Abstract
Introduction
Gender issues, in South Asia, have been evolved and shaped by the political economics, cultural politics, state policies, social discourses and movements in the region. Gender status, in South Asia, is sustained through the existence of a gendered social order propagated through customs, cultural beliefs and laws reinforced to ‘control’ women through sanctions, violence, suppression of human rights, etc. This ‘hierarchical opposition’ (Dumont, 1966 [1980]) in gender dynamics is vastly removed from the dualism of ancient Indian philosophy where the pairs—male/female—may be different are not essentially superior or inferior to each other but are harmonious (Natarajan, 2001). In early societies, in the subcontinent, gender stratification existed but men and women had collective contributions to work and rights to resources. As the states and class structures emerged, differences between subjectivities (male and female) were constructed in socio-economic, theological and political discourses propagating conservative views of female sexuality and subjecthood. The cultural interventions and distortions due to centuries of invasions and the colonial past have also contributed to developing a parochial mind-set much in contrast with progressive Indian philosophical traditions. In India, ‘starting from ancient times to modern management stories, there is no dearth of legendary narratives of women empowerment, extraordinary women leaders and philosophers’ (Kar, 2019, p. 97) who overcame popular prejudices and barriers to bring qualitative changes in the social structures.
The extant literature on gender in South Asia centres on women’s experiences during historical phenomena and events like nationalist movements in the Indian subcontinent, partition of Bengal and India, electoral politics in the region, Taliban’s violent repression of women in Afghanistan, in the formal and informal economic sector, intersections between gender and caste, ethnicity, culture and religion. The emerging fields of investigations explore the local, comparative and transnational contexts with focus on the rich experiences and diverse meanings of inter-disciplinarity and intersectionality surrounding historical, cultural, political, economic and organisational formations of gender in South Asia. South Asia, thus, presents a dynamic setting for the evolving archetypes of trajectories, negotiations and strategies being deployed to attain gender equality across classes, communities and institutional set-ups. In this context, the special issue explores thematic areas involving socio-economic, health, educational and consumerist dimensions of gender issues in the South Asian context.
Thematic Insights
South Asia, on the one hand, has seen great political leaders, freedom fighters and women who had played an indispensable role in the nationalist movements in 19th and 20th century (India, Bangladesh and Pakistan) and, on the other hand, all these states are struggling, in present times, to have better participation of women in bureaucracy, national and regional governance. With only 5 per cent women in police and less than 10 per cent in judiciary (UN Women, 2011–12), South Asian countries have resorted to reservation for women in the electoral bodies, to address the dearth of women in governance systems. India, Bangladesh and Pakistan reserve 33 per cent of the seats at the local village level governance system but, at the national level, in India, Women’s Reservation Bill reserving one-third seats for women in parliament, has been pending for many years. Though four of the major nation-states in the region—India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka—have had women Heads of State, representation of women in politics remains dismal. In the entire region, only 7 per cent women are members of political parties (World Development Report, 2011) and only 15 per cent hold ministerial positions in all of the South Asian countries with the lowest being in Sri Lanka at 6 per cent and highest being in Nepal at 33 per cent (UN Women, 2011–12). At the same time, women in top political leadership positions, in these countries, have influenced the state of women to some extent with Sheikh Hasina (Prime Minister, Bangladesh) introducing National Women Development Policy (2011) to address gender gap in asset ownership—a step criticised widely by religious fundamentalists in the country. Major obstacles to women’s participation in the public domain are mainly due to the fact that majority of the countries, in South Asia, have patrilineal and patrilocal kinship structures where women are ‘socialized to be mothers, wives and workers under others’ authority’ (Omvedt, 2005, p. 4747). Omvedt highlights another obstacle which has to do with the acutely competitive nature of politics where it becomes a profitable source of income and power that men tend to control. Overall, there have been some qualitative changes with women, across South Asia, claiming political power at the local levels with increasing grassroots actions towards women empowerment.
