Child Sex Ratio

The discussion in this section is based on regression analysis wherein CSR is the dependent variable while SRB is the independent variable. The results of the linear regression analysis are summed up in Table 7.3.

TABLE 7.3 Results of Regression of CSR on SRB

1. Constant/Intercept 1518.747 2. Regression Coeffi cient/Slope of the Line –5.308 3. Total Sum of Squares 1097840.021 4. Explained Sum of Squares 790688.421 5. R 0.849 6. Coeffi cient of Determination (R2) 720 7. Standard Error of Estimate 25.323 8. T –35.115 9. Signifi cance .000 Source: Author. Note: Number of observations were 481. 194 J Mohammad Izhar Hassan

From the results, the regression equation of CSR on SRB is:

Y= 1518.747 + (–5.308) X

As is evident from the equation, the regression coeffi cient is highly signifi cant, and indicates that an increase by 1 unit in SRB would mean a decline (because of the negative sign of the regression coeffi cient) by over 5 points in CSR.4 From the value of the coeffi cient of determination, that is, R2 (note that this is equal to the square of correlation coeffi cient between the two variables) it is evident that as much as 72 per cent of the variation in CSR in India across districts is explained by variation in SRB alone. SRB, thus, is a very powerful factor affecting the sex ratio among children in India. In the present case all the other factors including survival disadvantage of the girl child (and differential reporting, if any) explain only 28 per cent of the variation in CSR. This is, however, the average scenario at the aggregate level in the country. In view of the diversity in geographical and cultural factors across regions, one would expect a corresponding spatial variation in the nature of the relationship between CSR and SRB. For this one will have to look into the residuals of the regression. Residuals are the difference between the actual CSR and the expected CSR across districts as prescribed by the regression equation. Residuals in a regression analysis basically indicate the effects of other independent factors not included in the model, and can be either positive or negative. A positive residual in a district would mean a higher CSR than what is warranted by the prevailing SRB. Under- standably, this is only possible when other factors, for instance, the conditions of survival chances for the girl child are less severe. Con- versely, negative residuals would indicate a lower sex ratio than what should result from the prevailing SRB. Obviously, this situation will be the outcome of a general neglect of the girl child and a resultant greater survival disadvantage suffered by them. Thus, for a proper understanding of the spatiality in the nature of gender relations in India, residuals when plotted on a map can be a very useful tool. Mapping residuals requires classifi cation of the same in different categories. The mean of the residuals in the present case is (–0.02),

4 It should be borne in mind that while SRB is the number of male babies per 100 female babies at the time of birth, CSR is the number of female children per 1,000 male children in the age group 0–6 years. Expanding Masculine Spaces J 195 which is very close to zero. Considering the mean equal to zero, the standard deviation of the residuals (also known as standard error of estimate or SE) that works out to be 25.32 can be used to classify the districts in different categories on the basis of the magnitude of the residuals. Here, the main purpose is to map the areas that are marked with greater survival disadvantages for the girl child. Therefore, grouping of districts reporting negative residuals mainly will be focused upon. The districts are classiﬁ ed into three groups, namely, ‘low negative’ (zero to –1SE), ‘medium negative’ (–1SE to –2SE) and ‘high negative’ (–2SE and above). Table 7.4 shows the distribution of districts accordingly.

TABLE 7.4 Distribution of Districts in Different Categories of Residuals from Regression of CSR on SRB

Number of districts Distribution of districts with Total negative residuals number of Positive Negative Low Medium High States districts residuals residuals negative negative negative Andhra Pradesh 23 14 9 8 1 – Bihar 37 27 10 8 – 2 Chhattisgarh 16 16 – – – – Gujarat 25 14 11 10 1 – Haryana 19 2 17 9 8 – Himachal Pradesh 12 8 4 3 1 – Jharkhand 18 17 1 1 – – Karnataka 27 13 14 13 1 – Kerala 14 2 12 11 1 – Madhya Pradesh 45 30 15 12 2 1 Maharashtra 35 22 13 10 3 – Orissa 30 20 10 9 1 – Punjab 17 – 17 2 9 6 Rajasthan 32 22 10 10 – – Tamil Nadu 30 9 21 17 4 – Uttaranchal 13 11 2 2 – – Uttar Pradesh 70 34 36 19 10 7 West Bengal 18 5 13 8 3 2 Total 481 266 215 152 45 18 Source: Author. Note: Low negative = 0 to (–1SE) Medium Negative = (–1SE) to (–2SE). High Negative = (–2SE) and above. 196 J Mohammad Izhar Hassan

From Table 7.4, it can be seen that out of the 481 districts taken into consideration as many as 215 reported lower CSR than what is expected on the basis of the derived regression equation. Of these, in 18 districts the residuals are ‘high negative’ (that is, beyond –2SE from zero) while in another 45 districts the residuals are ‘medium negative’ (that is, between –1SE and –2SE from zero). It is remarkable to note that more than seven-tenth of these districts are located in the north and northwestern states. This is evident from the map showing residuals from the regression (see Map 7.2); it provides details of distribution of districts with negative residuals only. Although negative residuals are widely distributed, a distinct pocket of the same can be seen in the northern parts of the country over the states of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. Strikingly, the region is known for highly unequal gender relations. Already marked with a huge defi cit of females in the population, the region has recorded a further deterioration in all age sex ratios during the 1990s despite an improvement at the all-India level. The situation with regard to CSR in the region is even far more alarming. Within a period of 10 years only, that is, from 1991 to 2001, CSR is found to have declined by 80 points in Punjab and 60 points in Haryana. In all the districts with medium to high negative residuals in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, CSR as per the 2001 Census is below 900. In many districts of Punjab, CSR is even below 800. It is remarkable that a large number of districts in the southern states of Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh also report negative residuals. It is indeed shocking to note that the bias against the girl child is more widespread in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the states which otherwise have experienced signifi cant demographic changes that indicate increased status of women. However, barring four districts in Tamil Nadu and one each in the rest of the three states, the residuals are only ‘low negative’ in magnitude. Further, what differentiates these southern districts from their counterparts in the northwestern states is a generally higher level of CSR. In Kerala, for instance, all the districts reporting negative residuals have CSR above 950 females per 1,000 males. Likewise, in Andhra Pradesh all but one district reported CSR above 950 females per 1,000 males. The only district in the state with a CSR below 950 (it has 943 females per 1,000 males) is Hyderabad that accommodates the state capital city by the same name. Hyderabad is the most developed district in the state — as refl ected in indicators like levels of urbanisation, female Expanding Masculine Spaces J 197 literacy rate, percentage households with low standard of living and so on — also ranks the lowest terms of CSR in Andhra Pradesh. The situation in Tamil Nadu, however, appears to be perhaps as grim as that in the northwestern states. CSR, in as many as four districts in the state, is even below 900, and all these districts report negative residuals. Of these four districts, three, namely, Dharmapuri, Theni and Salem rank among the top fi ve districts in the state with largest negative residuals while their CSR is among the lowest. This is indicative of the fact that bias against daughters in the form of neglect and female infanticide is more intensive in these female-defi cit areas. Sravanan (2002) cites several studies that have indicated bias against daughters and prevalence of female infanticide in several areas of Tamil Nadu.

Conclusion

Seeped in an ideology that privileges male babies over girls, son preference marks the demographic profi le of India resulting in the defi cit of baby girls. In contrast with past practices of female infanticide and higher mortality rates among baby girls, contemporary methods of eliminating girls include innovative medical technologies which enable parents to go for sex-selective abortion, selecting male foetuses over female ones. Although medical means are freely available, the defi cit in baby girls is not uniformly seen in India. Several parts, particularly a vast stretch of land in the north, more or less overlapping the Hindi- speaking belt, are marked by relatively higher differential mortalities as well as practices of pre-natal sex selection as compared to the southern parts. Although the belt represents diverse socio-economic and demographic attributes, it shares one thing in common — the cultural practice of son preference. The north–south divide in terms of gender attributes in India has been studied by scholars across disciplines (Agarwal 1994; Raju et al. 1999; Uberoi 2005). Accordingly, areas lying in the north are seen as characterised by stronger patriarchal values and articulated via highly unequal gender relations. As against this, the southern states are relatively more egalitarian and women-friendly. This divide is evident in most socio-economic and demographic indicators including the sex composition of population. For example, the southern states show a somewhat balanced sex ratio as compared to those in the 198 J Mohammad Izhar Hassan north and northwest. However, recent accounts of deteriorating sex ratios in several districts of Tamil Nadu are indicative of not only the spreading of the practice of female infanticide in the south, but also blurring of what were identifi ed as distinct different social spaces. What used to be the hallmark of northern India, that is, a strong gender bias in the form of both differential mortality and pre-natal sex selection can be seen extending to several districts in the southern states. Maharashtra behaves more or less like the north and northwestern states, namely, Gujarat, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. If no corrective measures are taken immediately, this distinction between northern and southern states will further erode, and the demographic regime of the north will soon hold sway over the entire Indian subcontinent. Cases of female foeticide are frequently being reported in the media from the eastern states that otherwise were more women-friendly. 8 Neighbourhoods and Narratives: Contextualising Gender and Child Health in Lucknow City, Uttar Pradesh

MANISHA SINGH

Introduction

There are several studies on (a) child health (more particularly, on childhood morbidity, child survival, child mortality); (b) women’s autonomy; as well as (c) social capital, and yet not much work that places them in a spatial framework is available, particularly in the case of India. Also, women’s autonomy has often been conceptualised in narrow and rigid terms. Of the several studies that have examined the interface between women’s autonomy and child survival (Durrant and Sathar 2000; Ghuman 2003; Hossain et al. 2000; Jejeebhoy 1998), most ‘have taken women’s autonomy as an objective circumstance and rely on the face validity of survey indicators of this construct’ perhaps because of the ease with which statistically verifi able demographic data are available (Ghuman et al. 2006: 2). Even as women’s autonomy gets conceptualised in more expansive ways, the contextualised specifi cities in which individuals and/or households are located have been sorely missed. Of late, however, the ‘spatial turn’ in social science research invoking the role of locational specifi cities in impacting upon people and their autonomy has brought location upfront as one of the explanatory variables (Cattell 2001; Drukker et al. 2003; Macintyre et al. 2002; Montgomery and Hewett 2005; Popay et al. 2003; Wen et al. 2003). Against this background, this chapter explores the mutually played-out outcomes of household gender dynamics and child health, going beyond the conventional indicators to include the wider context of the neighbourhood. In doing so, the argument is 200 J Manisha Singh that the locational specifi cs of a given neighbourhood signifi cantly shape women’s lives as well as their responses to child health (this will be revisited later in the chapter).1 Such ‘existential spatiality’ of gendered lives and the bearing it has on child health forms the core of the enquiry in this chapter. This study is based on the fi eldwork conducted in four neighbourhoods of Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, a state in north India (Map 8.1).2 This chapter is divided into two sections: Part I gives an account of the database, study sites, methodology and the conceptual framework followed by Part II which dwells upon the results and discussion.

Part I Data Base and Methodology

Since this study required ‘mixed’ neighbourhoods in terms of rich and poor living in close spatial proximity, of the 110 wards (census tracks) of Lucknow only those that had a slum population were picked up for consideration. There were 45 such wards out of which four were ﬁ nally selected on the basis of speciﬁ c variables from the Census of

1 Given that the mother is almost always the primary caretaker of the child, her attitudinal and behavioural responses are taken as key inputs for conceptualising attitude to child health. However, throughout the study there is due recognition of the fact that care for the child as well the mother’s attitudes to it are entrenched in and considerably inﬂ uenced by the family set-up, particularly the respondent’s husband as well as other older female afﬁ nal kin. 2 The state is particularly important in so far as its size — the largest in terms of population (166.2 million according to Census 2001) — and poor performance in terms of development indicators such as, female literacy (42.2 per cent in Census 2001), maternal mortality ratio (517 as per the Sample Registration System 2001–2003) and infant mortality rate (69 as per Sample Registration System 2007), is concerned. Lucknow is situated about 500 kilometres southeast of New Delhi, in the centre of the state. Lucknow Urban Agglomeration (which includes the areas under the jurisdiction of the Lucknow Municipal Corporation as well as Lucknow Cantonment) became a million-plus city in 1981. Census 2001 estimated its population to be 22.46 lakh, of which 21.85 lakh live in Lucknow City. Neighbourhoods and Narratives J 201

MAP 8.1 Location of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh

India 2001 (see Map 8.2). These were: Scheduled Caste population, female work participation rate and female literacy, having some bearing on women’s position and its interface with children’s health. The wards that approximated the city’s average for these variables progressively were taken for in-depth study. In this way, they were in some sense ‘representative’ of urban Lucknow as a whole. 202 J Manisha Singh

MAP 8.2 Lucknow City — Location of Wards Studied

Source: Census of India, 2001. Wards Selected: 11, 13, 98 and 100.

Since the argument here hinges upon place-based social networks being instrumental in shaping the community life and health- seeking behaviour in a neighbourhood (Aber et al. 1997; Astone et al. 1999; Bulmer 1986 as cited in Cattell 2001; Furstenberg and Hughes 1997), this study focuses on neighbourhoods (locally called mohallas), essentially — small areas often congruent with Neighbourhoods and Narratives J 203 social interactions.3 Identifi cation of these mohallas for the survey posed some problems. Therefore, residents were asked to identify their neighbourhood boundaries. The fi nal selection of mohallas also took into consideration my own familiarity with the area and inputs from key local informants. It is important to point out that although these neighbourhoods are rich–poor in character, their residential patterning is of two types: rich–poor houses interspersed with each other throughout the neighbourhood (intermixed) and rich–poor houses confi ned to clearly demarcated zones within the neighbourhood (isolated) although even within the intermixed sites there are pockets of households — usually the poor — spatially isolated from the rest of the neighbourhood.4 These are often confi ned to a building (locally known as an ahataa), by-lane, or adjacent to a low-lying, waterlogged stretch. While two neighbourhoods are overwhelmingly Hindu and two largely Muslim, one each of the Muslim and Hindu neighbourhoods is intermixed and isolated.5

3 It is interesting to note that the wards selected also inadvertently ‘controlled for’ the distance to the nearest free medical facility, that is, a government hospital or a fairly big scale medical establishment (providing free/highly subsidised services) managed by a trust or a non-government organisation (NGO), was within a range of two kilometres from each of the fi ve sites. More importantly, the road and public transport network in these areas is such that (physical) access from any of these sites to a free medical facility was equally feasible. This introduced a ‘uniformity’ (in so far as physical access to medical facilities is concerned), of a kind which was very meaningful for this study wherein the core enquiry was how would the mother of the under-fi ve(s) cater to the health needs of her child/children given that a free medical facility was always accessible in the vicinity of the neighbourhood. 4 These locational specifi cities are important because as the discussion in Part II of this chapter shows, these, in conjunction with the socio- economic dynamic of each neighbourhood, have an important bearing on neighbourhood relationships, women’s agency and child health. 5 Hindu neighbourhoods have 98 and 100 per cent Hindu households, respectively, and Muslim neighbourhoods, 90 and 76 per cent Muslim households, respectively. Such selection was not intentional — in the relatively older parts of cities like Lucknow people generally tend to accrete on the basis of community affi liations. 204 J Manisha Singh

