‘ Those Voices Unheard’ : Re-negotiating Gender,Masculinity and Participation

Introduction

The paper looks into the politics of participatory approaches to development, further stating about ‘inclusive’ strategies and ‘empowering’ mechanism (Gaventa, 1995, 2002; Cornwall, 2002), by engaging men in gender equality programs (MASVAW, 2004; Das and Others, 2012; Roy and Das, 2014). Based on an ethnographic study of men and their masculinity in rural Maharashtra, India, this study investigates the politics of how parallel approaches to participation is based on creating ‘consciousness’ and a sense of ‘wisdom’, by means of which men engage themselves in understanding gender inequality and participate in various programmatic approaches aimed at changing their perceptions and behaviour. Unlike other participatory approaches to development that implicate elements of imperialistic strategies of power and control over the rural poor (Mosse, 1995); this version of participation challenges the hegemonic control of western imperialism in the name of ‘development’ and the colonial–nationalist power in order to illuminate the philosophy and epistemology of the marginal population that is shaped by the marginal poor themselves, with their own initiative. In that respect, the paper makes an account of the sensibilities of a men’s group in a village, as understanding the everyday inequalities among women, and the various disharmonies they encounter. The paper also voices the politics of women’s rights in domestic abuse, and their self strategizing by an innate sense of empowerment, as they embody in claiming their own rights.

The paper is further influenced by the postcolonial metaphor and the writings of Gayatri Chakrabarty Spivak. In her understanding of ‘class consciousness’ Spivak emphasizes the importance of ‘class’ as a significant agent to deconstruct the hegemonic norms, by means of collective awareness and the mobilization of certain marginal poor that creates the possibility of change (Spivak, 1988; Morton, 2003).

Here, Spivak’s notion of ‘class’ is innate to her understanding of the collective – signifying a group with uniform economic, social and political structure. Further, her idea is analogous to the critic to participatory approach to development by the Western/international development practitioners. Hence, with the Spivakian thought, the understanding of this paper is from ‘below’ –exploring the voices, insights and desires of the subaltern population. ¹

In her theoretical contention of the postcolonial metaphor, Gayatri Chakrabarty Spivak talks about European intellectuals and their perception of the ‘other’ – creating a sense of imperialist strategy, and the ways in which the West perceives the non-West. Spivak further articulates the construction of the ‘other’ that is formed through a sense of oppression, or employing the non-Western ‘poor’ people as a resource for the Western profitability – so as to make use of this people as ‘native informants’ for the Western intellectual enquiry (Spivak and Guha, 1988; Maggio, 2007; see also Chatterjee, 1986). Similarly, with regard to a critique of certain participatory approaches to development, David Mosse (1995) evaluates the participatory rural appraisal, PRA, as a development tool that mystifies and enchants the rural poor of the non-Western countries into certain set of activities and ‘rapport building’ – promising ‘development’, which in turn is a strategic expression of domination and overpowering. ² Likewise, Illan Kapoor’s (2005) assertion of participatory development recounts to the idea of imperial rule and the politics of power –recanting to the ‘complicity of desire’ of the non-western subjects – institutionalizing ‘corporate strategies’ and commercializing the rural poor as the agency of their development project.

This further brings into account the articulation by Spivak of ‘representation’ as borrowed from Marx – Vertreten (Adamson, 1986; Spivak, 1988). Spivak further says that the poor, marginalized or the ‘subaltern’ can never speak for themselves, but there is always someone to speak for them. This sense of ‘representing’ always silences the subaltern, and reaffirms their minority position by an imposition of power over these subjects, which Spivak calls ‘executive control’. In this way, the minority’s subject position is neglected and the ‘colonizer’ constructs themself using tactics of ‘marketability’ of these poor; assuring community empowerment and ‘development’.

Taking into account the postcolonial discourses of Spivak and the critique of the classical participatory approach to development, this paper is a blend of Spivakian epistemologies with a new way of looking into participatory politics.

