The economy, development, democracy and women’s movements

1. Economy and Development:

One of the crucial concerns of the contemporary women’s movements especially in the countries of the South relates to the impact of the global political economy and the developmental policies upon women. Here, the issues like those of inflation, displacement, deforestation, unemployment, poverty have been raised by the women’s organizations because all these issues have affected women.

These issues are the fall-out of the process of economic modernization, increasing mechanization, liberalization and globalization. The new international economic order that aims at one unified global market with no barriers to trade and that has forced the countries of the South to follow the Structural Adjustment Programmes [SAP] with its emphasis on privatization, trade liberalization and cuts in subsidies has long term impact on women.

They have been dislodged from their traditional source of employment in the small scale industries as a result of the competition that these industries face from the organized industry and have not been forced to work under increasingly exploitative conditions. Meanwhile, they have also been facing the brunt of the deforestation, displacement, unemployment, poverty etc.

Of late, the women’s organizations have started voicing their concern over the inherent gender bias underlying the development strategies and techniques. Hence, they have been raising the demands for sustainable development based on principles of equality and equity. They are also asking for basic rights of survival, right to livelihood, right to common property resources, right to identity and the need to regenerate the environment.

Women’s groups have been actively raising the issues like those of displacement resulting from the process of development. It is the result of the voices raised by women’s organizations all over the world that women, instead of being viewed merely as the recipients of the development programmes, are mow being considered as the key actors of the development process.

Women’s movements along with other mass based movements therefore, are in the process of redefining development and offering alternative paradigms. Calling the present form of development as anti-people and anti-women, the women’s groups call for a pattern of development based upon principles of equality and linked with nature.

It is this concern of women for nature that has taken the form of a unique form of movement commonly known as ‘Ecofeminism’. Attempting to voice the concerns of the marginalized, especially the women, ecofeminism call upon women to act against ecological degradation. The presumption is that when nature is destroyed, women get affected the most.

Ecofeminism, therefore, it that form of women’s movement that addresses inequality between humans and nature as well as between men and women. It not only merely questions the perspectives of development, but it also challenges the dominant idea that science and technology are measures of progress. It therefore lays emphasis on the alternate knowledge systems.

2.Democracy, Civil Society and Women’s Movements:

Women’s movements along with other social movements, all over the globe, have contributed to the process of democratization of the polity and society. This process of democratization has also resulted in reassessing some of the concepts related to emancipation, rights and social justice for women.

It is the result of such reassessment that the discourse of women’s movements has become focused on issues based on ‘rights’. Demand has been raised for women being treated as full citizens enjoying the social, civil and political rights and gaining institutional power.

Citizenship is understood in a broad way extending beyond the political realm. Hence the question of women’s rights does not remain limited to the public sphere but gets broadened to include the social and the private spheres governing women’s lives.

Hence, the issues related to women which were earlier considered as falling in the ‘private’ sphere are very much part of the politics of the women’s movements. The women’s movements therefore have challenged the distinction between the political and the non-political, public and the private.