FEMINIST MOVEMENTS IN INDIA: Issues, Debates, Struggles

Description

Feminist movements in India have come a long way since its beginnings in 1970s – not simply by way of visibility and breaking silence on gender issues but through developing our understanding of complexity and interconnectedness of patriarchies along with specificity of struggles waged by women/genders from different sections of society. There is a higher and deeper articulation of gender issues highlighting the complex and connected forms of violence and oppression experienced by women/genders along with reconceptualization of family, marriage, community, caste, sexuality, and labour. The volume provides a window to current feminist debates and discourses as also struggles, underscoring that there is not a unified women’s movement, but various streams within it.

Feminist research and studies have brought in a critical evaluation of terms, concepts and methods in existing social sciences and which, thankfully, have been finding their place in curriculum of different disciplines in universities. But there is still an acute lack of reflective and analytical reading materials for present generations of students and teachers on the ongoing feminist issues and debates in India. This volume aims to fill this lacuna and attempts to cover a range of issues, debates and struggles confronting feminist movements and studies.

Sadhna Arya, a feminist activist, has been a teacher of Political Science and Women Studies. Along with teaching and researching, to prepare reading material in Hindi, she has coedited many books in Hindi for women/gender studies students. Her latest work is titled Gaining Ground: The Changing Contours of Feminist Organising in post-1990s India, 2021.

Lata Singh is a faculty member of the Centre for Women’s Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. She was a British Academy Visiting Fellow, a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, and UGC Research Awardee. Her core work includes Raising the Curtain: Recasting Women Performers in India.