The paper reports on an ethnographic study of the narratives of men and their changing masculinities in a village in Sangola, in the state of Maharashtra, India. It explores the politics of participation of these men in gender equality programs – looking at the narratives of changing behaviour, roles, attitudes and perception of men towards women. It also talks about the different ways of programmatic approach among men’s group, the ways of representation, and various communicative mechanisms employed to create awareness for gender equality. The next section moves on to highlight women’s power and empowerment in the village, by a sense of collective mobilization by the formation of informal women’s group – realizing and claiming their rights. Women’s empowerment is further recounted by the ways in which the girls in a school are taught with marshal arts’ training, and contesting violence and abuse at home and workplace with the aid of the law and the police.

Men, roles and masculinities: the politics of transformation

In the villages around Sangola, men have altered their mind-set and behaviour towards women to be less aggressive, more understanding and sympathetic to household chores and responsibilities.

During my ethnography in the Manegaon village of the Sangola town, situated in the Sholapur district of Maharashtra, Western India, an animator/gender-educator named Baburao recollected how his effort to create a gender-equality program had been hindered by the politics of caste inequality in the village. ³ According to him, the small road that cuts across the village segregates the Dalit (backward caste) on one side, and the Marathas (upper caste) on the other. In addition, the dominant male representation Panchayat, the village governing body is an impediment to these sorts of initiatives. The village resembled a small patch of settlement, with 100 households, a basic community centre for men’s recreation with a room that is used as a maternity ward. Two nurses are on duty from morning (11 am) until 5 pm in the evening to serves the patients. A doctor visits twice in the week for health checks of the children: at that time, the maternity ward becomes the children’s health centre. The village also has a junior school, up to standard eight; extensive pomegranate orchards; and a few small-scale grocery shops on either side of the road. The villagers must travel to Sangola town for other major shopping, hospitals, travelling long distances by bus or trains, and other needs.

During my interaction with the men in the village, I sensed a sort of fear among these men with regard to the gender equality program. According to them, gender equality will liberate women, reducing the extent to which women have responsibilities in their households. Some of the men also mentioned that there was a chance that women would abandon their husbands and befriend other men. Women’s liberation will come with the discourse of higher education and employment, making men here wary that gender equality programs will create economic independence, leading to women establishing an independent voice in the society. And, lastly, there is a social fear that these progressive women might bring disgrace and shame to the society, because this is an alien concept to neighbouring villages. This might lead to the village being excluded from and ostracized by from the nearby communities.

Baburao, the village tailor, has shown significant interest in the gender-equality programs. His motivation has been his mother who was once elected as the Sarpanch, the head of the village governance. But, when I met his mother, she stated that during her days of being a Sarpanch, it was merely a notional position that had no voice or power to make any changes, with men in the village being the actual decision makers. She yearned to establish a high school in the village for women and to start an adult education program. It failed to materialize due the obstacles in the village and, more importantly, because of the lack of support from the men.

Similar to the few other villages in Sangola where workshops and training sessions have been conducted, Baburao has been successful in mobilizing young men in the village. A programmatic approach to gender equality is being used, engaging the men, with segregation of bhibhahit (married) and abhibhabhit (unmarried) men as the central strategy for reaching the targets. ⁴ According to the ‘Astitva’, this sort of division has been created to understand the ways and approaches by which men show their masculinity before and after marriage. It aims to address similar mindsets, and explore multiple ways in which masculinity is demonstrated with regard to their relationship to women at home and in the workplace.

During my several visits to the Manegaon village, Baburao managed to introduce me to many other members of the village. I had many opportunities to interact with the women in the village, the gram panchayat, the village health centres, schools, farmers and lastly, the bhibhahit and abhibhahit members.

During my discussions with the abhibhahit, the unmarried men, they stated the fact that, the gender trainings had enriched them with vast knowledge about women, their reproductive health, discrimination, the issues of not addressing women’s tasks at home, underpayment of women at workplaces, violence and abuse, and so on. They further mentioned their transformation due to the training program, and the other young men in the village who demand that their needs be met by their mother and sister. They observed that there is domestic discrimination based on gender, with both young and old men always favoured in their home, receiving the best gifts and more food and performing no domestic work; whereas their sisters at home were always excluded from these benefits. Further, they added that they slept long hours and remained unemployed, staying at home or socializing with friends in the village. In contrast, their mothers and sisters worked long hours to generate money for the family’s sustenance and living. They worked as domestic servants in the nearby towns, or day-laborers in fields, travelling long distances by walking to save money. The money they earned was forcefully seized by the young men for their daily expenses, either to socialize with friends, to watch movies or for other sorts of entertainment.