Patriarchal beliefs and social customs, in South Asian countries, create numerous disadvantages, for women and gender diverse people, in the sphere of education, employment, politics, family, reproductive health, religion, etc. Female gender is systematically deprived of educational opportunities across the region where social customs prioritise the male child receiving education over the girl child. There are 15.8 million out-of-school primary school age children in South Asia out of which 70 per cent are girls at 11.5 million (Chitrakar, 2009). Leading economists believe that women’s education is the best return investment in developing nations and the most effective way to achieve women’s well-being, slow down population growth, create healthier and better educated families and lead to faster growth of per capita income (Herz, 2006). With huge regional, caste, class and income disparities, South Asia (and Southeast Asia) account for 88 per cent of maternal mortality and 83 per cent of newborn mortality in the whole of Asia (UNFPA, 2014). Denial of education and access to healthcare resources, lack of decision-making power, are responsible for unmet needs of women for essential sexual and reproductive health services in the region. The region also has some of the world’s highest percentage of child marriages, unwanted pregnancies, risky abortions, maternal mortality, sexual abuse and violence and mounting rates of HIV/AIDS infection (Centre for Reproductive Rights, 2005, 2013).
A complex composition of historical, socio-economic and political developments helps explore the connections between gender rights and religion in South Asia. There are covert and overt manifestations of patriarchal practices that promote religious fundamentalism, in some countries of the region, by restricting women to traditional roles, veiling them and disallowing them the autonomy of choice. State sponsored religious fundamentalism in countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh asserts Islamic codes of dress/veil and conduct of women. In Bangladesh, Islamic fundamentalist forces use fatwa 1 against women, who strive to be economically independent, as a tool to subordinate and subjugate them (Alam, 1998) with the most infamous instance being that of Bangladeshi writer Tasleema Nasrin who was accused of committing blasphemy and conspiracy in her book Lajja (Nasrin, 1993). Large number of girl schools have been scorched in Bangladesh after fatwas were issued by mullahs in response to sending girls to schools instead of madarsas 2 (Alam, 1998). The rise of Taliban in Afghanistan has resulted in human rights violations and extreme violence against women who are beaten in public places for showing their ankles and not covering their faces. In Pakistan, ‘constitutions and state laws may offer protection and equal citizenship in theory, in practice religious laws and customs, such as Sharia law, often prevail’ (Alston, 2014, p. 5). In these ways, the authoritarian states ratify and endorse religion sponsored gender inequality and violence. All this is done in the name of ‘preserving traditions and the fundamental tenets of a religion’ (Chhachhi, 1989, p. 567). On the other hand, Maldives is the only Islamic state successfully experimenting with democracy and is ahead of other Islamic nation-states in the South Asian region, on account of gender equality in the public sphere of education, health and labour with liberal laws, policies and institution. But the private realm, in the country, is fiercely dominated by social conservatism and Sharia law with gender inequalities persisting in gender relations, roles, decision making and ownership. Secularisation of regional and local spaces, in these countries, is imperative to ending gender-based subjugation and violence (UNDP, 2011).
Economic empowerment paves the way to build pathways to power and freedom for women as they challenge the resilient character of gendered norms governing global value chains, corporate professional set-ups, farming activities and domestic labour market. Women, in South Asia, are acquiring and exercising power with control upon domestic financial resources as well as labour market contribution. Women, in both rural and urban sectors, are engaged as workforce in the local and global market, and continue to invest disproportionately in the unpaid childcare and eldercare work, in the region, which limit their prospects in the paid career choices (ILO, 2015). Women, in the region, also substantially contribute to the informal economy as domestic workers, street vendors, subsistence farmers, seasonal farm, labour, etc. According to UN Women (2015-16), 95 per cent of women, in South Asia, are in informal employment out of total employed ones. The informal employment arrangements leave women without any safeguards of social security and make them vulnerable to various forms of exploitations as they mostly work without written work contracts (Bertulfo, 2011). These uneven employment structures of informal economy have long-term impacts as more and more women remain without any social protection and pension in the old age creating further vicious networks of poverty.
