The Hindu Business Line : The missing analyses

This book is a classic example of an opportunity lost. Built around a theme that had a lot of possibilities, the collection of papers presented at a seminar jointly organised by the Indian Association for Asian and Pacific Studies, Women’s Studies Research Centre, University of Calcutta and Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata, fails to examine the issues it so ambitiously set out to explore.

The book opens with a bang, courtesy a well-written paper by Ishita Mukhopadhyay on ‘Gender Stereotyping in South Asia’. Although built on secondary sources, Ishita’s paper moves from gender theory, on to the realities of the labour market, and actual statistics, to come out with a well-balanced analysis on why women lose out on the best jobs, and are confined to marginal employment as part of the South Asian workforce. The papers that follow, however, whimper.

We are presented with a lot of statistics but no significant analyses to explain the same.

This is as true of papers dealing with South Asian and Indian women, as those from other parts of Asia. Thus, the less said the better of Smita Majumdar’s ‘Gender Disparity in South Asia: A Comparative Study of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka’ and Bonita Aleaz’s ‘Whither the Women of Asia? An Exploration into the Trends in the Nature of Women’s Engagements Visible in Asia’.

Even a comparatively well-written paper by Madhulika Mitra and Somnath Mitra on ‘Women (sic) Participation in Panchayati Raj Institution in West Bengal’ which has built on primary data on the first all-women panchayat in Kultikri, fails to look beyond and determine how this was possible in one of the most backward districts of West Bengal. The very fact that here was a panchayat where women not only got elected to an all-women body, but also ensured active participation from others of their kind, earning kudos from the respective Block Development Officer for being the most active of the 10 panchayats in the block, needed in-depth analysis.

The author has listed out the achievements of this unique panchayat, which even after its initial 1993-98 term saw eight of its members re-elected. But she has failed to look into the social conditioning that triggered the achievement and, in spite of having personally met the pradhan Tapati Singh, glossed over how these women nurtured their respective identities.

Flawed analysis

At times the analysis itself is flawed. A very simplistic, leftist bias results in flawed reasoning when Suman Ray and Basabi Chakraborty try to assess ‘Globalisation and its Impact on Women Workers: The Asian Experience’.

The paper blames globalisation for the marginalisation of women workers without realising that redundancy does not hit all parts of the world at all times. If workers benefit in one region, jobs are lost in another. The authors do mention that social conditions and a patriarchal set-up prevent women from deriving the benefits of globalisation in spite of joining the labour force in greater numbers, but do not delve any further.

Rajashri Basu’s ‘Women’s Non-identity: The Case of Baul Sadhasanginis’ is a case of love’s labour lost. While the author has dwelt at length on how Vaishnavism has used the female metaphor for philological purposes yet created a social set-up where women never attain the status of full sadhikas and are instead confined to the status of sanginis, she fails to go beyond merely mentioning those who have emerged out of the shadows of the ir male masters and established their identities as baul singers in their own right.

Swati Ghosh’s ‘Con(fused ) Identity’ of a flying woman is nothing better than a school-level essay, while the absence of any field work prevents Sheikh Rahim Mondal’s ‘Women in Bhutan: Aspects of their Status and Role’ getting the necessary focus.

Lipi Ghosh’s ‘Religion, Sex and Issues of Identity: Women in Thailand’ and Purabi Gangopadhyay’s ‘Japanese Women: Mukoirikon to Modernisation’ are similarly flawed. The authors have done well in etching the cultural histories of the nations they write on, yet there is no attempt to explain the present.

Thai prostitution is blamed on the historic/ cultural background of the people and Hindu-Brahmanical practices that justified the subjugation of women. Globalisation is blamed for the rest.

Little thought is given to the role of the Cold War, and the droves of peasant women who were driven to seek their livelihood from sex when farmlands were carpet bombed all over Indo-China.

Neither does one find any mention of the American military bases that spawned the sex trade in Thailand with the GI’s demand for women to relieve the tedium wrought out of years of war. The accession debate as regards the Chrysanthemum throne that has engaged all of Japan has not even been touched upon. Neither is the growing feminism in Japan and Japanese women’s quest for an identity.

In spite of being built on primary data, Anita Sengupta’s paper on ‘Between Homeland and Home: Russian Women in Uzbekistan’ loses its advantage as direct quotes and the author’s analyses run into one another, leaving the reader confused.

The surprises

There are some surprises, though.

Nandini Bhatacharya’s ‘Between Secular Teaching and Islamic Preaching: Confused Identity of Soviet Central Asian Women’ is remarkably well-constructed, and lives up to what it seeks to talk about. The contrary pulls and pressures of women brought up in an Islamic culture and compelled to adapt to atheistic Soviet rationalism, resulting in a dual identity, is well brought out.

So is Aditi Bhaduri’s ‘Quest for Identity: A Brief Sketch of the Palestinian Women’s Movement’, which tells us a great deal of a people and society about whom very little is known. The flow is good, and the author is obviously well-informed about ground realities. However, it remains what it calls itself as — a brief sketch.

Although marred by grammatical errors, Sarbani Guha Ghoshal’s ‘Identity-Women-Advertisement: Politics of Viewing’ is a good analysis of the depiction of Indian women in advertisements by well-known brands, and the exploitation of the woman’s sexual identity for commercial purposes.

Badly proof-read, the book does not seem to have been seriously edited either. Repetitions and grammatical errors abound, and the construction of papers is uneven. Primary data is largely absent.

Reading through, one feels an overwhelming sadness since this project could have resulted in a truly enriching experience on gender issues.

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