But, Baburao made an effort to meet these unmarried men informally and talk about the issues of gender-equality, men’s role in bringing about change through active engagement in domestic work as subverting their earlier ‘masculine’ roles and behaviour, and establishing an empathy with and respect for women’s contribution to domestic and outdoor work. Their formal training was delivered not only through dialogues and discussions, but also by the use of diagrammatic representations – for instance, pictures, charts, role-plays, and so on. This sort of training encompasses the symbolic and imagery description as depicting a story or narration that is based on women’s health, their gender subordination, discrimination, violence, abuse and so on.

During one of my visits to the Manegaon, Baburao arranged a formal meeting, asking some of the unmarried and married men from the training program to participate in the discussion. On that occasion, as well as Baburao’s mother there were some other women in the village who also joined the meeting. The unmarried men stated that the gender-equality training had enhanced them with knowledge of various issues of women’s subordination and discrimination by men, and the ways in which men can engage themselves to bring about change and create fairness in the relationship. They added by saying that they help their mothers at home in bringing water from the well, cutting logs from the woods to burn in their cooking-furnaces, helping with cooking and, in particular, not making demands that might create difficulties for the family. They mentioned certain aggravation and family conflicts in relation to the dowry during marriages, and their training and understanding of gender-equality allowed them to internalize the fact that the dowry symbolizes the culture of commodification of women, as ‘buying’ the bride in return for money, gold or different sorts of gifts. They suggested that when they chose to get married they would not participate in the taking of a dowry.

On the other hand, the bhibhahit (or the married men) acknowledged that before to the training programs they were usually very dominant and authoritative towards their wives. Their attitude towards their wives was one of being highly instructive and commanding, relating to either everyday conversations or in demanding trivial things that were self-indulgent – such as asking for the soap and towel during bathing, or asking for a massage late at night, without considering the fact that their wife might be very tired after a long day at work.

These groups of married men have realized their mistakes and have become more sensitive to the needs of their family. They have become keen to look after their children, share the household work with their wives, and also become more sensitive to the needs and requirements of their wives. Ram, a bhibhahit member of the Manegaon village, asserted that he had sent his wife for education in the town of Sangola to become a trained nurse. He said that her training would enable her to seek a permanent position for employment as a full-time nurse in the government hospital. Unlike the traditional thinking of others in his village, Ram’s post gender-training mindset has enabled him to realise that if his wife could obtain a job it would help him to share his household responsibilities and expenditures. Moreover, during his youth he lacked the urge to study, up until he graduated with his pre-secondary school degrees, and started work as a day laborer to support his family. Hence, Ram wanted to provide the opportunities that he had lacked to his wife.

Gender equality through participation: men in Manegaon village

Baburao and the men’s group offered an idea about how ‘informal participation’ unfolds the complex intricacies in the realm of gender relations in their Manegaon village. This further echoes the classical understanding of ‘participation’ by Habermas, where ‘public sphere’ and ‘communicative rationality’ becomes the site of democratic decision making, informal ways of engagement and a participatory approach to development (Kulynych, 1997). The ethnography highlights the constellation of these men in the village and their open communication about gender issues and inequalities, raising concerns of those facets of their everyday life that are sidelined by the taken-for-granted assumptions about their everyday lives. These discussions highlight the importance of discourse and communication that contributes to the intelligibility of speech, as aiming to contribute to the public good.

The abibhahit (unmarried) and bhibhahit (married) men and their participation in building gender equality in the village, enacts the concept of the Habermasian approach to ‘communicative rationality’ which envisages a form of logical and rational communication, creating a sense of understanding and knowledge about the vulnerability of women (Brocklesby and Cummings, 1996). According to Habermas, discourse creates consensus in society, and developing a theory of the ‘public sphere’ states the dialectics of discourse formation, where discourses are shaped and subverted and new discourses are created. By means of these discourses, rational arguments are formed leading to the development of integrity (Love, 1989). This idea moves beyond the ways and strategies of communication and offers a design of an image of how these sorts of communication are ‘reflexive’ (Kulynych, 1997; Flyvbjerg, 1998). In other words, these interactions create a form of consciousness and awareness, reflecting how regular as well as constrained discourses are set into the public forum. that becomes discursive and a subject of analytical reasoning. These discussions further echo elements of democracy, as rendering further the nuances of ‘free speech’ that implicates the political motive of gender empowerment through building consciousness and participation.