The four wards in which the sites are located being spatially con- tiguous made it possible to collapse the four neighbourhoods into two categories — A and B — essentially for simplifying the analysis. Unintentionally, the specifi c religious composition of the population in the neighbourhoods of A and B emerges as predominantly Hindu and Muslim, respectively, which then provided the primary axis along which homogeneity in key socio-economic variables were examined (see Table 8.1). Studies distinguish between compositional and contextual components of places (see Macintyre et al. 2002; Wen et al. 2003). While the former refers to the attributes of the people who inhabit a space, the latter pertains to the characteristics of the space per se (those that cannot be reduced to the characteristics of the people who live there). Thus, while Hindu and Muslim mohallas pertain to the compositional aspect, the intermixed as well as isolated nature of the neighbourhoods is a characteristic of the place itself. Based upon these compositional and contextual specifi cs, the neighbourhoods are given pseudonyms — HinMix (Hindi intermixed), MusIso (Muslim isolated) and so on. In a way, this schema underpins the concern running through this chapter. That is, which of the two — compositional attribute of the neighbourhood population (Hindu or Muslim, as the case may be) or contextual specifi cities (intermixed or isolated layout) — is more important in infl uencing maternal responses to child health. To see if these neighbourhoods were comparable in terms of their socio-economic attributes or dissimilar to begin with, a test of signifi cance with the help of T-test was carried out for variables such as religious composition, standard of living, family type, education and work status. It was found that the differences between

TABLE 8.1 Analytical Schema of the Neighbourhoods

Neighbourhood 1 Neighbourhood 3 Neighbourhood 2 Neighbourhood 4 (Ward 11) (Ward 98) (Ward 13) (Ward 100) Intermixed Isolated Intermixed Isolated Group A: Hindu Mohallas Group B: Muslim Mohallas

Hindu Mix Hindu Isolated Muslim Mix Muslim Isolated (HinMix) (HinIso) (MusMix) (MusIso) Fieldwork (2007–2008). Neighbourhoods and Narratives J 205 groups A and B were not statistically signifi cant. This preliminary ‘check’ was undertaken to counter a possible argument that what we ‘attribute’ to ‘locational effects’ may as well be due to the basic differences in the observed attributes of women belonging to these disparate neighbourhoods. This study combines quantitative as well as qualitative methods carried out in two phases. A quick overall house-census yielded a total of about 500 eligible households that met the prerequisite criteria of having at least one woman with one child under the age of fi ve.6 In case of two women in a household, the younger woman was the respondent. Out of these, 250 randomly-selected households formed the basis for the fi rst phase of the survey.7 Respondents for the second phase were selected through participatory observation, key contacts and through snowballing (Cattell 2001).8 While the fi rst phase had close-ended questions on the demographic and socio-economic profi les of each household as well as parental response to child health, the second phase aimed at in-depth face-to-face interaction focused on women’s attitudinal as well as behavioural stances with regard to physical, economic, decision-making as well as emotional aspects of their autonomy. It further explored how they coped with limiting and constrictive structures (if any), neighbourhood relations

6 Episodes of child’s illnesses were also a factor for shortlisting the survey sample — in case a child had no illness at all in the last three months, the mother was not regarded as an eligible respondent. It is important to mention that while the usual recall period for reporting of illnesses was two weeks, in case there had been no episode of minor or major illness during the fortnight preceding the interview, the recall period was extended up to three months with only major episodes of illnesses being considered for this extended duration. Also, in case the respondent had more than one child, questions were asked with regard to the youngest child. 7At the outset of the fi eldwork, an informed consent to the interviews was taken from each of the respondents. Also, to ensure anonymity, the respondents are referred to by their serial numbers in the analysis. 8 More specifically, respondents were shortlisted on the basis of: (a) maternal response to child health being discriminatory towards the girl vis-à-vis the boy child as refl ected by the fi eld data; (b) suspected incidences of repeated abortions; (c) being mothers of only girls/only boys; and (d) my rapport with the respondent/willingness of the respondent to participate in the study. A total of 125 respondents/households were selected for the second round. 206 J Manisha Singh and sharing9 and a detailed probing on childcare, child health and family support for the same. The semi-structured and informal interviews in this phase, lasting between one and a half to three hours, were tape-recorded with prior consent from the respondent and then transcribed.10 One could ‘hear’ textured ‘narratives’ through such a process.11

Conceptual Framework

The apparent maternal attributes, particularly educational and employment status, contributing to women’s autonomy and its bearing on childcare, have been widely studied (Basu and Basu 1991; Cleland and van Ginneken 1988; Desai and Alva 1998; Desai and Jain 1994; Hobcraft 1993; Mehrotra 2006; Raju and Bagchi 1993a). However, as pointed out by several scholars, women’s autonomy is far more complex an issue (Batliwala 1997; Batliwala et al. 1998; Jejeebhoy 1995; Kabeer 1994, 2000b; Karl 1995; Parpart 2002; Rowlands 1997). A more inclusive conceptualisation of autonomy, as would be argued later, is thus necessary. Most studies, despite some references to social class and/or occupation, regard health as ‘ontologically detachable from both power and experience’ (Popay et al. 1998: 621) whereas it has also been suggested by some that structure and quality of social relations inﬂ uence health. However, critics point out that the existing literature on health inequalities fails to capture the causal complexities

9 The respondents were asked to talk about their neighbourhood social support under three themes: social cohesion, social control and neighbourhood network density. Cattell’s (2001) study was taken as a guideline for culling questions relevant for this study. 10 This allowed me to look for omissions/errors/points of less clarity; I would revisit the household the next day and seek to ﬁ ll these gaps. This uninhibited conversation was very crucial for the respondent particularly in so far as explaining the ‘workings’ of gender dynamics in her household was concerned. 11 van de Kaa (1996) states that narratives that are carefully and meaningfully ‘anchored’ in the societal context as well as time frame of the research, present clear and remarkable insights about the patterns the researcher is looking at. ‘A well-anchored narrative will, in many instances, consist of a series of sub-narratives. Sub-narratives tell part of the full story in greater detail; frequently they are nested and can be arranged hierarchically’ (van de Kaa 1996: 389). Neighbourhoods and Narratives J 207

(Oakley 1992). Three shortcomings are specifi cally pointed out: one, existing theoretical frameworks overlook the critical role of social organisations, processes and relationships that impact upon health; two, the link between agency and structure remains unexplored; and three, ‘place’ as an explanatory variable is missing in theoretical models of health inequalities. In most studies of health, the individual is regarded as a unit — such ‘atomistic approach’ (Hall and Wellman 1985) disconnects people from their social context, and bypasses the structure of social networks within which they are embedded. Experiences, perceptions, feelings and other subjective states of individuals may be taken into account as ‘fi ne grained approach’ (Macintyre 1997: 740). Following such a growing body of research seeking to locate individuals within the places in which they live and exploring the relative contribution of individual characteristics and area infl uences to health (Gatrell et al. 2000; Jones and Moon 1993; Macintyre et al. 1993; Popay et al. 2003; Sooman and Macintyre 1995) this chapter argues that locations shape people’s experiences and attitudes and have a signifi cant bearing upon child health. Neighbourhood in this study ‘[is a] … physical place … coterminus with a sense of community through providing a setting in which there [are] opportunities for … social interaction, and an environment that [is] safe, secure and protected’ (Forrest and Kearns 1999: 24; also see Berkman and Breslaw 1983; Blaxter 1990; Bridge et al. 2004; Montgomery et al. 2005). Neighbourhood effects are ‘the forces acting outside households that … exert an infl uence on household-level attitudes and behaviour’ (Montgomery and Hewett 2005: 398; also see Drukker et al. 2003; Wen et al. 2003). Neighbourhood socio- economic context works through social resources (such as reciprocity among neighbours, local networking, social cohesion and informal social control), to infl uence health status (Wen et al. 2003). In other words, the spatial context provides the anchor for social capital12

12 Places have a profound bearing upon how residents visualise (and also evaluate) social capital. This can be seen in the fact that while only 43 per cent of the respondents located in isolated neighbourhoods/parts of neighbourhoods consider their area as having good social capital, the corresponding ﬁ gure for those living in intermixed neighbourhoods is 92 per cent; the difference in the mean score for social capital between these two types of locations is 4.614 (signiﬁ cant at .01 per cent level). 208 J Manisha Singh

(defi ned as features of social relationships such as interpersonal trust and reciprocity which act as resources for individuals, facilitating action for mutual benefi t).13 The immediate neighbourhood provides a crucial context to explore issues of women’s autonomy because socio-spatial networks of women are often fairly restricted to their immediate surroundings. This is more true in the case of Lucknow, where the selected neighbourhoods are particularly ‘traditional’. Of particular interest to this study is the rich–poor mixed neighbourhood. Wen et al. (2003: 844) following Brooks-Gunn et al. (1993) point out: ‘… the presence of high- and low-income residents may exert unique effects on health …. Affl uence has also been demonstrated to affect neighbourhood-level social conditions that may have implications for individual well-being, including health status.’ A similar point has been made by Cattell (2001: 1514) as he observes that mixing of rich and poor households in a neighbourhood may also motivate ‘residents … to take co-operative action which carries the potential for benefi ting health’. In addition to gender/age composition, religious affi nity and economic status, locational embeddedness imparts a certain sense of belonging to residents (Castells 1997). Overlapping and intersecting, these identities lead to a highly complex and diversifi ed pattern of neighbourhood networks. It is postulated that women’s autonomy and neighbouring have a two-way causality, which, at individual and collective levels, infl uence mothers’ responses to the healthcare needs of their child/children (see Figure 8.1). While places have a dynamic of their own, people have experiences — variously articulated as ‘stories’ (Graham 1984) and/or ‘narratives’ (Hinchman and Hinchman 1997) — to share. Whichever way one looks at experiences,

13 The importance of social capital in health research has come to the fore especially after the cultural turn in social sciences. Though several social scientists (Giddens 1991; Jamieson 1998; Luhmann 1988; Misztal 1996; Sztompka 1999) worked on micro-level individual behaviour and experiences, with a speciﬁ c focus on day-to-day interaction and interpersonal relationships, none — with the exception of Misztal 1996 and Sztompka 1999 — explicitly referred to/used the term social capital per se. Their work, however, lays the foundation for much of the subsequent academic engagement on this theme. Later, Bourdieu, Coleman and Putnam developed the concept of social capital. All three proposed that social capital consists of interpersonal relationships along with a shared set of values. Neighbourhoods and Narratives J 209

FIGURE 8.1 Conceptual Framework

‘social life is storied and … narrative is an ontological condition of social life … showing us that stories guide action’ (Somers 1994: 614). It is argued that like places, narratives also have a role to play in the articulation of women’s autonomy (Popay et al. 1998). Sloggett and Joshi (1994) propose, therefore, that a focus on place means factoring in perspectives and experiences of people. Finally, Somer’s (1994) work lays the foundation for an appreciation of why groups of people belonging to the same class and/or social position respond differently across social and geographical landscapes. It is important to study, for instance, the experiences of those belonging to a deprived household that is located in close proximity to prosperous households, or, conversely, a deprived household located in an overall deprived zone. This chapter explores how women’s autonomy is shaped and how they perceive and respond to healthcare needs of their children, depending upon what type of neighbourhoods they are located in and with whom they interact (in their neighbourhood). 210 J Manisha Singh

Part II

Given the arguments so far, this section interfaces parental response to child health in a comparative and contextual framework of the Hindu and Muslim mohallas. Withstanding mohallas as entry point, the picture, however, gets more complex and nuanced depending upon whether the rich and poor live in intermixed or isolated locations — as deﬁ ned earlier. This section draws upon data (from the ﬁ rst and second phases) as well as narratives from the second phase to substantiate the existential spatiality in a more ‘dense’ way.

Factors Affecting Response to Child Health

This section looks at a few important attributes such as religion, standard of living of the household, education of the mother and her autonomy within the domestic sphere, and support of husband and/or female affi nal kin towards childcare. Accordingly, mothers’ responses were grouped in two categories: ‘lackadaisical’ (poor) and ‘proactive’ (good) care.14 Each explanatory variable is dichotomous. T-values for each of factors in the two categories provided the basis for assessing whether these were statistically and signifi cantly different from each other as far as responses to child health were concerned. Thus, economic status, location, and neighbouring emerged as the most striking infl uences — contrary to general perception, religious location does not seem to make a difference in this regard (see Table 8.2). Child health is envisaged as consisting of two components: (a) neonatal and routine care (including vaccination) and (b) response to a recent episode of illness. Table 8.3 shows the correlations between factors affecting response to child health separately for each of these components. It is clear that of all the factors, neighbourhood15 is more strongly correlated with response to overall child health.

14 Responses of those who attended to childcare concerns promptly, sought the advice of a trained medical practitioner in case of illnesses and were regular with the vaccination schedule get classiﬁ ed as ‘proactive’. The opposite is true of the ‘lackadaisical’ attitude to childcare. 15 When used as a variable, the term ‘neighbourhood’ pertains to the cumulative score for neighbourhood social capital as well as neighbourhood networks. Neighbourhoods and Narratives J 211

TABLE 8.2 Factors Affecting Response to Child Health

Response to child health (Percentage) Factors affecting response Total to child health Lackadaisical Proactive (N) T-value Religion Hindu 29.3 70.7 100 (116) 1.658 Muslim 40.5 59.5 100 (84) Economic status Poor 44.8 55.2 100 (125) 5.763∗∗ Rich 16 84 100 (75) Education Illiterate 50 50 100 (54) 3.178∗∗ Literate 28.1 71.9 100 (146) Autonomy Low 61.9 38.1 100 (42) 3.777∗∗ High 32.8 67.2 100 (58) Attitude of Husband/ Indifferent 69.2 30.8 100 (26) 3.238∗∗ In-laws towards Supportive 36.5 63.5 100 (74) childcare Location Isolated 50.4 49.6 100 (113) 6.027∗∗ Intermixed 12.6 87.4 100 (87) Neighbourhood and Poor 78 22 100 (50) 8.278∗∗ Neighbouring Good 12 88 100 (50) Source: Fieldwork (2007–2008). Note: ∗∗ Signiﬁ cant at .01 per cent.

