To be or not to be1: the location of women in public policy . Devaki Jain The Argument The main argument of my paper is that despite great leaps in uncovering of knowledge, as well as extraordinarily skillful strategizing, neither has the value of women’s advisories to public policy been recognized; nor have the tools been adequate to achieve that recognition. My argument is that there are in built difficulties, problematiques, in getting the inclusion of women in public policy right, which I attempt to capture in the title to be or not to be. This is the ancient and well traversed, and relevant to many other social groupings question: separate or “integrated”, also known as the difference and equal debate. On the grounds that centuries of exclusion, of deep unbridgeable differences, have to be overcome it is often argued that the identity tag, has its strategic value and is a necessary tool for negotiation of justice. But the identity ‘tag’ may not be “valid” as there are multiple identities with their embedded hierarchies within an identity tag, like women or even dalit or black. There is enough material on these debates from the racism2 as well as dalit discourse.3 I often refer to the well known argument between Gandhiji and Ambedkar to illustrate the problematique of the separate vs integrate dilemmas. One of the most notable and still contentious issues in India in the field of social justice, is the debate on how to enable the castes who had been historically excluded and oppressed to level up, and overcome this historical blemish. Prior to drafting the constitution of free India in 1946-47, Dr. Ambedkar, demanded reservation, special provisions, ladders to “uplift” them from their neglected positions. Gandhi, argued that by thus doing, these castes would be marked, their identity made explicit, and therefore they would always be “separated”, even continue to receive the ‘n’ demeaning gaze that they have historically received. and be impeded in being absorbed into the body politic, into social spaces as equals. To Gandhi integration meant muting of difference, and appeal to the moral sense of human beings to overcome their discriminatory mindsets. Dr Ambedkar, reasoned that this was an impractical hope and special provisions are crucial for compensating for historically embedded and experienced in Justice. The old debate still haunts this “difference “ and has also led to ideas of “reservation “ for women, and such legal, as opposed to moral mechanisms, to compensate for such practices of exclusion and subordination. The debate however rages on whether such provisions have 1 In Hamlet, Shakespeare immortalized the ultimate existential question: "To be or not to be?" This philosophical question that distinguishes the human mind touches on the universal experience of doubt, of questioning. Both of these elements of Hamlet's question resonate in this analysis 2 Faye V. Harrison, Facing Racism and the Moral Responsibility of Human Rights Knowledge, New York Academy of Sciences (Reprinted from Ethics and Anthropology, Volume 925 of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, December 2000 3 Devaki Jain, ‘Gender inequity as racism’, The Hindu, 23 September 2000 E:\downloads\KDC\Devaki jain.doc - 1 - reduced or exacerbated the inequalities,4 whether they have not been scarred by the ‘creamy layer’ within the ‘excluded’ and soon. Emphasizing the separate identity, such as women or dalit, also invites among other items exclusion, perpetuates it .The room of ones own, to take the metaphor from Virginia Woolf 5 does give the space for self strength. But it can also become the ghetto In a book I have just completed called “Women, Development, and the UN - A Sixty-Year Quest for Equality and Justice,”6 I have reviewed the historical struggle of women to be understood and included and given space in the international arena of justice, I found that whenever they did achieve some “success” in their quest for equality, it was through strategizing on collective identity as woman, as well as inclusion of even one woman in a drafting committee A revealing and more current story is how when the Constitution of the yet to be “born free” South Africa was being drafted in Geneva (prior to the democratic elections of 1994) by some of the leading members of the African National Congress, Dr. Frene Ginwala was asked to go to Geneva from London to assist them. At the end of the day, the draft read “he” and “he” and “he”. Dr. Ginwala, being junior, in ANC hierarchy, asked the leaders to let her take the draft to her room and type it. When she returned with the draft the next morning, she had substituted all “hes” with “shes”. The others were aghast but Frene said, “Why not? ‘She’ includes ‘he’.” At this point they gave in. The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa thus has he/she