Furthermore, the Habermasian theory of communicative rationality explains how Baburao has established a sort of community space for interactions and building mutual rapport between the men in the villages. As part of his programmatic approach, he segregates men’s groups as ‘married’ and ‘unmarried’, so as to recognize the views of these men with regard to their violence and aggression towards women. And, by identifying this, Baburao fabricates certain ways to develop ‘capacity-building’ among these men, based on training and dialogue. This sort of participation, through communicative techniques, leads to two important insights with regard to participatory research. On the one hand it echoes Robert Chamber’s (Chambers, 1994a) view of participation, where ‘the indigenous knowledge’ and technique becomes the tool for empowerment, ‘dialogues’ and ‘action’ maneuver to modify the existing power relations to another new set of relationships based on equality. And, on the other hand, this approach reiterates a form of social movement that resists and subverts a certain set of gendered practice that are hegemonic, to engage with a ‘performative participation’– a means by which men are engaged with the new politics of enabling ‘citizenship’ through awareness building, and sharing knowledge about gender issues, so as to establish a social change based on gender equality ‘by men’ and ‘through men’ and ‘with men’ (Cornwall, 2002; Uphoff, 2000).

The participation of the men’s groups also results in a form of collective mobilization and a sort of gender movement, creating a form of political consciousness that allows them to subvert their hegemonic male masculinity and resist those acts in the village. Very often, participatory theories to development have been criticized as a colonial approach in the name of ‘development’– an imposition of ‘Western democratic ideals’ on the non-Western poor and a form of ‘institutional marketability’, where commercial strategies are deployed for the particular interest of a community through the imposition of ‘capital authority’, which Pierre Bourdieu calls ‘officialising strategy’ (Mosse, 1995; see also, Kapoor, 2005).

Denouncing those participatory approaches where ‘local knowledge’ and ‘indigenous people’ are used as tools for achieving commercial and economic rewards, the participatory approach among the men’s groups in Manegaon village, looks into the cultural description and the political dimension of men and their masculinity with a very narrative-based dimension of representation. It describes a specific set of scenarios that highlight the rhetoric of a social process – transformation of men’s ideas about gender, engaging in building gender equality, facing resistance, as subverting the historical regimes of power and hegemony – to new forms of gender relations that are embedded in collective mobilization through a new set of gendered consciousness, ‘by themselves ‘and ‘through themselves’.

Participation, power and visibility: women and representations

These villages also demonstrate the ways in which women make their voices heard and claim their rights. But, prior to it, most of the animators or the gender-facilitators of the villages acknowledged the fact that women’s education is an essential means by which gender-equality could be sustained. Baburao stated that he felt it was essential to strengthen women’s education in order to establish gender-equality. In that context he negotiated with other village authorities to upgrade his village school up to matriculation stage. Unlike the young boys in his village who commute to the nearby town of Sangola to complete their matriculation and further education thereafter, the young girls were left behind either because of family pressure on them to get married at a very young age, or to help their mothers with the domestic chores.

With regard to his village, Baburao realised the fact that extending the school process would be very bureaucratic. As such he made efforts to mobilize certain young girls in the village who had shown interest in studying further, up to matriculation and high school. In addition he arranged for a motor van to be available to transport these young girls to the nearby high school.

The young girls talked about their vulnerability in the streets and village roads. They spoke of cherkhani (harassment) by men in the bus stands of the nearby town; or of men in the villages staring at them quite inappropriately; or, when travelling in the public bus, that sometimes the men sitting beside them would try to touch them or stroke their body in an indecent and inappropriate manner.