While this holds true for neonatal care and response to recent episodes of illness, the correlation is higher in the case of the latter. Medical emergencies and episodes of illnesses related to children lead to considerable sharing and exchange of ideas as well as assistance among neighbours; this is reﬂ ected in how parents assess the need for/ importance of medical intervention in their child/children’s illnesses. Such exchange is a direct outcome of the location of households (that is, whether in intermixed areas or isolated pockets) as shall be seen in subsequent analyses. Table 8.3 also introduces the sex of the child as an important explanatory variable. The correlation of the neighbourhood with child health responses is stronger in the case of the girl child than her male counterpart.16 The boy child, it can be argued, is a ‘natural

16 Though the correlation between mother’s autonomy and medical care of her girl child in case of illness is not very strong (.406), it is much higher than the corresponding ﬁ gure for boys (.269). 212 J Manisha Singh

TABLE 8.3 Factors Affecting Response to Child Health and Attitudes to Neonatal Care, Recent Illness and Overall Childcare

Overall response to Factors affecting Neonatal care Recent illness child health response to child health Boys Girls Total Boys Girls Total Boys Girls Total Economic Status .47∗∗ .51∗∗ .49∗∗ .33∗∗ .44∗∗ .39∗∗ .48∗∗ .55∗∗ .51∗∗ (Standard of Living scores) Respondent’s .46∗∗ .50∗∗ .47∗∗ .33∗∗ .33∗∗ .33∗∗ .47∗∗ .50∗∗ .47∗∗ Education (in years) Respondent’s .36∗ .50∗∗ .42∗∗ .27 .41∗∗ .35∗∗ .36∗ .50∗∗ .43∗∗ Autonomy Attitude of .47∗∗ .54∗∗ .48∗∗ .27 .41∗∗ .34∗∗ .44∗∗ .56∗∗ .47∗∗ Husband/In-laws to childcare Neighbourhood .51∗∗ .57∗∗ .54∗∗ .62∗∗ .63∗∗ .62∗∗ .59∗∗ .67∗∗ .62∗∗ and Neighbouring Source: Fieldwork (2007–2008). Notes: ∗ Correlation is signifi cant at the .05 level. ∗∗ Correlation is signifi cant at the .01 level. benefi ciary’ of preferential healthcare and medical attention, but a girl child benefi ts if she is born into a household which has kin ‘supportive’ of her receiving due care and attention. What is being suggested is that within the confi nes of the family — a domain outside public scrutiny — women’s autonomy and kin support is all the more crucial for the girl child. Also, while both these fi ndings apply in case of neonatal care/ vaccination — the difference between the correlations for girls and boys is relatively lower than in cases of recent illness. It appears that the neonatal phase/routine vaccination is, in general, not as ‘discriminatory’ as in the later childhood years, that is, up to age fi ve in this study. This seems to be true given that most couples, particularly in urban areas, have small, ‘planned’ families wherein each child is considered precious. This is not to deny the existence of any discrimination against the girl child; however, what it does seem to refl ect is that (a) such discrimination is usually effected before a girl child is born (foetal sex determination and termination of pregnancy) and (b) in case of response to recent illness it is usually done in a very Neighbourhoods and Narratives J 213 covert and subtle manner (such as, medical attention to the girl child being given later as compared to boys, and often at the hands of less competent persons) — issues outside the purview of this study. Finally, Table 8.3 also shows that in addition to the neighbourhood, the standard of living of the household has a considerable bearing upon responses to child health. A well-established social reality, there seems to be no need to validate it through statistical backing. However, neighbourhood and child health responses for poor households are interlinked as can be seen by the very high correlation with r-value of 0.82 (signifi cant at .01 level) whereas for the rich the correlation is very weak (0.11). This suggests that for poor households that are also socially disadvantaged, neighbourhood interactions are more important than for the rich. It may be recalled that neighbourhood, as conceptualised for the purpose of this chapter, encapsulates social capital and ensuing neighbouring which is essentially spatially confi ned. By way of summing up, a step-wise linear regression analysis shows how factors infl uencing response to child health progressively enter in the explanatory framework (see Tables 8.4A and 8.4B). The model summary (that is, Table 8.4A) provides fi t measures for each stage in the step-wise regression. Model 1 (neighbourhood alone) accounted for 35 per cent of the variation in overall attitude to

TABLE 8.4 Factors Inﬂ uencing Response to Child Health 8.4A Model Summary of Factors

Adjusted Model Factors R-square 1 Neighbourhood 0.351 2 Neighbourhood; Standard of Living. 0.521 3 Neighbourhood; Standard of Living; Location. 0.560 4 Neighbourhood; Standard of Living; Location; Attitude of 0.585 Spouse/Female Affi nes to Child Health/Care. 5 Neighbourhood; Standard of Living; Location; Attitude of Spouse/Female Affi nes to Child Health/Care; Respondent’s 0.583 Autonomy. 6 Neighbourhood; Standard of Living; Location; Attitude of Spouse/Female Affi nes to Child Health/Care; Respondent’s 0.580 Autonomy; Respondent’s Schooling. Source: Fieldwork (2007–2008). 214 J Manisha Singh

8.4B Coefﬁ cients (Dependent Variable: Overall Response to Child Health)

Model 4 Coeffi cient (B) T Sig. (Constant) 2.339 4.485 .000 Neighbourhood .438 4.811 .000 Standard of Living .060 4.606 .000 Location 1.237 3.490 .001 Attitude of Spouse/Female Affi nes to Child .801 2.878 .005 Health/Care Source: Fieldwork (2007–2008). child health. Adding standard of living (Model 2) raises the r-square considerably — an almost 17 per cent increase (0.35 to 0.52). Thereafter, introduction of location and attitude of the spouse and female in-laws to childcare improves the r-square by 4 per cent and 2 per cent (Models 3 and 4), respectively. Beyond this, the inclusion of additional variables (autonomy, and years of education of the respondent) reduces the r-square value, albeit marginally. Since Model 4 best explains the variation in child health, the beta- coeffi cients (β) from this model can be used to predict response to child health. The prediction equation for response to child health would thus be:

Response to Child Health = 0.438∗Neighbourhood + 0.060∗Standard of Living + 1.237∗Location + 0.801∗Attitude of Spouse/In-laws + 2.339 (see Table 8.4B).

The following section expands upon the discussion on neighbourhood that has emerged as the most important factor shaping responses to child health.17

17 Within each neighbourhood, location of the rich and the poor vis-à-vis each other is important to see how their interactions, and the ﬂ ow of information that these create, shape responses to child health. This interaction and learning is more critical for the poor than the rich respondents for whom economic well-being makes available information as well as facilities for childcare. For instance, it is seen that more than 90 per cent of the respondents from poor households located in intermixed areas had a proactive approach to child health, the corresponding ﬁ gure for poor households in isolated locations being 35 per cent. Neighbourhoods and Narratives J 215

Place Effects on Responses to Child Health

The emerging picture so far allows me to propose that the spatial pattern in which the rich and the poor are located vis-à-vis each other, in a Hindu or Muslim mohalla, whichever is the case, exerts a more dominant infl uence on response to child health. The expanded analysis here is at two levels: (a) comparing the ‘better’ and the ‘worse’ responses at the level of (Hindu and Muslim) mohallas as a whole; and (b) comparing the mixed and the isolated neighbourhoods across the mohallas. To this extent, the fi rst part can be seen as comparison across religion as the two mohallas have an overwhelmingly Hindu or Muslim presence, whereas the second part is essentially about the spatial patterning (see Table 8.1). Table 8.5 shows the average scores for response to child health for variables that are purported to have a bearing upon the same. After assigning scores for each variable, and arranging the values in an ascending order, the observations were divided into two groups. For lack of better words those above the average are termed as advantaged group and the other as disadvantaged group. For example, it would be rich and poor, high and low (autonomy), good and poor (neighbouring) and supportive and indifferent (spouse and kin). Literates and illiterates, however, are classifi ed on the basis of basic educational attainment.18 The next step involved calculation of mean scores for ‘response to child health’ variable for each of these two groups separately. Further, it was seen through t-test whether or not the differences in scores between the two groups are statistically signifi cant. This simple classification (Table 8.5) shows that while the differences between the pairs of groups are signifi cant (at .01 level) in both Hindu as well as Muslim mohallas and also in isolated locations, the intermixed locations stand out in stark contrast. It is here that child health attitudes and responses of poor and rich, illiterates and literates, women with low and high autonomy, those who live in poor or good neighbourhoods, as well as those who have indifferent or supportive husbands and in-laws, are similar. Apparently, intermixed locations afford opportunities for close

18 The census deﬁ nition of literacy is used for this purpose. Thus, a person who is able to read and write in any language, provided she/he has attained the age of seven years, is termed as literate.

216 J Manisha Singh Sig.

∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗

Mean score Mean

(N = 100) = (N

child health child

in-laws to in-laws

husband/

Attitude of of Attitude Indifferent 6.65 Indifferent 7.13 Indifferent 6.50 Supportive 8.28 Mohallas /Sites) Sig.

∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗

Mean score Mean

(N = 100) = (N

neighbouring and and

Poor 6.90 Poor 7.00 Good 9.47 Neighbourhood Neighbourhood Sig.

∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗

Mean score Mean

(N = 100) = (N

autonomy Mother’s Mother’s Low 7.30 Low 7.95Low 6.60 Poor 6.76 High 8.6

TABLE 8.5 Sig.

∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗

Mean score Mean

(N = 200) = (N

education Mother’s Mother’s

Literate 9.05 Illiterate 7.63 Illiterate 8.34 Illiterate 6.59 Sig.

∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗ ∗∗

Mean score Mean

(N = 200) = (N

status Economic Economic Rich 10.61Rich 10.92 Literate 9.69Rich 10.31 Literate 9.98 HighRich 10.64 Literate 9.33 9.44 HighRich 10.57 Literate 9.32 Good 10.39 High 10.06 9.33 Good High Supportive 10.14 10.5 9.12 Good Supportive 9.95 9.40 Good 10.42 Supportive 8.78 Supportive 10.29 Poor 8.25 Poor 8.60 Poor 7.89 Poor 9.91Poor Illiterate 7.31 9.77 Illiterate 6.65 Low 9.80 Low 5.9 Poor 9.17 Poor Indifferent 6.59 9.83 Indifferent 5.70 Difference between mean values for the two groups is signifi cant at .01 level. Difference between mean values for the two groups is signifi ∗∗ Response to Child Health for the Better- and Worse-off Groups (Average Scores by respondents mohalla mohalla locations locations All Hindu Muslim Intermixed Isolated Fieldwork (2007–2008). Source: Fieldwork Note: Neighbourhoods and Narratives J 217 interaction between women across the economic spectrum, which benefi ts the less privileged among them to imbibe attitudes and responses of their better-situated counterparts. As indicated earlier, such interactions are more crucial for the well-being of marginalised groups whose social networks are spatially constricted: women and the poor certainly fi t this category (McCulloch 2003; also, Panel on Urban Population Dynamics 2003). More importantly, this seems to override the religious location of households. Figure 8.2 depicts the fi ndings of Table 8.5 (differences in response to child health scores), thereby facilitating a comparison across mohallas and sites. With regard to individual attributes such as mother’s education and autonomy, disadvantaged groups are worse-off as compared to advantaged groups of the same mohalla in sites that are predominantly Muslim. In the case of the variable — neighbourhoods, however, the difference is marginally higher for Hindu mohallas thereby indicating that in comparison to the Muslim mohallas those

FIGURE 8.2 Factors Affecting Response to Child Health (Difference [in Average Scores for Response to Child Health] between the Better- and Worse-off Groups across Mohallas and Sites)

Source: Fieldwork (2007–2008). 218 J Manisha Singh who have poor neighbouring in Hindu mohallas are ‘more worse- off’ than those who have better neighbouring in the same mohallas. Differences between the better- and worse-off groups with respect to economic status and kin support present a similar picture across the Hindu and Muslim mohallas. Quite evidently, the intermixed sites perform remarkably better than any other location with differences between advantaged and disadvantaged households therein being considerably lower. As indicated earlier, features associated with neighbourhoods include awareness as well as behaviours of women — particularly those who are poor. Mothers’ knowledge and awareness of issues pertaining to child health (which, in turn, is an important input to their attitude to the same) is a case in point.19 This study shows that for poor women, neighbouring is very highly correlated (0.89) with their awareness of child health. Interestingly, variables usually taken up in studies — years of education (0.17) as well as women’s autonomy (0.34) — have very weak correlations with such knowledge. Also, while mean scores for child health knowledge are signiﬁ cantly different between the isolated and intermixed sites; residence in a predominantly Hindu or Muslim mohalla makes no signiﬁ cant difference to the same. Given that knowledge of child health is contingent upon neighbourhoods, it is imperative to see how poor women across the four sites — HinIso, HinMix, MusIso and MusMix — compare in terms of their behavioural responses to neonatal care and vaccination, recent illness and overall child health (see Tables 8.6A and 8.6B).20

19 Women were interviewed intensively for their awareness of certain dimensions of child health. Concerns such as diarrhoea (speciﬁ cally, home- based treatment such as oral rehydration solution), breastfeeding, and the two most commonly present oral conditions — dental caries and bleeding gums — were included for such discussion because these are some of the most common child health concerns and apply across class and regional contexts. Moreover, given the large-scale outreach and advocacy campaigns of the public health sector with the objective of disseminating information pertaining to these aspects, it is widely believed that all classes of people, women in particular, have access to such awareness and knowledge. Their responses were then scored and categorised. 20 Only the poor households are considered for this comparison as locations, neighbourhood social capital and neighbouring are more meaningfully associated with the health outcomes of the poor. Neighbourhoods and Narratives J 219 81 100 61 100 5044 100 100 Overall attitude to child health 81 100 19 57 100 39 44 100 50 44 100 56 TABLE 8.6 Response to Child Health among the Poor 8.6A Components of Child Health: Percentage Distribution by Location 47 53 100 56 56 44 100 56 Poor Good Total Lackadaisical Proactive Total Lackadaisical Proactive Total Neonatal care and vaccination status Response to recent illness HinMix 22 78 100 19 MusMix 32 68 100 43 HinIso MusIso (2007–2008). Source: Fieldwork 220 J Manisha Singh

8.6B Components of Child Health: Mean Scores by Location

Mohallas T-Value Response Overall Neonatal care and to recent response to vaccination status illness child care Level of Constituent Mean Mean Mean aggregation mohallas score T-value score T-value score T-value 1.52 8.02 2.59∗∗ 2.39∗ Hindu Mohallas HinIso and 6.50 2.11 9.38 1.79 HinMix 7.26 Muslim Mohallas MusIso and 6.09 1.50 7.59 .682 1.39 1.01 MusMix 6.42 1.82 8.25 Isolated Mohallas HinIso and 6.50 1.52 8.02 .980 .145 .809 MusIso 6.09 1.50 7.59 Intermixed HinMix and 7.26 2.11 9.38 1.63 1.07 1.63 Mohallas MusMix 6.42 1.82 8.25

Source: Fieldwork (2007–2008). Notes: ∗ Signiﬁ cant at .05 per cent. ∗∗ Signiﬁ cant at .01 per cent.