throughout its text. 7 In the book I have later used a metaphor, the Peace Tent, as a symbol of this strategic space, the room of one’s own for mobilizing collective strength as well as showing the intersectionality of various identities and flaws in the classical dichotomies in the social sciences, and then raised the question is the Peace tent the space for “unity within difference” - a power house or a ghetto?8 --To be or not to be? “Integrate” into the mainstream, or remain apart, challenging its legitimacy and its values? The question of gendering public policy is intimately related to the answer to this question… If the table, i.e. the nature of public policy, as arising out of the given theories and frameworks of analysis and data are unacceptable to say a group, i.e. women, or even dalits as Gopal Guru9 argues, in his essay ‘How Egalitarian Are the Social Sciences in India?’ then integrating into that set up is surrender apart from being inaccurate ,flawed and would 4 Bipin Chandra, Mridula Mukherjee, Aditya Mukherjee, KN Pannikar, Sucheta Mahajan, “Indias’s Struggle For Independence,” Penguin Books, 1988 5 Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own_(Granada, 1977 Published: 1929) 6 Devaki Jain, Women, Development, and the UN- A Sixty-Year Quest for Equality and Justice, Indiana University Press, to be released in August 2005, New York, (Website: www.unhistory.org or book can be ordered from IUP by email: [email protected]) 7 As South Africa's Madam Speaker, Ginwala Still Shaping History, Advance Archive, September 11, 2000 8 Devaki Jain, ‘Finding Strategic Identities in an Unequal World: Feminist Reflections from India’, in Faye V. Harrison, ed., Resisting Racism and Xenophobia: Global Perspectives on Race, Gender and Human Rights, AltaMira Press, California, to be released in September 2005 9 Gopal Guru, How Egalitarian Are the Social Sciences in India?, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXXVII No. 51 December 14, 2002 E:\downloads\KDC\Devaki jain.doc - 2 - perhaps lead to undesirable results . But this staying away , therefore , from participating also has its negative effects, ie exclusion .This is one of the dilemmas . The second arises from the nature of women’s intellectual history., or experiences of reconstructing knowledge. It is well known that the study of women, as well as their activism, revealed the flaws in the facts and the analysis in the social sciences (even physical sciences as was told to me by the scientists at the NIAS 10 Thus women have entered into a challenging mode, challenging the given11. Further since there is the question of finding a basis for identity on the basis of “sex”, - as all the usual stratifications, class, caste etc apply here - there is a tendency to question every notion or concept which attempts an arrival at a boundary for identity fixing. In my book I call this the nethi nethi syndrome, borrowing from the Upanishads. It is definition by negation, but the negation defies unification. Then there are the significant differences in mainstream political choices, and since the voice that women need to develop to influence public policy, has to be political , a presence in power structures, these strong differences in their mainstream political identity, also impedes solidarity. The notion of reconstructing knowledge has also been challenged, eg by Linda Gordon a feminist historian who12 argues that: “The feminist reconstitution of knowledge no longer seems to me so radical a break as it once did. … Indeed, I would venture to say that the rhetoric of the uniqueness of our intellectual project reflects a growing distance of scholars from the totalizing tendencies of a strong political feminist movement, and its desire to incorporate, even to subsume, other radical traditions… So even re constructure theory, adds to the difficulties of building a uniting politics. Thus my argument is that whether one looks at the bricks on which development discourse, theories and policies are built or whether from the lobbying and intervening by the women’s lobbies, there are serious obstacles to gendering of public policy – Naturally , I do think we can overcome this impasse, on both sides – once we take note of it and in this paper starting from some illustrations, I will move to some proposals I would illustrate my gloomy views through four or five examples, whose interpretation is of course is my own, not necessarily one that all those who are engaged in women’s battles with the demeaning gaze would agree. I would try to draw on some Karnataka efforts, but the primary thrust would be on the challenge of being included meaningfully in public policy. 10 Devaki Jain, Women’s Participation in the History of Ideas: The Importance of Reconstructing Knowledge, for National Institute for Advanced Studies, 6 February 2002.