Rita, the secretary of the Astitva NGO, felt that by means of the gender equality program in the village the women became aware of their rights, becoming more vocal and talking about domestic violence and abuse very publicly. Rita further added that the women in the village meet informally amongst themselves and talk about gender issues. With her leadership, Rita, has mobilized these women in the villages and records their stories about abuse, harassment, dowries, inequalities at work, and so on. They talk about drunken husbands coming home and beating their wives. Rita, who is also a lower caste dalit woman from the village, has suffered severe hardships to attain her education and to become a professional lawyer. As a woman, she is very sensitive to women’s rights and feels that to voice and to express the grievances against any sort of unlawful activity would be the ultimate means in claiming rights. On the occasions of domestic violence and women’s harassment in the village, she accompanies the women victim, with other women in the village, to register formal complaints at the police station. And, in circumstances where the violence becomes more critical, for instance when a case of wife battering led to the woman being burned, and similar such situations, the grievances are taken to the nearby court, to seek justice.

With further reference to women’s rights, power and their visibility in public spaces, the ethnography captured a school in Sangola where the young girls are trained in karate and other forms of martial arts. Savita Devi, the president and the founding member of the school, stated that women’s safety is an important issue and as such the woman or young girls should be equipped for self-defense; and, to do so, the girls are not only trained in marshal art exercises in the school, but are also made aware of how to defend their own rights, dignity and their body from any sorts of harassment, and to fight back in all cases of verbal and physical confrontations and abuse. Savita Devi had to overcome major obstacles and criticisms with regard to the martial arts training for women in the school, but she was quite firm in maintain her principle of setting the training as a formal curriculum and a strict set of courses.

Rita further talked about the tanta-mukht committee in the village that focuses on the village disputes, either in personal households, or with regard to land or other public disagreements. ⁵ Members of the committee are people respected in the villages – for instance, government officials, police officers, teachers, sarpanch (the head of the village government), civil society representatives, doctors and lawyers. In addition, she stated that women’s issues are raised in the committee meetings as subjects related to violence and abuse in the home, or harassment in the street, or discrimination in terms of unequal wages with regard to to those of male laborers in the workplace, and so on. According to Rita, the possibility of discussion about women’s issues in the tanta-mukht committee has had a major effect on establishing women and their rights in the village governance.

How can women create their ‘voice’? – participation, performance and social change

The evidence reported above highlights the importance of how participation creates the significance of ‘performative resistance’ that builds up the capacity of subverting a social structure in order to recreate another (Kulynych, 1997). The act of resistance brings to the fore the possibilities of emphasizing the ‘subjectivity’ and the ‘subjection’ – building up a political struggle with discrete aims in order to uphold the broader aims of empowerment and rights. Furthermore, it introduces the quintessential arguments of John Gaventa, who states that these sorts of resistance are rooted in economic disparity, further projecting social inequality – that ‘resistance’ is developed by developing certain elements of disparagement or discounting existing norms; and this state of consciousness gives rise to awareness and solidarity with regard to collective mobilization based on a sense of inner resentment and desire (Gaventa, 1995; Kulynych, 1997).

This form of ‘performative resistance’ is reiterated in the ethnography, highlighting the change and construction of women’s position in the village. Their resistance to patriarchy is ‘performative’ in the sense of how they articulate their voices through re-establishing their position with regard to strategic acts and contesting norms. The act of resistance is further reiterated with the evidence of how the empowering strategies of the young girls and women are related to the karate training for self-defence and women’s participation in the tanta-mukht committee. John Gaventa’s idea of ‘anger’ as a means of resistance is illustrated here with regard to the repression and control over women which denies them economic and social opportunities and gradually leads to the development of resentment and anger through collective mobilization. The women in Sangola unite in collective action, or defend their rights through declaring their grievances publicly, seeking legal assistance for the victims of the unruly patriarchy, a form of ‘political participation’ through collective mobilization in line with Gaventa’s ideas. Their sense of visibility is entangled with the politics collective consciousness and a sense of women’s empowerment that is articulated by the act of women’s resentment in the police station. Further to this argument, and as discussed before, it echoes Gayatri Spivak’s idea of how the place and location of the subject self-represent the political economy of violence that they suffer, and could embody the pain, in order to create a form of (class) consciousness to combat it (Spivak and Guha, 1988). This sort of ‘representation’ from within the community, to represent their own voices of suffering and, moreover, to participate amongst themselves to bring about changes based on (gender) equality, is the main argument of this piece of work.