To reiterate, it is proposed that the two isolated, or the two intermixed sites — as the case may be — would ‘behave’ in a similar way, irrespective of whether they are primarily Hindu or Muslim. Also, the isolated sites would perform poorly in terms of child health as compared to the intermixed. However, while the latter proposition is borne out by the data, the former is only partially validated. In other words, while HinIso and HinMix are distinctly different,21 MusIso and MusMix are not signifi cantly different from each other. For women living in Muslim neighbourhoods, contexts (intermixed or isolated) do not seem to be an important infl uence in shaping childcare attitudes. Perhaps this refl ects that social cohesion and

21 In case of neonatal care and vaccination, however, the difference between the HinIso and HinMix scores is not statistically signifi cant. This can be explained in terms of the fact that HinIso scores are fairly high (and therefore quite similar to HinMix scores) because of the extensive outreach of the public health initiatives in case of vaccination. Neighbourhoods and Narratives J 221 solidarity within Muslim mohallas is more prominent than that in Hindu mohallas. It can be suggested that though the caste system has made inroads into the Muslim social set-up, for Muslims, in general, hierarchy is not very clearly played out. The rigidities of the proverbial class–caste nexus seem to operate more among Hindus as compared to Muslims. Resultantly, the poorer Hindu families do not have a social network or support system unlike their Muslim counterparts who are able to break social distance with affl uent families more effectively. The hierarchical arrangement among Hindus being stronger results in economic differences between women being played out very differently even within the limited socio-spatial context of the neighbourhood. An interesting suggestion, this aspect needs further probing. However, despite the fact that differences between Muslims located in isolated and intermixed neighbourhoods are not signifi cant, in so far as vaccination and neonatal care are concerned, MusMix scores are lower than even HinIso scores. Thus, the general perception that Muslim-dominated areas score poorly in terms of vaccination is borne out by this study. In fact, for each aspect of response to child health, MusMix scores are consistently lower than HinMix scores. Thus, to some extent, the contention that dispositions that vary by religious affi liation provide ‘avenues by which religion exerts indirect effects on utilisation, whether preventive, curative, or palliative’ (Schiller and Levin 1988: 1376) does seem to hold true. Stark evidence of the impact of location on child health in poor households is evident in that in isolated sites 30 per cent children have not been vaccinated as against only 6.7 per cent in intermixed areas.22 While 60 per cent of poor women in isolated locations have a lackadaisical attitude to child health, for those living in intermixed neighbourhoods this percentage is as low as 11. It is clear that intermixed or isolated contexts are more clearly associated with variations in attitudes to child health (as against the religious compositions of the neighbourhoods). It would be interesting to revisit, in a sense, the interface between women’s

22 Vaccination is taken as a case in point because the rampant and consistent efforts of the government in providing free/highly subsidised and easily available vaccines is expected to cover all children — even among the economically weakest sections of society. 222 J Manisha Singh autonomy, neighbourhoods and child health so as to understand how these attributes play out — the pathways. Even as statistical handling has revealed some very interesting and nuanced interpretational possibilities it is heartening to note that some of the narratives collected during the research echo what the data are showing. In health research, narratives have been accorded a place worth exploring:

Attention to the meanings people attach to their experience of places and how this shapes social action could provide a missing link in our understanding of the causes of inequalities in health. In particular, the articulation of these meanings — which we refer to as lay knowledge — in narrative form could provide invaluable insights into the dynamic relationships between human agency and wider social structures that underpin inequalities in health (Popay et al. 1998: 636).

The narratives of poor women reveal that autonomy and neighbourhood networks work together — both substituting and/or complementing each other — within the overarching framework of benefi ts and/or limitations that location(s) confer. Though the process appears to be fairly commonsensical and ‘general’, places and communities enter into people’s lives through fairly well-defi ned pathways. Also, social externalities (individuals and households connected to others in their neighbourhood through ties of social network) — an important component in so far as information fl ow is concerned — vary according to the type of neighbourhood, intermixed or isolated.23 The respondents’ narratives shed invaluable light on each of these aspects.

23 One may argue, however, that ‘collective social functioning and practices need not be geographically restricted to residential neighbourhoods … it may as much be related to other sorts of spaces such as the family and the workplace, which cut across “traditional” geographical space and are only anchored in “place” by common meeting points’ (Macintyre et al. 2002: 131 quoting Giddens 1984). However, this does not diminish in any way the salience of neighbourhoods as spaces that anchor social networks. In fact, Forrest and Kearns (1999) note that the foremost notions of community were based around the shared geographical spaces of neighbourhood. Neighbourhoods and Narratives J 223

The salience of intermixed location in a woman’s spatially restricted and time constrained life is reﬂ ected in the words of Zohra,24 a poor resident of MusMix:

I live in a neighbourhood which has all kinds of people and I … meet quite a few [of them] …. You see, as women, we have to build our own networks and share our joys and grief — as much as time and opportunity permit. With this [sharing] we become close. We are, after all, in the same boat!

Several respondents recognised that economic heterogeneity of mixed neighbourhoods is signiﬁ cant because the health (of the poor) depends not only on their standard of living, but also on those who live in their immediate vicinity (see Montgomery and Hewett 2005). Besides crucial social support, also embedded in these networks is much social learning. As has been established in studies (speciﬁ cally, in Finch and Mason 1993), socially shared meanings and frameworks which develop on account of living in shared spaces inform and shape the decisions that people make within their families. Such guidelines provide an idealised notion of ‘the proper thing to do’. When women get opportunities to network thus, they imbibe many ‘good practices’ (here, pertaining to childcare). Further, intermixed locations confer the advantage of access to a variety of social networks — within the same economic class and with those who are relatively better-off. Malti, resident of HinMix said:

My husband is a mason; I am uneducated. But we bring up our children in the best possible way we can. I often meet the memsahibs of our area; I … am not friends with them, but I do get to meet them. Sometimes I do small chores to help them out … [though] I do not work as domestic help … I get to talk to them. One of them guides me with respect to my children — how and what I should [feed] them. But in emergencies, I turn to people of our class. They understand our condition and run around for us.

As mentioned earlier, however, locations are not an independent factor. Household gender dynamics modify the effect of locations in myriad ways. The four residents of intermixed neighbourhoods

24 To ensure anonymity, names of the respondents have been changed. 224 J Manisha Singh who report a lackadaisical attitude to child health are a case in point: with one exception, the others have very low autonomy, particularly physical, within the household. Evidently, this greatly mitigates their neighbouring/networking and, eventually, gets reﬂ ected in poor response to child health. Contrarily, not all women in isolated sites report poor response to child health. Fieldwork revealed that (of the poor respondents living in isolated sites, but reporting a proactive attitude to child health) except one, all have high autonomy within the household with their physical autonomy being particularly high. For these women, such mobility means access to the better- off households/more educated women of their neighbourhood. A supportive family works in the backdrop of this dynamic. Thus, while an isolated context is generally considered as a negative setting for the respondent’s neighbouring, Sabeena (resident of MusIso) feels she is ‘blessed’ to live there. She explicitly credits her neighbourhood for the way she is able to care for her two daughters while acknowledging the support from her spouse and mother-in-law in this regard:

I am blessed to live in this area. Okay, there are a few problems also, but where do you not have them? By and large, people are nice, helpful and trustworthy. There are families — some very poor — whom I help with advice; sometimes with things; also, money. Similarly, there are women from better-off families whom I look up to for advice. I go to them to ask about my [daughters’] health and education. I think my mother-in-law and husband appreciate the way I learn and adopt the practices of my [better-off] neighbours.

Rajni (HinIso) living with her spouse and three children, reported high autonomy and good neighbourhood networks:

… I ‘sometimes’ work for three houses here … which means that I am not really employed there but I try to help them out with their chores if the need arises. These households [have] working women. I have learnt a lot from them …. Earlier, I [regretted] not having gone to school, but now it does not matter to me. I learn from my memsahibs. I mean — I know what to do for my children, what is good and bad for them. [My employers] always help me in good and bad times.

It is worthwhile to note that though in isolated neighbourhoods the ‘better-off’ women are located in a separate, more afﬂ uent zone, they are well within the networks of these respondents. Neighbourhoods and Narratives J 225

Case studies revealed how beneﬁ cial such interactions are in an otherwise disadvantaged setting (poor economic status, little or no education, located in a poor zone). MusIso resident Nazma recounts the advantages thus:

… I come from a very poor family and am very poor [in this neighbourhood] as well. I could never go to school …. My neighbours here — some of them ‘big’ people — [are] big not only in terms of money … but also education. I go over and meet the women [from these households]. Our culture provides occasions to interact. In weddings they call me as a helper. They also trust me, you see. And when I need help, they don’t usually refuse. I learn much from these women.

Words such as ‘network’, ‘help’, ‘trust’, ‘learn’ in the narratives of these women are indicative of the social resources of mixed neighbourhoods that the poor, illiterate women are able to access as invaluable opportunities for social learning. Evidence substanti- ating this link between informal social networks, social activities and better health prospects exists in the literature (Berkman and Breslaw 1983; Rogers 1996; Wolf and Bruhn 1993). In contrast to these narratives are those of women with ‘dual constraints’ — low autonomy and neighbouring — which seem to get exacerbated by their ‘adverse location’ in isolated neighbourhoods. These result in lack of interaction across class boundaries and limited socialisation. Puja (HinIso) pointed to a neighbour’s house, a little farther from her own, and summed up her situation:

I would love to go to this woman’s house …. [M]y neighbour goes there and I also want to, but cannot. [M]y husband does not like me going across to ‘that side’. Had that house been closer here I am sure he would not have had so much of a problem. But somehow he feels that me moving out to the ‘other part’ of the mohalla is totally uncalled for ….

These narratives cull some of the plausible pathways through which the social capital of intermixed neighbourhoods inﬂ uences individual health: (a) effective diffusion of health-related information; (b) increased likelihood of better health-related behaviour being adopted; and (c) psychosocial processes such as affective support, self-esteem and mutual respect are some of these (Kawachi et al. 1999). 226 J Manisha Singh

Conclusion

The results of this study are striking and easy to summarise: empirical fi ndings clearly establish the fact that places have a profound bearing upon attitudes to child health. Neighbourhoods overwhelmingly dominate the dynamic between household gender dynamics and parental response to child health. Their impact is particularly signifi cant in case of healthcare meted out to the girl child, more so in cases of recent illnesses. Mixed neighbourhoods, in particular, provide interesting backdrops for the study of ‘the possibility of “pull up” and “pull down” effects on health of adjacency to different types of people or places’ (Macintyre et al. 2002: 129). Further, responses to child health vary according to the specifi cs of the neighbourhood both in terms of their population composition as well as locational context. This study revealed that if neighbourhoods are well matched in terms of their socio-economic and demographic profi les, the residential patterning emerges as a more powerful infl uence. For instance, isolated locations are likely to have a more water-tight hierarchical set-up between the rich and the poor than intermixed locations. Given that they are not conducive to spatially-anchored neighbouring, they have more traditional kinds of neighbourhood interactions. The reverse is true of intermixed locations. Resultantly, child health indicators here are signifi cantly better than in isolated contexts. Neighbourhoods where the rich–poor live in close spatial proximity seem to provide scope for ‘social learning’ as also ‘social checks’ on acceptable behaviour. However, it is equally true that even in intermixed neighbourhoods the domain of the household remains largely unaffected by such neighbourhood effects, particularly in so far as women’s autonomy in domestic matters is concerned. While in general, religious identity is not a very strong infl uence in shaping response to child health, it does tend to enter the framework through the neighbourhood context. This is substantiated by the fact that restricted neighbouring/interaction in isolated contexts is more clearly entrenched in Hindu mohallas; the Muslim mohallas have relatively more ‘porous’ boundaries of neighbouring even in isolated settings. As pointed out earlier, however, this aspect is not addressed in this study and, therefore, warrants further exploration. Neighbourhoods and Narratives J 227

This quantitative–qualitative mixed study shows that in so far as making neighbourhoods the fulcrum of research is concerned, empirical analyses needs to step back from grandiose approaches (to neighbourhood social capital) and focus, instead, on the mundane but potentially more fruitful task of analysing the social components of individual behaviour. The workings of spatially-rooted social capital as well as the neighbouring that it generates, should be derived from specifi c claims about their infl uences on individuals. It is in this regard that narratives from the fi eld become critical ingredients in our understanding of the plethora of issues concerning place-effects on health behaviour. In the end, however, it is worthwhile to note what some researchers have concluded: where you live matters for health, although probably not as much as who you are (Pickett and Pearl 2001 as cited in Macintyre et al. 2002). While this assertion pertaining to individual level attributes holds true, the present study concludes that locational contexts certainly matter more than what has been acknowledged in current research. Health research must move beyond the conventional, limited view of factors affecting responses to health and incorporate these largely unexplored dimensions. To situate the discussion in a wider context of places as well as narratives to unearth causalities, however, fi rmer conclusions necessitate more comparative micro-level research in multiple settings. 228 J Manisha Singh Part III

Domestic and Public Spaces 230 J Mohammad Sanjeer Alam 9 Unequal They Stand: Decision-making and Gendered Spaces within Family

MOHAMMAD SANJEER ALAM

Introduction

The ongoing discussion on inclusive social policy repeatedly brings equity issues for women to the fore and India is no exception. Very often naively conceptualised notions about women’s access to education and income generation are seen as translating into overall empowerment for them, including their status in the family. This is done without much attention to evidence in literature pointing otherwise (Cornwell and Chou 1986; Hull 1979; Sharma 1980) at the expense of women’s contested location in the family vis-à-vis their male counterparts. Research shows how gender relations are undergoing transformation in favour of women in public spheres and still maintain zealous resistance to any change in private domains (Raju 2005c). The family has remained insulated from public policy for long on the assumption that it is a homogeneous unit where all members enjoy the same social privilege, experience the same standard of living and share the same life chances and are, therefore, social equals.1 However, studies suggest that men and women within

1 The concept of family carries different meanings and implies different connotations depending upon the perspective one looks through. There has been an intense debate in sociological and anthropological literature as to what the standard defi nition of family should be. It is suggested that there are various ways of looking at the term and concept of family. For one thing, marriage does not necessarily mean constitution of family, nor divorce mean dissolution of family, nor is household synonymous with family (see Levin and Trost 1992). However, given the lack of any standard defi nition of the concept of family, for the present purpose family is taken as a social group consisting of at least one spousal unit. 232 J Mohammad Sanjeer Alam families neither have equal access to resources — both material and non-material — within the families, nor do they experience equal life chances (Bardhan 1974; Behrman 1988; Sen 1984), leading to different life outcomes. The family itself can thus be the site of various forms of gender inequalities at various stages of women’s lifecycles. One such form stemming from within the family is inequality in the decision-making process. Arguably, the degree to which women have control over their lives, decide things for themselves and/or are able to negotiate with their male partners or simply participate in decision-making on usual family matters, if not all, is refl ective of their empowerment as it refl ects their choices, behaviour and various positive outcomes (Dyson and Moore 1983; Morgan et al. 2002). Thus, if women’s decision-making power is seen as a direct measure of gender equity as well as empowerment, the key questions that need to be addressed are:

(a) How do women stand vis-à-vis men in day-to-day decision- making processes in the family? Do they participate on an equal footing with men or are just subservient to them? (b) How does the decision-making power of women vary with socio-cultural context? What are the enabling factors and whether education and employment status positively and sig- niﬁ cantly contribute to their decision-making power in the family? (c) Do education and employment have a linear and unidirectional impact on women’s decision-making power independent of spatial context or do spatial speciﬁ cs intersect the educational and employment attributes to result in spatially contextualised geographies of women’s decision-making power?

At this point, it may be observed that women’s decision-making power and the underlying factors infl uencing it is of immense signifi cance and yet the available studies, mainly carried out by demographers, are limited in their scope. Their focus remains confi ned to the hypothesised association between the decision-making power of women and their reproductive outcomes — an instrumentalist approach rather than situating the decision-making process in the broader socio-spatial domain. Given this, this chapter attempts to address concerns just outlined with the help of the latest round of Unequal They Stand J 233

National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2005–2006.2 As the purpose is to uncover women’s ability to share the decision-making spaces with their husbands, this study confi nes itself to currently married women. The chapter is divided into fi ve sections. The following section is an overview of theories/approaches; especially feminists’ approaches trying to explain women’s exclusion in supposedly shared spaces by men and women. The second section attempts to profi le the socio-economic status of married women followed by the third section which documents the patterns of their decision- making. The fourth section discusses certain correlates of women’s decision-making power within the family. The fi fth section presents an upshot of the discussion.

