A series of unexpected travels took me, in the last few months, to three countries: South Africa, Bahrain and Japan. In each I met groups of women — by design and by accident — and interacted with them at length, sometimes sitting on the same panels. In each I found different and fascinating stories about women.

In South Africa, on a panel called ‘Women Changing South Africa’, I spoke with four women: one of Indian origin, the other black, a third of Chinese origin and the fourth a South African Muslim. The rainbow was firmly in place, not only in terms of colour, but also ethnicity and origin.

They talked about women’s contribution to education, to law, in the media, in working with children, and about how they had been at the heart of so much change in the country, right from the time of apartheid.

In Bahrain, on a similar panel, I met a group of Arab women: art curators, museum heads, photographers and a senior member of the Supreme Council of Women (SCW). They spoke of women’s role in the field of culture and education, and described the long history of women’s achievements in Bahrain.

Bahrain’s SCW, headed by the wife of the king, advises the monarch and the government on women’s issues; it also conducts research and surveys on women, as well as honours their achievements in different professions, such as women in engineering (some 150 of them, at last count).

As in other countries, the SCW receives a fair share of criticism from Bahraini women who consider it nothing but a government face — a criticism that will be familiar to Indian feminists who have had the same opinion of the National Commission for Women.

In Japan, I found myself not in what is known as ‘mainland’ Japan but a small southern island called Okinawa. Here unfolded a different history of the Japanese. The Okinawans consider themselves as somewhat separate from mainland Japanese, and indeed feel that the Japanese ignore and marginalise them. Women on this island have long fought many battles, the biggest of them against sexual violence and for justice for those known as ‘comfort women’. Both these histories are related to the World War II: ‘comfort women’ were sexual slaves, women the governments and armies provided to soldiers to help ease the hardship of war (never mind the rights of the women). Okinawans estimate that there were as many as 145 comfort stations in the island during this period.

Sexual violence, too, has its history in Okinawa. The war left behind a large number of American soldiers and a number of US airbases in Japan, the majority of these are in Okinawa.

Indeed, it was only as recently as 1972 that the US handed Okinawa back to the Japanese. Until then, rather as in our North-East, cases of sexual violence were dealt with by the US army and, as the women there told me, “after the accused soldier was sent away, theoretically to serve out his sentence, we never knew what happened to them. Very likely they just roamed free.”

Three countries –— each so different from the other; each with its own historical context, but in each the women are fighting to bring about change. Their battles are not similar, even though the issues they are addressing — inequality, women’s rights, violence against women, egalitarian laws and so on — resonate with each other across continents.

Nor are the obstacles they face the similar: South Africa’s wonderful Constitution and its rainbow advantage are under serious threat, and women’s battle to keep the fabric of society intact, comes up against much indifference and active opposition.

Bahrain is in the grip of a clash between modernity and tradition — the push that inevitably comes when women start working for change, and the pull of what is called ‘tradition’.

Okinawan women are confronted with the legacies of the war, with their sense of being marginalised by the mainland, and with the recent resurgence of the spectre of nationalism.

But in every place, no matter how different, it is women’s courage and steadfastness that hold them together. In Johannesburg, a hall full (mostly) of women cheered and applauded as the panellists described their work and spoke of their commitment to improving the lives of women. In Okinawa, groups of women sat together in a closed meeting and shared their stories, tears and laughter at the battles they were fighting and those their sisters had fought.

As I returned to India from the last of these visits, I thought of how much I had learned. And I also thought of how different the battles are that women fight. They don’t pick up guns and kill, and in the long term their strategies are the ones that will last.

Urvashi Butalia is an editor, publisher and director of Zubaan

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