Governments, across South Asia, have introduced several social protection policies, programmes and constitutional amendments to curb social vulnerability, economic dependence of women (Indian Hindu Succession Act, 2005) and promote equal opportunities. The countries are also the signatories to global humanitarian initiatives such as SDGs, MDGs and CEDAW, 3 and the Fourth World Conference on Women (1995) for gender equality and empowerment. Despite the current social protection interventions in South Asian nation-states, there are many challenges—women’s lack of property and inheritance rights, evils of dowry in patrilocal set-ups, lack of autonomy, access to markets and lower productivity that exposes them to poverty. Women’s economic dependency heightens in the state of domestic violence which is ‘a manifestation, in many senses, of the intra-household inequities’ (ICRW, 2006, p. 4). Gender barriers, also, plague the business environments in the emerging economies of South Asian nations ‘where top-level managerial positions are rigorously confined to men based on cultural assumptions around gender stereotyping’ (Kar, 2019, pp. 93–94). Women administrators spend much of their time and energy in overcoming gender biases, discrimination along with managing work tasks and dealing with performance pressure. Despite these barriers, urban women, in the region, have been breaking the glass ceiling in the finance, banking, corporate, defence and the business sectors with remarkable success stories of leading businesswomen, entrepreneurs and CEOs. This area is very less researched in South Asian context though countries like India, Sri Lanka have a very high percentage of female executives in the private sector.
Conclusion
Gender engagement, in the South Asian region, has ranged from women’s involvement in political and social movements to promoting gender rights and socio-economic justice (Fernandes, 2014) and abolishing discriminatory laws and bizarre gender categories. Women’s movements, in the region, are committed to achieve gender parity across institutions, domains and contexts. Widespread protests such as in the Nirbhaya case in Delhi (2012), and Aurat March in Pakistan on International Women’s Day, have emerged against exploitative patriarchal structures, violence against women, denial of access to economic resources, forced religious conversions in Pakistan and more. These struggles have helped women find their voices and channel them to become empowered. Contemporary local and transnational milieus are characterised by ideas and mission focusing on result-oriented goals, policies and strategies that can achieve equality and optimum opportunities across genders. In this context, this Special Issue aims to contribute towards developing state of the art literature, through a diverse range of papers, focusing on new pathways to gender empowerment and methods to researching on gender issues in less researched areas, in South Asia. The focus on thematic areas are role of agency or choice in women’s employment, reproductive rights, gender variance, ownership rights and impact of technology on gender dynamics in matrimony. The first article critically analyses the status of economic empowerment of women in India from agency and choice perspective. The second article offers an extensive research perspective on lack of sexual and reproductive health services for women in Sri Lanka with specific focus on need for abortion law reforms. The third article investigates the presence/absence of institutional arrangements in educational settings, in the three country context of India, Sri Lanka and Nepal, for addressing the concerns of gender variant children. The fourth paper focuses on the legal and paralegal systems that govern the property access for Hindu widows in select South Asian countries. The fifth paper explores the impact of globalisation on Hindu Bengali Matrimony with the advent of online matrimonial websites. The papers in the special issue highlight how women are overcoming social constructionist views of gender to be empowered with access to academia, business, politics, finance and other related areas and achieve their goals. Women entrepreneurship is also being recognised as a latent force to contribute to economic growth and GDP. However, this dispersed progress does not undermine the challenges that women in South Asia face both personally and professionally. There is still lot to be achieved, both globally and locally, for gender and women’s movements. Slogans of universal human rights, including gender equality, need to be supplemented with localised discussions of adaptation and application (Ortenblad et al, 2017). Strategies as actions need to be developed, especially for South Asia region, to address and resolve expectations of gender role categorisation; to gain maneuverability, to negotiate structural limitations and challenges of intersectionality.