Decision-making Power of Women within the Family: Theoretical Perspectives

Gendered inequalities in both public and domestic spheres across societies and cultures, albeit in varying degrees and forms, have led to diverse interpretations, theoretical formulations and approaches. Of these, the feminist perspectives are the most salient ones, although these also have diverse strands. Overall, the feminist perspectives on gender inequality can be subsumed into two broad approaches: gender role and gender relations. The gender role thesis attributes gender inequality to the sexual division of labour primarily into production and reproduction and the association of these divisions with separate spheres of inﬂ uence — public with production and reproduction with private. By virtue of biologically-endorsed reproductive responsibilities, home and hearth of the private spheres came to be associated with women whereas the outdoor public spheres were traditionally the legitimate place for men (Dunn et al. 1993; Rogers 1980). As the reproductive responsibilities and associated tasks became conﬁ ned

2 NFHS (2005–2006) is one of the large-scale representative sample surveys, maintaining a rigorous social scientifi c sampling design, high quality data and editing procedures in the country. It covers all the states of the country by collecting information on a wide range of demographic, social and economic indicators of about 109,041 households. 234 J Mohammad Sanjeer Alam to home, they were carried out as unpaid work, and as the public was linked with market and paid activities, the gender segregated occupational/domestic roles made women undervalued because they also had less control over material and non-material resources. Blumberg (1984) argues that the degree to which women control the means of production determines their general power and status. The gender relation thesis locates the origin of women’s subordination in the social organisation of power relations based on sexual differences — power which is deeply entrenched in patriarchy as an ideological system that holds men superior to women — men as bread-winners and women as mothers and caretakers of children and other domestic chores. This ideology is defended, maintained and reconfi gured through a complex web of institutions, norms, values and laws (Chafetz 1990; Huber 1990). In other words, allocation of status, power and resources in society are made according to the positioning of gender categories in the social order (Ferree and Hall 2000). Thus, gender carries a meaning of hierarchy that naturalises and legitimises subordination and inequality. It is organised at all levels — micro (interpersonal), meso (inter-group) and macro (institutional). These two approaches primarily focusing on structures that produce and reproduce gender inequality offer deeper insights into gender inequality in society. However, they are faced with several limitations. The common weakness of these two approaches is that both treat gender as a monolithic social category. Gender is seen as internally homogeneous. Recent research has shown that gender disadvantages are multi-dimensional (Jeejeebhoy and Sathar 2001; Jeffery et al. 1988; Malhotra et al. 1995; Raju 1993c). Gender boundaries are, therefore, fl uid and permeable. Seen in this light, gender inequalities in any area ought to be studied by intertwining several dimensions of social stratifi cation such as race or ethnicity, class, space and so on rather than separate (Collins 1990) as the notion and practice of gender roles and gender relations are not invariable across social space. Yet, another limitation of gender role and gender relation theses is that both present structurally-determinant arguments by conceptualising inequality as a constant, incapable of getting eroded, reduced or eliminated (Anderson 1996). Hence, the questions of agency and change are often glossed over in these approaches. Scholars like Giddens (1984), Alexander (1988) and others have Unequal They Stand J 235 demonstrated how individuals create social structures that constrain and enable them. In sum, the structures are not fi xed nor do social values remain unchanged; they are alterable. Human agency has the potential of social creation, maintenance and alteration of structures. Given the inadequacy of available models based on structures, which are uncritically accepted as pervasive or on women’s individual attributes, this study contests the conventional studies and looks beyond familiar attributes of women’s decision-making power. It argues that neither structures nor individual attributes provide suffi cient bases for unveiling the decision-making process amongst women across the Indian space. Instead, these characteristics are altered or modifi ed according to regions with their socio-cultural and historical region-specifi c attributes, that is, spatial embeddedness, a component part of the analytical framework, which remains under researched by geographers.3 The following section locates women in domains conventionally understood as empowering individuals. It then takes into account several layers of women’s inclusion in decision-making processes. Finally, it examines how interaction of a complex web of factors in consonance within spatial context makes a difference in their participation in decision-making processes.

Locating Married Women in Socio-economic Domains

As seen in the theoretical discussion, it has been argued that women’s acquired individual attributes reﬂ ect their position in the social order and, in turn, these attributes, among other things, tend to have an important bearing on socially constructed and prescribed gender roles and gender relations affecting their lives. While this position is contested in this chapter, it would be not out place to discuss, albeit in brief, the socio-economic standing of women in India.

3 While Dyson and Moore (1983), Jeejeebhoy and Sathar (2001) and Rahman and Rao (2004) have examined the role of regional speciﬁ cities (in terms of the north–south divide) in inﬂ uencing the life chances of women, they do not look beyond it to see the role of various social, economic and cultural processes within the region that create intra-region inequality of status among women. 236 J Mohammad Sanjeer Alam

Table 9.1 presents select socio-economic indicators pertaining to currently married women in India. Overall, slightly less than half of them are either illiterate or have received no formal education, less than one-third of them are educated till secondary level and only about 6 per cent to have got post-secondary education. This reﬂ ects the overall lower educational attainment of females in the country. However, there are considerable regional variations in terms of female literacy and educational attainment. Women in the southern and western regions are better placed in terms of educational attainment than the rest of India, though there remain considerable gender gaps in the former (Alam 2007). Conventionally, education for women is seen as a liberating force for it enables them to assert their rights and privileges in the family, provides them ﬁ nancial independence which in turn frees them from many patriarchal constraints and traditional values (Dreze and Sen 2004).

TABLE 9.1 Socio-economic Proﬁ le of Currently Married Women by Region

Indicators North Central East West South All

Education No Education 50.9 61.0 53.6 31.8 35.8 47.7 Primary 12.9 13.6 16.3 14.8 17.3 15.2 Secondary 28.4 20.6 26.5 45.4 39.5 31.1 Higher 7.8 4.8 3.6 8.0 7.4 6.0 Economic Worked in last 12 months 40.1 43.0 36.8 50.2 47.3 42.2 Nature of employment∗ All year 58.2 45.4 47.4 72.9 70.1 58.4 Seasonal 33.5 48.4 48.4 25.2 27.1 37.1 Occasional 8.3 6.2 4.2 1.9 2.8 4.5 Type of earning∗ Not paid 27.5 29.2 21.2 30.5 15.6 24.2 In kind only 20.9 21.2 15.1 3.0 1.6 11.8 Cash and kind 14.1 16.0 21.0 7.3 7.7 13.2 Cash only 37.5 33.6 42.7 59.2 75.1 50.8 Access to money∗ Have bank account 14.1 11.4 11.5 20.8 21.2 15.3 Have money for her own use 34.1 52.6 47.3 47.2 42.3 45.0 Source: NFHS (2005–2006), weighted data set. Note: Total sample 89,780 (excluding the sample for the northeast region). ∗ Those who worked any time during the 12 months preceding the survey. Unequal They Stand J 237

Of all the currently married women, less than half reported to be formally in the workforce, the productive process. Once again, there are remarkable regional variations in women’s working status. While in the eastern region, one in every three women takes part in productive processes, by contrast, it is a much higher proportion in the western and southern regions. It can be recalled that women in these regions also have better educational chances, which enables them to enter the labour market in greater number.4 However, work participation rate as an economic indicator does not tell much. More important than this is the nature of employment as well as duration of work.5 It can be observed that for those who worked any time during the year (a large proportion did not work the whole year), their work was rather seasonal or occasional. Here again, the regional location of women seems to make a perceptible difference in the nature of employment. In the southern and western regions, about two-thirds of working women worked throughout the year whereas those in the eastern and central regions worked seasonally or occasionally. Spatial variations could also be seen in terms of type of earning. In the southern and western regions, most women earned cash whereas in the rest of India, a greater portion of working women were either not paid at all or paid in kind and cash.

4 However, education does not always behave as a positive correlate of women’s likelihood of entering the labour market. In many situations, the education of women may not necessarily result in their access to the labour market. See Hull (1979) and Sharma (1985). 5 There are many who argue that although the labour market has not evolved to accommodate women, a vast majority of them work in the informal sectors as casual workers, wage labourers and in the formal sectors as unskilled/semi-skilled or manual workers. NFHS (2005–2006) data supports this contention. As per NFHS, about 59 per cent of women (15–49) worked as agricultural labourers and about 22 per cent as production workers (including skilled, unskilled and manual occupations) as against 33 and 36 per cent, respectively, for men in the same age group. It is argued that economic development has strengthened rather than broken down the traditional sexual division of labour and values (Pai 1987; Singh 1996; Unni 1992). As a result, not only is there lower labour force participation of women, but also their concentration in low-paid traditional jobs. Even though women work, their work does not enable them to be economically independent. 238 J Mohammad Sanjeer Alam

One of the indicators of women’s access to money is to have a bank or post offi ce account in their names. One in every seven women has such an account. Even in the southern and western regions, where the majority of the women work throughout the year, only one-fi fth of them have a bank or post offi ce account (see Table 9.1). Thus, it can be said that women’s work status does not seem to correlate with the possibility of having a bank or post offi ce account. In sum, women have poor educational attainment and a low work participation rate. Those who work do so seasonally or occasionally. Moreover, their work is undervalued as a large proportion of working women do not get paid for their work. If having a bank or post offi ce account is considered as a measure of direct control over income, only a tiny proportion of women have this control. However, it must be noted that women’s education or their chances of participation in productive processes are not uniform across the country. There are remarkable spatial variations in the life chances of women, though they might be still away from catching up with men.

Women’s Decision-making Power within the Family: Socio-spatial Pattern

In day-to-day family life, there are many events that need thinking. Moreover, they undergo the processes of negotiations, consultations and even contestation between and among family members, in particular between couples. However, this study picks up only four decisions that are usually taken in the family: own health care, major household purchases, household purchases of daily needs and visiting natal family or relatives. As NFHS (2005–2006) data suggests, a little over one-third of currently married women participate in all four decisions and one-ﬁ fth of them do not take part in any, that is, they are totally excluded. The other women participate in any one or two decisions. Thus, even though women in general happen to be the caretakers of the household, the majority of them do not fully participate in the decision-making processes in the family. However, the degree of participation of women in decision-making is bound to vary across Indian social space. Indeed, women in general make unequal partners with men, yet some women are more unequal than others. In this section, an attempt has made to capture some patterns of women’s participation in decision-making processes. Unequal They Stand J 239

Table 9.2 presents levels of women’s participation in decision- making across the Indian social space.6 There are substantial differentials in women’s participation in decision-making by the social categories they belong to. It is partly, as would appear, because each social group possesses distinctive values and belief systems, nurture different orientation of life and attitude towards women and more so remain at differing levels of socio-cultural advancement.

TABLE 9.2 Pattern of Women’s Participation in Decision-making

Index of women’s participation in decision-making Background characteristics Very low Low Medium High All 26.1 22.8 25.9 25.2 Religion Hindu 26.6 22.8 25.9 24.7 Muslim 28.6 22.7 24.5 24.2 Others 14.9 22.5 28.5 34.1 Castes/Tribes SC/ST 25.4 22.9 26.3 25.4 Non-SC/ST 26.4 22.6 25.6 25.4 Economic Class Poor 29.8 23.4 25.0 21.9 Middle 28.8 22.3 24.6 24.3 Rich 21.6 22.4 27.3 28.8 Regions North 29.2 23.3 22.3 25.1 Central 30.7 23.6 24.9 20.8 East 29.7 25.3 23.3 21.7 West 17.4 22.2 26.6 33.8 South 23.7 20.1 28.0 28.2 Source: NFHS (2005–2006). Note: All ﬁ gures in per cent.

6 Different scores were assigned to ‘who takes the decision’? Scores were assigned as follows: 2 if she took decisions alone; 1 if she took decisions with her husband or with someone else in the family; 0 if husband or someone else alone took the decisions. These scores were summed up and classiﬁ ed into very low, low, medium and high categories. The scores ranged from 0 to 8. 240 J Mohammad Sanjeer Alam

Religion is arguably a clear axis of gender stratifi cation for it provides a pattern of belief system. It prescribes values, norms, and attitudes, sets behaviour and orientation towards life of men and women. While all religions prescribe gender codes that effectively exclude women and subordinate them to men, it is debatable that women in Islamic settings occupy a distinctive and separate position that effectively denies them autonomy (Caldwell 1982; Sathar and Kazi 2001); Islam is more patriarchal than other religions (Balk 1994) and Muslim women in India as in other Islamic settings, are, therefore, likely to be socially more disadvantaged than women of other religions. One of the implications of being in a disadvantaged position is having less participation in decision-making. However, it appears that Muslim women do not do so badly as far as participation in decision-making is concerned (see Table 9.2). Both Hindu and Muslim women are equally placed in decision-making processes within the family. Some recent studies have also corroborated this fi nding (Jeejeebhoy and Sathar 2001). Caste is another important axis of gender stratifi cation in India. Different castes differ not only in terms of access to social and economic resources in society (Betancourt and Gleason 2000; Sengupta and Guha 2002), but also with regard to family systems and adherence to socio-cultural values. In general, the upper castes enjoy a relatively higher socio-economic status and are more exposed to education than others. If higher educational attainment is directly linked to women’s participation in decision-making, as understood conventionally, women belonging to the upper castes should enjoy greater participation in decision-making. However, it appears that caste affi liation does not make any difference so far as participation of women in decision-making is concerned (see Table 9.2). It can be said that despite exposure to modern values, upper-caste families are also more conscious of old values and norms (parampara or sanskriti) that prescribe gender roles and expectations within family. Given this, upper-caste families would strictly follow prescribed gender codes. On the other hand, living in physical isolation, lower-caste families might not observe gender codes as strictly as upper-caste families do. Moreover, for lower-caste families, mostly poor, existential concerns precede any other social concerns operating at the macro level. Driven by quotidian needs, these families circumvent the taboos against women’s work outside home. They let their women work and contribute to the family income. Even if lower-caste families are not Unequal They Stand J 241 exposed to modern values or gender egalitarian systems, women’s contribution to family income might enable them to have a greater say in the decisions taken in the family. Class and gender systems have been well documented. It has long been argued by sociologists that different social classes espouse different socialisation values which vary in their evaluation of autonomy and conformity in female members of the family (Xiao and Andes 1999). Class factor is, therefore, expected to have an important bearing on their likelihood of participation in decision-making as well as their relative autonomy (Gilligan 1982). In order to assess women’s participation in decision-making by class, wealth index or economic index7 as constructed in NFHS (2005–2006), it is used here as a proxy for class. A gradual increase in women’s participation in decision-making can be observed as one moves from being poor to rich. While women belonging to middle-class families do not signifi cantly differ from those of the poor in the participation index, women in rich families seem to enjoy a relatively greater participation in decision-making, albeit vast proportion of them still demonstrate low participation. It could be argued that women belonging to the upper classes are more likely to be educated and likely to be employed in formal sectors than the lower classes. As such, they are more likely to be assertive of their rights and their due place in the family and hence their greater participation in decision-making. However, what seems to be intriguing is the thin line between women of middle class and poor families. Theoretically, middle-class women and their spouses are educationally better off compared to poor women, which should have led them to greater participation in decision-making. However, as a ‘custodian of morality’ it is possible that typical middle-class families are more likely to be conscious of family values and their social status. They may allow girls to receive some levels of education,

7 The wealth index or economic index constructed in NFHS (2006–2007) includes both household assets and housing characteristics. The index is based on 33 household assets and housing characteristics. Different scores were given to each item and the scores were summed for each household. The whole sample was then divided into quintiles — poorest, poorer, middle, richer and richest (for details see National Family Health Survey 2005–2006). For convenience of analysis, poorest and poorer categories have been clubbed together. Similarly, richer and richest categories are clubbed together. 242 J Mohammad Sanjeer Alam but may not allow them to work. This restricts women becoming economically independent, thus leading to their subordination affecting their participation in decision-making. In contrast, though poor women may not get education, they are more likely to work outside home in order to contribute to the meagre family income. As scholars have argued that women’s economic contribution to family income gives women a measure of empowerment (Blumberg 1991; Browning and Chiaporri 1998), poor families, despite not being exposed to gender egalitarian values, have to include their women in many family decisions. Social pattern apart, there occurs a regional8 pattern of women’s participation in decision-making.9 Women in the northern, central and eastern regions experience much lower participation than those in the southern and western regions, though a large proportion of women even in the southwest region enjoy a lower level of participation in decision-making (see Table 9.2). The regional variation in women’s participation in decision-making is largely attributed to differing family systems. In the southern region, the family system values daughters both socially and economically. As a result, they are more likely to survive, be educated and exposed to work outside home. Here, women maintain strong family ties even after marriage, which strengthens their position in the afﬁ nal family. By contrast, the northern-eastern regions are typically patriarchal, with few exceptions patrilocal and widely known for inegalitarian gender relations (Basu 1992; Dyson and Moore 1983; Jeejeebhoy and Sathar 2001). Prevalence of a gender regressive ideology in these regions often dis- courages much education and employment of women outside the home resulting in lower autonomy and status in the family.