In relation to this, a further theory, that of Judith Butler, was considered in developing my understanding of gender and performance. Butler’s theory of gender and performance, which states the bodily performance becomes ‘naturalised’ through ‘repetitive’ effects, and becomes ‘discursive’ in nature (Butler, 1993). Her understanding of the ‘performativity theory’ moves beyond her much celebrated work on ‘performance’. In her contemporary works, Butler asserts the politics of resistance and the subversion of gender performances that are naturalised, and the role of ‘voice’ (speech) that plays an important part in the process of subversion. At this juncture, she particularly holds into account the voices (and performances) of the ‘marginalised’ (poor people, sexual minorities, women and others), to challenge the dominant set of rules (Butler, 2009). This is what she calls ‘precarity’, a condition in which the most ‘marginalised people’ join in unison to voice their claims for rights and recognition. It is interesting to note how Butler’s theory of the ‘free speech act’ as ‘excitable speech’ (Butler, 1997) is connected with her theories of ‘performance’ (Butler, 1993; 2004), bringing forth the techniques in which the dominant hegemony is contested and ultimately a claim is made for ‘recognition’ (Butler, 2009).

Butler’s further assertion on ‘action’ and ‘speech’ is ‘performative’ and ‘political’, setting up a situation where denial of the hegemony by subordinates in itself becomes an essential constituent of the nation-building process; and acts of resistance are also performative act where the rights to ‘claim’ becomes political (Butler, 2009).

Drawing on Spivak’s (1988) work, Butler re-states her proposition of post-colonial nation-building through serious acts of subversion and resistance to the colonizers, those ‘precarious population’ seeking freedom. Thus her understanding of ‘performance’ and ‘precarity’ is aimed atseeking ‘freedom’ based on ‘desire’ – the desire to be recognized as ‘sovereign subjects’. Furthermore, the ‘dialectics of desire’ is linked to contestation of power between the superior and their subordinates, as seeking to create the ‘intelligibility’ of space and location for achieving absolute freedom (Butler, 2009).

Along these lines, the ethnography highlights the subversion of the popular hegemonic norms by these women. The women and their ‘rebellion’ is political and ideological: in a way, it is contested through collective representation (either the tanta-mukht committee or the village panchayat), or through an institutional organization such as the law or a police station. Moreover, their life is ‘precarious’ in the sense that they are subjected to violence, abuse and childhood marriage that can have tragic consequences. Interestingly, it is important to note the ‘gap’ that Butler articulates between the act of (vocal) resistance and the possibilities of the norm being changed (Fleche, 1999). The performance of (speech-act) negotiation, either in the police station, the tanta-mukht committee or the panchayat, may be confrontational, disparaging and defamatory – what Judith Butler calls ‘hate speech’. This sort of ‘speech’ is logical and politically significant in creating the possibility of impeding discrimination. This dialectics of ‘speech’, as Butler postulates, allows the formation of a new form of ‘speech’ and new ways of ‘re-signification’ based on a new set of norms (White, 1998; Fleche, 1999).

Conclusion

The paper presents an analysis of an inclusive dimension of the participatory approach to gender and development. Based on ethnographic and sociological work women’s issues regarding empowerment and development, the paper highlights the nuances of people’s involvement in developing solidarity designed to achieve women’s safety, education, literacy, equal pay at work, property rights and distribution and division of labour and dignity, ultimately deconstructing the hegemonic patriarchal and masculinist norms. This is a form of creating and raising consciousness amongst the villagers who represent the economically poor population, such that development strategies are formed by empowering these people. Furthermore, the facilitators or the animators are the forerunners of these new changes, mobilizing the village population and its thoughts. The initiative further represents a form of movement for gender equality, highlighting in fact the Men’s Action to Stop Violence against Women (MASVAW) – a global movement that acts locally to encourage the participation of men, to bring about change. The villages in Sangola illustrated the implementation of such a participatory process of development, wherein individual voices are heard, male hegemonic masculinities are contested and women’s empowerment is perceived in educational, legal and everyday spheres of life. The various examples of male engagement and participation in the gender equality programs offer proof of how awareness, mobilization and change have been developed by these men themselves. This archetypical participatory model highlights the shift from the hegemonic and bureaucratic Western participatory paradigm of the 1990s to that of a more reflexive, discursive and rights-based ‘citizenship participation’, wherein the process of change, equality and development is manifested by local actors themselves, that is maneuvered by their own self-realization.