8 The regionalisation of Indian states has been done as follows: northern — Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal and Rajasthan; central — Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh; eastern — Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal; western — Maharashtra, Gujarat; southern — Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Goa. As the study is focused on these ﬁ ve regions, the sample for the northeast region has been excluded from the analysis. 9 Of late, studies have emphasised the role of spatial contexts in the production and reproduction of social hierarchies and inequalities. Space contains, creates and constructs around gender relations. Also see McDowell 1999b; Spain 1992; Tickmayer 2000. Unequal They Stand J 243

It can be said that even as a vast proportion of women get excluded from or enjoy less participation in decision-making, the socio-spatial locations of women seem to signifi cantly infl uence their participation. However, the documentation of women’s participation in decision-making in terms of social groups and spatial contexts is not as straightforward as it appears to be. It is argued that these axes of inequality often do not contribute to gender inequality either positively or negatively independent of each other. They are intertwined; these categories often overlap and interact (Collins 1990). Further, the hypothesised association between social locations of women and their participation in decision-making becomes weak when acquired individual attributes are taken into account. Even this formulation might get fractured when ‘spatiality’ comes into the picture. Thus, a nuanced understanding of what actually infl u- ences women’s inclusion in decision-making processes warrants multilayered conceptualisation of social actions and relations and a framework of embeddedness that allows interaction of both structural and individual attributes.

Constraints and Supportive Structures for Women’s Decision-making

As pointed out earlier, women are placed in multiple locations, which often overlap and interact and tend to complicate one’s understanding of what really contributes to inclusion of women in decision-making processes. It is possible that one factor may emerge stronger in one location, but may be esoteric or may have no relevance in other locations. In order to capture the dynamics of gender inequality in decision-making, OLS (Ordinary Least Squared) regression is used as an analytical statistical tool. OLS regression allows assessing the degree to which independent variables affect the likelihood of participation in decision-making. It also helps rank the relative importance of each of the predictor variables. The discussion offers some clues as to what can possibly enhance or impede women’s participation in decision-making. Yet, treating these factors in isolation and giving any weightage to any variable on the basis of bivariate analysis would be misleading. What follows is an attempt to evaluate the impact of different variables when they interact with one another. In view of the multi-dimensionality of women’s decision-making authority, as already seen in the preceding 244 J Mohammad Sanjeer Alam sections, the ensuing analysis is multi-tiered or multi-layered. In Model 1, independent variables are basically family characteristics. The purpose here is to see how much of women’s decision-making power is explained by variables pertaining to family background. Model 2 controls both family and individual attributes of women. Model 3 includes region besides family backgrounds and individual attributes in order to assess the so-called north/east–south/west dichotomy of women’s decision-making power. Model 4 assesses the impact of independent variables for regions separately. It is seen in Model 1 (see Table 9.3) that Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) women are more likely to participate in decision-making processes. Muslim women seem to have lesser participation than others. While women of rich families tend to take part in decision-making more than poor women, the partner or spouse’s education is an impediment. However, it should be noted that Model 1 that controls for family background explains only .8 per cent of variance (r² = .008). When both family background and individual characteristics are controlled, many changes seem to occur (Model 2). One, r², that explains degree of variance, improves dramatically. In other words, individual characteristics appear to be far more powerfully explanatory variables than family background. Second, when both sets of variables interact with each other, the likelihood of participation of Muslim women in decision-making improves significantly. Rahman and Rao (2004) have also made similar observations. Third, women of rich families continue to participate in decision-making more than the women of poor families, but regression coeffi cients reduce. However, the likelihood of SC and ST women’s participation increases tremendously. The result suggests that these changes are due to group differences in individual characteristics. Fourth, though spouse’s education impacts negatively, when individual attributes of women come into play, its impact seems to be loosened, suggesting that factors such as education and working status of women mediate with gender ideology. Of the individual attributes, age by far appears to be the strongest predictor of women’s participation in decision-making. As women age, their participation increases for several reasons. One, older women come out of the extended family that undermines their authority (Bloom et al. 2001). Second, longer duration of marriage possibly enables them establish gradual spousal adjustments Unequal They Stand J 245 –.076 – + region North/East South/West (Family background + individual characteristics TABLE 9.3 (Family background + individual characteristics) –– (Family Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 background) Regression Coeffi cients on Index of Participation in Decision-making Regression Coeffi cients are signifi cant at 1 per cent level. cients are signifi Independent variables Family background Caste (SC/ST)Religion (Muslim)Class (Non-poor)Partner’s education (Educated)Individual characteristics AgeUrban –.035WorkingEducation –.005Region (North/East) .024R square .097Source: Derived from NFHS 2005–2006. coeffi –.029Note: All .012 .042 .003 – – – – –.029 .008 .014 .038 –.012 .275 –.040 .109 .058 .078 .104 –.008 .020 .029 –.017 –.005 .052 .005 .276 .107 .042 .064 .111 .296 .100 .034 .064 .107 .243 .188 .061 .088 .086 246 J Mohammad Sanjeer Alam

(Sahoo and Raju 2007) thereby acquiring greater ability to negotiate with husbands. On the other hand, in the initial years of marriage they are yet to be fully integrated into their spouse’s home and are also unable to cast off the sense of being strangers. They may remain submissive or less demanding of their rights and privileges (Dhruvarajan 1989; Koening et al. 2006) and hence their less participation in decision- making. After age, urbanity is the most important factor. This could be attributed to urban women’s enhanced access to education and employment (in both formal and informal sectors), which not only make them aware of their rights, but also less dependent on their spouses. Educational attainment and the working status of women are positively associated with women’s participation in decision-making regardless of their social location (see Table 9.3, Model 2). Needless to emphasise, better education frees women from social constraints to assert their rights and privileges and to rise against atrocities (Dreze and Sen 2004: 353). It can also be proposed that better education enables women to handle situations with a greater degree of dexterity. Thus, equipped with better education, women may combine their awareness and articulation of their rights with greater manoeuvring skills, enhanced by education, to bargain and negotiate with patriarchy. Hence, better the education, greater is their say in family matters. The working status of women is also positively and signifi cantly linked to their participation in decision-making. As working women contribute to the family income, it renders them not only fi nancially independent, but also to decide and make choices for themselves and their families. Women’s involvement in economically gainful activities gives them an additional base of power other than reproduction (Blumberg 1991). However, when spatial dynamics enter the analytical framework, the results bring forth some interesting fi ndings. It appears that region10 or spatial specifi cities exert signifi cant infl uence on women’s

10 Socio-economic and demographic characteristics as well as level of participation of women in decision-making demonstrate two clear regional patterns — states north of the Satpura range hanging together and so do the states lying to the south. For the sake of interpretational convenience here, northern, central and eastern regions have been clubbed together and Unequal They Stand J 247 participation in decision-making (see Table 9.3, Model 3). Women residing in northern–eastern region are less likely to be participating in decision-making compared to women in the southern–western region when their family background and individual characteristics are controlled for. The results thus endorse the observation made by Dyson and Moore and others. When all other variables including region are controlled for, education of women appears to play a greater role in enhancing women’s decision-making power. After age and urbanism, education emerges as the third most important factor. The working status of women is also found to positively affect their decision-making power. However, it should be noted that when region is controlled for (see Model 3), the impact of these two factors gets reduced signifi cantly. It suggests that though education and working status of women positively contribute to participation in decision-making across regions, the degree of impact of the two factors varies in terms of spatial contexts. It becomes even more explicit in Model 4. The impact of education and the working status of women is more robust in the southern–western region than those in the northern–eastern region. The results presented in Model 4 clearly suggest that the impact of familial characteristics is not fi xed, rather vulnerable to change under the infl uence of spatiality. Religion and class seem to be most fl exible variables. Overall, when all other variables are controlled, the effect of religious affi liation is diluted. After controlling familial and individual characteristics, Muslim women are more likely to participate in decision-making compared to Hindu women in the northern–eastern region, but the reverse is true in the southern– western region. Similarly, when all other variables including region are controlled, women of the lower classes are more likely to participate in decision-making than those of the upper classes in the northern– eastern region. But the reverse is true in the southern–western part. The results suggest that broad generalisations made by demographers, sociologists and anthropologist need to be questioned. Although individual characteristics matter in women’s participation in decision-making across regions, their impact varies widely. so have been south and western regions. However, it must be noted that this scheme of regional convergence and divergence is bound to lose some nuances, which otherwise would have added more vigour to the analysis. 248 J Mohammad Sanjeer Alam

For example, with advancing age, women’s participation in decision- making increases much higher than those in the southern–western region, when familial and other individual characteristics are controlled (see Table 9.3, Model 4). Levels of education and working status matter more for women in southern–western region than those in the northern–eastern region. In brief, the discussion suggests the following. One, the family background of women does not impact women’s inclusion in decision- making independent of individually achieved characteristics. Two, the socio-economic factors that condition women’s participation in decision-making have different impacts depending upon spatial speciﬁ cities. Thus, women’s participation in decision-making in the family is the function of the interplay of a complex web of factors.

Conclusion

Conventionally, social policy debates on gender equity do not move beyond access to education and employment status ignoring the question of how women’s location vis-à-vis men in familial and socio- economic domains is affected. If women’s participation in decision- making in the family is considered an important dimension of women’s empowerment, the debate on women’s empowerment needs to be reframed and restructured. This needs to be done not only because a vast majority of women do not or are unable to participate in the decision-making processes, but also because conventionally understood factors of empowerment such as education and work do not often translate into women’s enhanced participation in decision- making processes. Women’s exclusion from decision-making processes is too complex a phenomenon as it demonstrates a multidimensional character. At times, it is the structural determinants whereas at other times, agencies of change emerge as the most powerful explanatory variables. In yet another case, the processes appear to be affected by geographical location. Thus, in a complex mutually constitutive manner, family characteristics, acquired individual attributes such as education and work status and broader structural variables of class and caste interact in consonance with spatially embedded contexts. Out of these, however, spatial characteristics seem to override the infl uence of other factors as even after controlling for all other variables signifi cantly infl uencing women’s decision-making power, Unequal They Stand J 249 women in the northern–eastern region of India are far less likely to participate in decision-making than those in the southern–western region. Viewed in this context, women’s participation in decision- making processes calls for further investigation into nuances which are spatially entrenched and are quite distinctive in enhancing or impeding women’s decision-making power, independent of the factors explored and examined in this research. 10 Public Spaces and Everyday Lives: Gendered Encounters in the Metro City of Kolkata

TANUSREE PAUL

The concept of space in social science has been in a continuous state of becoming and a site for profound contestations. Space has been perceived as the ‘means’ which aids an individual in manoeuvring and accomplishing his/her pursuit of interests as well as the ‘end’ for which people negotiate since access to and control over space is posited as key elements in power dynamics. Space is not simply ‘a neutral container waiting to be fi lled, but is a dynamic, humanly constructed means of control, and hence of domination of power’ (Lefebvre 1991: 24 cited in Gaventa 2006: 26). Power relations demarcate the boundaries of spaces and determine the legitimacy of users who enter these spaces as well as their ‘identities, discourses and interests’ (Gaventa 2006: 26). Korpela (1989) acknowledges that physical space is frequently utilised as strategy to reproduce self which, as a consequence, ‘embody, reify, and sometimes naturalize’ (cited in Kilde 1999: 455) such behavioural strategies with passage of time. It is through the replication of such identities that specifi c spaces come to be associated with either masculine or feminine attributes that ‘strongly infl uence men’s and women’s actual behaviour and power within them’ (Kilde 1999: 452). As Niranjana (2001: 34–35) observes:

... both space and gender are better approached as sets of relationships between phenomena, groups or persons, negotiated within certain given frames of reference. These relations are neither pre-determined nor programmed, but contingent, changing according to the contexts and the identities involved.

As Kilde (1999: 455) puts it, ‘to contest gender is also to contest space or, more precisely, some of the meanings associated with space.’ Public Spaces and Everyday Lives J 251

Space is gendered in complex ways that reﬂ ect the social organisation of differences between women and men rather than in simple binary terms of inside and outside, private/public, home/market and so on.

Public Space and its Engendered Connotations

The public sphere is the site where human capabilities, the basic tenet of current development discourse, are shaped and acted out.1 Habermas (1989) posited public spaces as spaces of communication and argued that every democratic state ought to have such spaces for the ‘public’ to come together and discuss public issues. Public space, therefore, is the forum for ventilating the claims of the people. It is also an effective machinery in manoeuvring state policies. Being in public place endows one with visibility and mobilising bond. Issues pertaining to who uses public places and for what purpose are important research propositions, particularly because these go a long way in shaping government’s policies. Exclusion of women from public places, therefore, has far-reaching consequences. It manifests itself in unequal status, loss of access to empowering information, incompetence in making informed decisions and choices. Expansion of space, therefore, emerges as a key issue in women’s empowerment. For men, public space is the site for exchanging ideas, values, expressing grievances and claims, and a platform for leisure activities whereas for women, public places are often regarded as ‘transit ways to other regions, not loci of interest in themselves; laws against loitering, lolling and vagrancy exist in part to ensure that public places remain way stations, not goals’ (Gardner 1990: 315). A woman can access public places legitimately only when she can manufacture a sense of purpose for being there and she is supposed to use these places as a transit between one private space and another

1 This ‘public sphere’ is the physical space in the concrete sense of the term, a space that can be measured in units, and can be used for acting upon it (such as through developmental planning). I am aware that other social scientists have used the term to create an opposite category to the ‘private sphere’. 252 J Tanusree Paul

(Ranade 2007). Her negotiation of public places is more likely to be governed by an appreciation of ‘body idiom’ (Goffman 1963: 33–34 cited in Gardner 1990: 314). Physical look, proper decorum, non- verbal communication, proper attire and so on are some markers stipulated for the woman while accessing public spaces. Needless to say, these markers have been established upon the edifi ce of female sexuality, and are explicitly underlain by efforts to curb this imagined, reckless sexuality; the reason being that feminine sexuality has been portrayed as promiscuous which needs to be tamed by keeping them indoors. Scholars (Chakravarti 2006; Chatterjee 1994; Dilworth and Trevenen 2004; Niranjana 2001; Rajalakshmi 2001; Vivante 1999) have argued that control over female sexuality has been a major concern in society and different moral and religious injunctions have been put forth to exclude women from public spaces. It is important to mention at this juncture that sexuality, physical vulnerability and reproductive role of women have been typically held responsible for legitimising their confi nement within private space since time immemorial. Their more extensive and toilsome reproductive role and the male’s superior size are biological bases for existing patterns of division of labour in society and the consequent separation of space. Women are to inhabit and manage the private sphere and provide an anchor for men’s public sphere of life. Women, in almost all cultures, are to be the ‘repository of domestic and civic purity.... [T]heir contamination threatened the larger social, economic and political structure’ (Dilworth and Trevenon 2004: 189). Moreover, ‘femininity is not only defi ned in terms of masculinity, but also in terms of “proper” and “improper” femininity, gendered “goodness”, “otherizing” the woman’s own sexuality from herself through patriarchal prescriptions’ (Bannerji 2001: 123). Nevertheless, restriction of women to the inside space is a matter of convenience — not to women themselves, but to men, children and the institution of marriage and family itself. Rosaldo (1974) and Massey (1994) maintained that it is this confi nement that is the major reason for the secondary status of women in society. One can also reverse the argument to suggest that it is societal reticence/ approval for women’s appearance in public spaces that restrict their access to productive resources which in turn gets articulated in a lower status (Raju and Bagchi 1993a). Public Spaces and Everyday Lives J 253

It is this array of factors, either perpetrated by society or internalised by women, which makes their access to public space extremely limited and conditional. Moreover, women may develop preconceived notions of places of fear where they anticipate trouble which may be a product of their past experiences or of secondary information. The reason for this may be sought in the socially learned knowledge that says the home is the rightful place of the women and their presence in the public, that is, the man’s terrain, is fraught with dangerous consequences. Also their presence in public spaces is conjectured to entail dishonour and shame as well as ‘questioning of sexual virtues’ (Phadke 2007b: 1511). Women are so alarmingly made aware of their sexuality that they come to identify themselves in part with their bodies and in part with their gendered roles as mothers, daughters and wives who are supposed to be the vanguard for preserving the sanctity of the ‘home’. Such private attributes associated with femininity determine the norms of using public spaces by women, carve out ‘legitimate’ spaces for her and chart out codes of ‘legitimate’ behaviour. This leads to adoption of certain precautionary steps such as avoidance of certain parts of the city or not venturing into the public spaces after dark (Koskela 1997; Miethe 1995; Wesley and Gaarder 2004). Thus, routes chosen and places preferred by them, though often mistaken as their autonomous choice, are actually governed by the dual process of fear and notions of social legitimacy. Such decisions to abstain from ‘masculine’ city spaces generate a different type of urban space. However, male dominance over public spaces is not merely achieved through their numerical appropriation of space, but largely through assertive and aggressive behaviour which intimidates and embarrasses women. Different scholars have documented different places which women fear and tend to avoid: deserted, large open spaces; closed spaces with limited exits such as subways, alleyways to name a few (Valentine 1989); places out of the visual range of others (Koskela and Tuominen 1995 cited in Koskela 1999: 113). These scholars have also ascertained typical coping behaviour resorted to by women like not walking through streets or not going to pubs and clubs alone at night, not acting or dressing provocatively, taking ‘common-sense’ precautions by not putting oneself in ‘dangerous’ situations, consciously monitoring 254 J Tanusree Paul the environment and self-regulating behaviour and so on. Besides the specifi c characteristics of space, time is also a major inhibiting factor in the usage of public space. Koskela (1997) noted that time is a ‘social construction’ as well. She observed in her study of Scandinavian countries that it is the social nature of the night which instils fear among women. Within this conceptual framework, this chapter attempts to explore the issue of women’s negotiation of public places and how these ‘places’, through the infusion of gendered meanings, get transformed into gendered ‘spaces’. It is divided into four sections: the fi rst section attempts to present a conceptual framework for locating this study; the second gives database and accounts for the methodology used; the third deals with the analysis of primary data; and the last section presents some refl ections and conclusion.

Data and Methodology

This study is based on a primary survey undertaken during the year 2007–2008 in the city of Kolkata. The methodologies used have largely been adopted from the ‘Gender and Space Project’ conducted by PUKAR, Mumbai.2 The primary survey examined several parameters. The ﬁ rst was to get a sense of people’s cognitive mapping for which a group of about 50 boys and girls in the age group of 22–25 years were provided with a hypothetical map which showed stable features of the cityscape. They were asked to locate the following groups of people as they perceive in the morning at about 9 and in the evening at 7:30 on the map: young children, teenage boys and girls, middle-aged men and women, both mobile and stationary. Another 50 women, aged 20–25 years, were asked to trace their path from Points A to B on a given map and also mention the reasons for following the speciﬁ c routes. Sequential photographs provided information on people’s movement and occupancy of

2 The Gender and Space Project was conducted by PUKAR, Mumbai between 2003–2006 funded by the Indo-Dutch Programme on Alternatives in Development. Public Spaces and Everyday Lives J 255 space at different locations as well as time.3 Information from the photographs was collated and mapped with the help of Arc Map software. In addition, about 180 women from different socio- economic backgrounds were interviewed with the help of structured questionnaires. This particular survey was exploratory in nature and the samples were selected through the snowballing research method.

Women and Public Space: Case of Kolkata Urban Public Spaces and People’s Perceptions

It is understood that one’s behaviour and negotiation of the real world is a manifestation of his/her perceptions about the world and conditions prevailing therein. Individuals attribute meanings and symbolic signiﬁ cance to surrounding spatial environment and accordingly modify their negotiation. In order to understand how public spaces in Kolkata get constructed in the minds of the natives, whether issues of normativity order their perceptions or whether the concept of man as ‘legitimate’ users of these spaces is embedded in their minds and also to see how they cope with public spaces, a hypothetical physical map showing an urbanscape was given to a sample of men and women. They were asked to locate men and women of different ages, either stationary or mobile, and at different points of time (see Figure 10.1). First, men were mostly seen as ‘hanging-out’ in public places as compared to women. While the former were perceived to be moving as well as standing, either chatting or waiting for friends, the latter were perceived to occupy public spaces mostly as moving bodies. Second, men were perceived to be present anywhere in public places at all times of the day. In contrast, respondents saw women as having limited access to public places which was legitimised through purpose as well as time of the day. In general, women, either mobile or stationary, were signiﬁ cantly less likely to be perceived as occupying public places in the evening or at night. The stereotypes about the

3 Time has been considered because it is a major inhibiting factor in the usage of public space, especially for women. Koskela (1997) noted that time is a ‘social construction’ as well. She observed in her study of Scandinavian countries that it is the social nature of the night which instils fear among women. 256 J Tanusree Paul

FIGURE 10.1 Locating People in a Hypothetical Place

Source: Primary survey in Kolkata December 2007–February 2008.

‘appropriate’ spaces for women, therefore, were deeply internalised in the minds of respondents, refl ected through their perceptions. Slightly more than half of the respondents perceived boys, as compared to about one-third for girls, to be playing in the park at noon; the proportion perceiving girls to do the same dropped remarkably Public Spaces and Everyday Lives J 257 to less than a fi fth of the respondents affi rming the act. This refl ects child socialisation and conditioning about appropriate gendered behaviour and associated spatial regimes (Pitcher and Schultz 1983, cited in Madge 1997: 245).4 Such associations are so complete that often girls playing in parks are likely to be looked upon as ‘space- invaders’ (Massey 1994: 185). The respondents’ perceptions about mobile and stationary men and women further point to gender-role stereotypes. The majority of the respondents, about 42 per cent, considered men to be present in the offi ce area as compared to any other public place whereas women were supposed to be at shops, market, school engaged in purposive movement. Perhaps, these perceptions reiterate society’s constructions about men as the bread-winner, therefore, most likely to be present in the offi ce, and women as the homemaker, running errands for the household which justify their being in public. This is further corroborated by the participants’ perceptions about gendered occupance of leisure spaces. While men were thought to be almost everywhere, certain places like lottery shops and paan shops were marked by the absence of women. How gender stereotypes ingrained in minds of the respondents gets associated with legitimised spatial locations is evident. If women were to be present in the public domain, they were to assuage some purpose which in fact was extended domestic chores. The summary result is presented in Table 10.1. Some observations with regard to the ‘hang-out’ spaces are quite insightful. Lottery, tea and paan shops were perceived to be mostly occupied by men while cafeterias, by women. It is worthwhile to note that the cafeteria emerges as a somewhat feminine space while tea stalls are masculine. Perhaps, it gives women a legitimate right to use public spaces for personal leisure activities ‘respectfully’. Tea stalls tend to be at roadsides, frequented by ‘men of all sorts’ and most importantly, they are open to public view. Cafeterias, on the other hand, are marked by comparatively restricted access and their

4 Boys and girls, men and women, inhabit different social worlds and gender identity ‘emerges out of social interaction and is incorporated into the individual’s transsituational self.’ (Cahill 1987: 81). Such socialisation processes are all involved in the achievement of sexual differences in social interaction (Ibid: 82–83). 258 J Tanusree Paul ∗ TABLE 10.1 Noon Evening Noon Evening 402 26 08 10 0 4 2 6 16 8 2 4 6 2 0 4 0 16 26 2 30 10 8 2 2 12 0 2 20 12 2 6 8 2 0 2 16 0 0 0 24 0 34 2 42 16 24 8 20 12 18 4 Man Woman Man Woman Man Woman Man Woman Middle-aged Persons (Mobile and Stationary) Respondents’ Perception about Stationary Location of Persons moving Persons stationary Cinema Cafeteria Lottery shop Tea Stall Paan Shop Park SchoolGarment ShopGeneral ShopStationery Shop ce Ofﬁ 18 4 4 0 40 28 14 4 8 4 8 0 26 24 10 4 0 4 8 38 0 28 16 12 6 6 20 22 0 14 0 0 Figures show percentage of respondents who perceived men or women to be mobile stationary. ∗ Source: Primary survey in Kolkata, December 2007–January 2008. Note: Type of place Leisure Space Purposive Activity Space Vegetable Market 0 34 4 4 14 20 12 8 Public Spaces and Everyday Lives J 259 sophisticated enclosure provides a kind of purdah for the users, keeping them away from the full gaze of the public. It has been observed, as discussed later, that women perceive low-class, illiterate men as potential threats to their bodily integrity. Teastalls users and their proﬁ les make them illegitimate spaces as far as women are concerned (see Table 10.2).

TABLE 10.2 Respondents’ Perceptions about Occupancy of Places of Recreation∗

Type of places Lottery Tea Paan Persons Time Cinema Cafeteria shop stall shop Park Teenagers Noon Boys 50 18 0 4 2 16 Girls 30 30 0 2 2 16 Evening Boys 14 14 0 0 0 10 Girls 8 16 0 2 2 4 Middle-aged Noon Men 4 34 4 32 14 6 Persons Women 6 48 0 2 0 6 for a Chat Evening Men 10 32 12 34 22 8 Women 8 14 0 0 0 4 Stationary Noon Men 2 4 24 26 30 10 Middle-aged Women 2 8 0 2 0 2 Persons Evening Men 2 12 34 20 12 6 Women 2 8 2 2 0 2 Source: Primary Survey in Kolkata December 2007–January 2008. Note: ∗Figures show percentage of respondents who perceived men or women’s participation in leisure spaces.

The discussion reveals that men have been perceived to be anywhere in public places at any time; women can ‘intrude’ these places only to assuage speciﬁ c purposes of domesticity and they have to be in ‘legitimate’ ways in that they have to comply with socially sanctioned ‘appropriate’ norms in terms of the places where they can go, the time when they can go and the code of conduct they are to follow in public places. How women cope with public space and how they manufacture personal safety is the next issue explored in the study. The sampled women were asked to trace the (unfamiliar) path they would follow traversing from points A to B as marked on the map and account for the reasons. Figure 10.2 depicts the results. It can be seen that as many as 58 per cent of the women would avoid footpaths occupied by squatter settlements. This percentage 260 J Tanusree Paul

FIGURE 10.2 Negotiating a Public Place: A Street

Source: Field Survey at Kolkata, December 2007–February 2008. goes up to 96 per cent in the case of liquor shops, garage and truck parking while 94 per cent women avoid lottery shops. Other places that these women would avoid were tea and paan shops and vegetable markets. Out of these, liquor/lottery shops, garage and truck parking were Public Spaces and Everyday Lives J 261 strictly masculine spaces. The reasons offered by the respondents were quite interesting. The responses ranged from avoidance because of ‘unfriendly men’ to ‘feeling of discomfort’. A few respondents were of the opinion that masculine spaces were frequented by low class and illiterate men. Less than 1 per cent of the 50 women in the sample traced a straight path from point A to B in order to traverse the street ‘as fast as possible’ since it was unfamiliar to them. Women saw masculine spaces as threatening even though in public because the places themselves were imbued with certain meanings where ‘strange’ men outnumber familiar faces. Also, for women to be seen in such places would be dishonourable. Niranjana (2001: 124) observes:

… the female, or feminine, does not constitute an undifferentiated locus of sexualization; rather there is a constant attempt to weigh and legislate between diverse subject positions within the feminine itself, all of which lends itself to the consolidation of the ideal female self, inhabiting socially approved spaces in modes that are culturally enjoined.

The discussion so far reveals that men are assumed to have more commendable claims over certain places than women. Women not only have to legitimise their presence in such places, their own sense of self leads them, consciously or unconsciously, to reproduce the gendered behaviour articulated through various spatial patterns in terms of choosing a speciﬁ c route and avoiding another. By withdrawing from certain places women seem to re-entrench male control and claim over these public spaces. According to Ranade (2007: 1522):

... while safety is too closely associated to actual, physical violence, discomfort falls in that in-between space of implied threat — a sense of being made to feel that you are in the wrong place/time. This is done through being liked at verbally assaulted (catcalls), and very often through self-policing by women themselves.

Urban Public Space and its Occupancy by People

It is evident that the perceptions of the people and their normative understanding about public places would order their visibility in and utilisation of these places. The fact that a woman’s access to public 262 J Tanusree Paul places is socially sanctioned only in the event of purposive utilisation gets reiterated through visual images.5 One such place was a park in south Kolkata. The park is surrounded by a residential area with a cinema hall and a cafeteria located at one corner of the park and a sports club at the other. Morning and evening had distinctly different patterns. In the morning, men and women of all ages go for walks. A cricket coaching camp also runs at this time. It was interesting to observe that many middle-aged women were sitting in the park, either in groups or near the point where the boys were practising. They were the mothers of the boys who were playing; girls were conspicuously absent. In the evening, men outnumbered women. Men were found sitting alone in the park; women on the other hand were either with men or in their peer groups (see Figures 10.3 and 10.4). In the ofﬁ ce area, men outnumber women throughout the day (see Figure 10.5). Men lunched outside in the afternoon while

FIGURE 10.3 Occupancy of Park for Recreation (Morning)

Source: Field Survey at Kolkata, December 2007–February 2008. Map not to scale.

5 Photographs of different functional areas of the city of Kolkata were taken at regular intervals of time during different parts of the day. The information about men and women’s occupancy of space, as emerging from the photographs, were then collated and mapped with the help of digital cartographic technique using ARC map software. Public Spaces and Everyday Lives J 263

FIGURE 10.4 Occupancy of Park for Recreation (Evening)

Source: Field Survey at Kolkata, December 2007–February 2008. Map not to scale.

FIGURE 10.5 Occupancy of Ofﬁ ce Area (Afternoon)

Source: Field Survey at Kolkata, December 2007–February 2008. Map not to scale. very few women were seen to do so (see Ranade 2007). In the evening, a number of men were seen chatting in scattered groups (see Figure 10.6). The notion of freedom and greater mobility for working women thus appear to be a myth. Their activities too are 264 J Tanusree Paul

FIGURE 10.6 Occupancy of Ofﬁ ce Area (Evening)

Source: Field Survey at Kolkata, December 2007–February 2008. Map not to scale. discernibly proscribed by the constructs of ‘ideal’ feminine which devolves around respectability, familial responsibilities and purposeful utilisation of public places. In fact, a group discussion with working women unravelled this issue. The participants maintained that the marital status of a woman plays a signiﬁ cant role in their access to and utilisation of public spaces. They claimed that while an unmarried woman may be ‘allowed’ to be more independent and access public spaces more freely for their recreation and other purposes; a married woman tends to be more proscribed by her family obligations and societal sanctions. Marriage repositions her place within the home and her visibility in public spaces gets signiﬁ cantly regulated, even curtailed. She is then expected to run the household and be an ideal homemaker. Even her employment outside does not widen her space much. She is expected to take charge of the domestic sphere immediately after her working hours outside the home are over. She is ‘permitted’ to stay out only in case of an urgent need. In a sense, therefore, employment fails to actually emancipate her from the shackles of familial and societal unjust proscriptions. Before marriage, she is refrained in the name of physical vulnerability; after marriage, social commitments keep her away from public spaces. Semi-public places seem to conform to similar behavioural patterns. At Boubazar, a residential area in north Kolkata, it was Public Spaces and Everyday Lives J 265 observed that men occupied public spaces mostly in leisurely activities. They were playing cards, chatting in groups and hanging around at tea stalls. On the other hand, women were found moving quickly from one place to another in purposeful movement (see Figures 10.7 and 10.8).

Conclusion

Spaces and places are engendered by a complex set of processes. These include ‘gendered messages’ (Massey 1994: 179) imparted by the symbolic attributes attached to these spaces besides the threat of physical violence. It is the former which appears to be the chief hindrance in women’s mobility in public spaces of Kolkata. Women in the city face constraints in accessing public spaces even in the absence of potential physical threats which has often been considered to be the most pervasive deterrent in women’s mobility in other cities in India (Visawanath and Mehrotra 2007) as well as in the West viz. Scandinavian cities (Pain 1997, 2001; Koskela 1999; Koskela and Pain 2000) and US cities (Clemente and Kleiman 1976; DuBow et al. 1979; Ferraro and LaGrange 1987; Hindelang et al. 1978; Warr and Stafford 1983 cited in Ferraro 1996). In Kolkata, the norms of social legitimacy and constructions about ‘ideal’ femininity subject women to restricted access to public spaces. It is not fear that inhibits women but their larger social responsibility of nurturing the family and upholding feminine virtues and respectability that precludes their movement in the public. This gets reﬂ ected in the gendered occupance and use of space in the city. Most of the respondents maintain that Kolkata is a safer metro compared to other large cities in India. As a matter of fact, not all the women in Kolkata fear violence or social stigma while negotiating public spaces — an observation endorsed by the ﬁ eld survey whereby about 32 per cent of the respondents said that they never felt unsafe in public places. Even as they admitted to being victims of physical intimidation in public places, such experiences did not always keep them off the public. They resorted to self reliance and courage to negotiate these spaces. They also took recourse to certain coping strategies such as dressing properly, maintaining decorous behaviour, avoiding going for late-night outings or moving in groups to overcome the ‘discomfort’ experienced in certain public places reckoned as male spaces. Their robust involvement in theatre, arts, fairs and other cultural activities 266 J Tanusree Paul

FIGURE 10.7 Occupancy of Semi-Public Space (4.45 pm–5.00 pm)

Source: Field survey in Kolkata, December 2007–February 2008. Map not to scale. Public Spaces and Everyday Lives J 267

Figure 10.8 Occupancy of Semi-Public Space (5.00 pm–5.15pm)

Source: Field Survey at Kolkata, December 2007–February 2008. Map not to scale. 268 J Tanusree Paul point to an interactive public life. As a matter of fact, these very processes of negotiation may be reckoned as indicative of women’s agency. Despite such agency exhibited by women, public spaces in Kolkata are engendered in myriad ways. Although the public and private are no longer mutually exclusive domains, women’s presence in the former does not challenge the asymmetrical power relations operationalised by the idiom of separate spheres. The study shows that the city’s inherently public places like central business areas, wholesale markets which harbour the chief livelihood opportunities as well as the recreational places, appear to be more masculine in nature. Women who are ‘permitted’ to step into these places largely stay indoors in their workplaces. Seldom do they loiter as is the case with men. Again, the places of recreation are marked with considerable ambivalence. While some places like lottery shops or liquor shops have been identiﬁ ed as typical ‘male hang-outs’, places such as parks, cinemas or cafeterias have been perceived to be used by both sexes for their leisurely activities. However, women’s legitimate right to use these spaces vary with the time of the day as well as the age of the users. It has been observed that a far greater proportion of respondents, who participated in the cognitive mapping exercise, perceive young teenage women to be present in a cinema or a cafeteria as compared to those with respect to middle-aged women engaged in similar activities. Marriage as an institution, perhaps, further re- entrenches women’s place within the home. Moreover, irrespective of age, women’s presence in public places remarkably declines in the late evening and at night. The picture is no different even within the ‘parochial’ domain or the neighbourhood spaces where women are likely to feel more in comfort and command. Through these places as well, women have been observed to navigate in rapid purposeful movements. It is worthwhile to mention here that adda, a leisurely chat in public courtyards, forms an intrinsic component of Kolkata’s neighbourhood or para culture. However, adda has typically been a male prerogative and women are almost never seen to indulge in it. The fact that men have been observed to be chatting, playing cards or just standing in different public spaces during the survey further adds strength to this argument. In fact, such women hanging around in public places are looked upon as ‘bad’ women. Public places, therefore, clearly emerge as the locales where sex- differentiated practices are acted out. Human agents create and recreate social structures by way of expressing themselves and repeating Public Spaces and Everyday Lives J 269 these activities. This further perpetrates asymmetrical power relations in a society and puts space in a state of becoming, as many scholars have pointed out. A male or a female body, through its occupance of space, reproduces the material social relations and by being governed by the dominant social discourse of what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’, re-entrench these social structures. As Ranade points out ‘in space, they mark the practice of a set of material and social relations that both produce and are produced by the dominant code of gender- space’ (2007: 1525). After gendered meanings are invested in spaces, they aid in sustaining the disparate social relations and structures. The repercussions ensuing from such social control and unequal power relations are far more nuanced. It impedes a woman’s major life decisions, for instance choosing a house or job and obstructs access to empowering information and consequently adversely affects her ‘capabilities’. In other words, it jeopardises her ‘real freedom’ which is essential for a valuable life. Being largely excluded, either directly or indirectly from the public sphere, women also lack access to structural and institutional sources of power which consequently robs them of their inner capability to negotiate and resist asymmetrical power and status relations. Bibliography

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Saraswati Raju is Professor of Social Geography at the Centre for the Study of Regional Development (CSRD), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Educated in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh and trained at Syracuse University, USA, her teaching and research interests are in issues related to gendered marginalities in social development, with a focus on labour market outcomes, access to literacy/education/skills and empowerment, and gender and space. She has published extensively on these issues in national and international journals of repute. She is one of the founding members of the International Geographic Union (IGU) Commission on Gender and Geography. On the editorial boards of Annals of Association of American Geographers, Antipode and Progress in Human Geography, amongst others, she has been at the forefront in introducing gender studies in Indian geography — her co-written Atlas on Women and Men in India has been praised as a pioneering landmark in this direction by academics, members of civil societies and development practitioners. Her recent co-edited books include Colonial and Post-colonial Geographies of India (2006) and her co-authored book titled NGOs and the State in 21st Century: India and Ghana (2006). Raju has received many prestigious visiting awards and fellowships in her long and illustrious career.

Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt is currently a Fellow at the Resource Manage- ment in Asia Paciﬁ c Program, Crawford School of Economics and Government, ANU College of Asia and the Paciﬁ c, The Australian National University (ANU). She has researched the women, gender and environment interface since 1993–94 when she was based in the University of Burdwan, a large regional university located in eastern India. She has written widely on challenges relating to gender in the extractive industries and water sectors. Her recent books include Water First: Issues and Challenges for Nations and Communities in South Asia (co-edited, 2008), Women Miners in Developing Notes on Editors J 309

Countries: Pit Women and Others (co-edited, 2006) and Fluid Bonds: Views on Gender and Water (2006). In ANU, Kuntala teaches courses on gender and development, and lectures on indigenous peoples and resource projects and research process courses in Masters of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development. More information on her action-research projects is available on www. asmasiapaciﬁ c.org, http://empoweringcommunities.anu.edu.au and http://rspas.anu.edu.au/gwn. Notes on Contributors

Mohammad Sanjeer Alam was trained in social geography and social demography at the Centre for the Study of Regional Development (CSRD), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, from where he received his Ph.D. in 2005. Currently, he is Associate Fellow at Lokniti/Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi. CSDS is widely known for undertaking empirical research on contemporary issues concerning the society and polity of the country. Sanjeer Alam has researched extensively on socio-spatial inequalities in access to publicly provided goods and services with particular focus on disadvantaged groups, including gender. His work focuses in particular on the socio-spatial dynamics that enhance or hinder inclusion of gender as well as his-torically marginalised groups in the public sphere. Alam’s work has been published in reputed academic and professional journals and his book — Community, Education and Context — is forthcoming.

Arpita Banerjee is completing doctoral degree at the Centre for the Study of Regional Development (CSRD), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. A social geographer by training, Banerjee received her M.Sc. and M.Phil. in Geography from the University of Calcutta and Jawaharlal Nehru Universities, respectively. In 2006, she received a research fellowship from the University Grants Commission of India. Her research interests in gender and space issues lie in the context of inter-secting demographic, ethnic and caste/class parameters. For her Ph.D., she is exploring poor migrant women’s ‘autonomy’ as expressed through labour market outcomes, and their identity formations in negotiating/contesting traditional patriarchal roles juxtaposed with the expanding social and activity spaces in Kolkata city. She has recently published an article — ‘Gendered Mobility: Women Migrants and Work in Urban India’ (co-authored, 2009).

Mohammad Izhar Hassan is currently a Professor, Department of Geography, Maharshi Dayanand University in Haryana. His teaching Notes on Contributors J 311 career began as a lecturer in geography in 1991 on completion of his Ph.D. from the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. In 2004, Izhar Hassan was granted a University Grants Commission research award for three years to work on an independent project on ‘Demographic Situation and its Development Implications in Orissa’ at Ravenshaw University, Cuttack. He has written a textbook — Population Geography (2006) — which is used by Masters-level students. He has also published a number of research papers in various journals and has supervised doctoral and M.Phil. dissertations. The broad area of Hassan’s interest is population analysis in geography and of late, he has been engaged in research on gender issues in geography. He has contributed a number of papers exploring the nature of gender relations in India as seen through the demographic lens.

Taneesha Devi Mohan is a social geographer by training and is currently enrolled in the Ph.D. programme at the Centre for the Study of Regional Development (CSRD), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research interests focus on the gendered characteristic of space and place. In her M.Phil. dissertation she explored the changing nature of gendered spaces within the sexually segregated private domain, and examined how these spatial arrangements have altered the status of women and their negotiation capacities. As a social geographer, she is interested in understanding the changing nature of ‘spatial institutions’ and its effect on the lives of women. Taneesha has also worked at the Centre for Women’s Development Studies on issues related to gender, migration and women’s rights.

Tanusree Paul is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the Centre for the Study of Regional Development (CSRD), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Born and brought up in Calcutta, she is a geographer by training. She graduated from Lady Brabourne College, Kolkata in 2004, securing the sixth position in the University of Calcutta and completed her M.A. in 2006 and M.Phil. in 2008 from CSRD. She was awarded a Junior Research Fellowship in June 2006 by the University Grants Commission. Thrust in the socially sensitive ambience of JNU’s academic curriculum, she has developed an immense interest in social issues and specialised in regional development and social geography. Her research interests span gender and development issues and her M.Phil. dissertation was entitled ‘Women and Gendered Public Spaces: A Case of Kolkata’. 312 J Doing Gender, Doing Geography

Gopa Samanta is currently Reader in the Department of Geography, University of Burdwan, West Bengal. She received her Ph.D. in 2002 on rural–urban interactions in Burdwan. Since then, she has been engaged in researching gender in the context of different issues such as rural development, poverty, microﬁ nance and urban governance. Her journey from a small remote village of Bankura district to the University of Burdwan as a single woman has enriched her research of viewing gender across places and societies in India. She has completed three research projects out of which two are on gender studies — the work presented here was funded by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) under the title ‘Microﬁ nance and Gender in Rural Bengal’. Her current research project focuses on globalisation, urban governance and basic services in West Bengal. Gopa has been a visiting fellow at the Australian National University and the French Institute of Pondicherry.

Pallabi Sil is presently Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Vivekananda Mahavidyalaya, Burdwan, West Bengal. She has completed her Ph.D. on middle-class women in informal activities. An awareness of the lack of gender approach in geographical studies in India steered Pallabi to investigate the differences in perceptions between women and men of different classes, castes, regions and religions. Since completing her Ph.D., her work has been published in national and international journals. Her research focuses on women and work in the context of globalisation and on women’s perceptions of the environment. Recently, she has been pursuing a project on gender-based discriminations in health services, to further incorporate gender perspectives in her geographical analyses of the contemporary world.

Manisha Singh is Senior Lecturer, Departments of Geography and Women’s Studies and Development, Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow. A social geographer by training, she is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the Centre for the Study of Regional Development (CSRD), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research interests centre on the ‘existential spatiality’ of gendered lives. Currently, she is studying the salience of location (particularly neighbourhoods) in shaping women’s attitudes and behavior, speciﬁ cally toward childcare. Manisha’s doctoral work has been funded by the Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi Notes on Contributors J 313 and Tokyo Foundation, Japan — the latter, through the award of the prestigious Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leader’s Fellowship Fund (SYLFF). Currently, she is a visiting scholar at York University, Toronto under the aegis of SYLFF. As a social geographer Singh is particularly interested in the ‘nestled hierarchies of scale’, speciﬁ cally with regard to women’s issues. She has been involved with groups that adopt a social approach to world’s emerging concerns at the global (Copenhagen Consensus 2008) and regional levels (Building a Better Asia, under the aegis of the Asian Dialogue Society, Singapore and the Nippon Group of Foundations, Japan).