Feminist Filters for the 2014 Elections

This was published as "2014 elections: Parties that ignore women's rights aren't worth your vote" on February 13, 2014.

Exasperated with simplistic solutions for achieving gender inclusivity, feminists critique approaches to development and social change that just “add women and stir.” In India, we have had enough women in positions of power to know that their presence offers a powerful role model and an impressive point of departure, but that is all. In most cases, just having women in positions of power does not equal a transformed society. For that, women need to be active and represented at all levels and in all spheres of the political process. And even more important, “women’s issues” should be everybody’s issues—especially in an election year.

For those of us who talk about women’s participation and about gender sensitivity in policy-making, one challenge is that women are automatically associated with care-related or domestic concerns. Thus, those forming a Cabinet will appoint women to Women and Child Development, Health, even Education and Social Welfare, and maybe at a stretch to Information and Broadcasting, but rarely to Defence, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Home or even Industry. Gender stereotyping continues at this level. But even more lasting damage is done when those addressing women do not talk to them of these issues. A candidate campaigning door-to-door expects to find only women at home and to talk to them about gas cylinder prices and not peace talks with our neighbour. It is not as if all men hold strategic studies or MBA degrees or five years of corporate or army experience; it is an unfounded assumption about women’s interests and abilities that determines the agenda. Women internalise this and feel that without additional training, the portfolios of care-giving and domesticity are their natural domain.

The other challenge is that women in politics are not necessarily sensitized to think about gender issues. Political activity is structured around the way that most men live in patriarchal societies, with someone else taking care of their families and life-maintenance work. This option is usually not available to women and while balancing these responsibilities is a challenge in most careers, it is particularly so in politics. Women have to enter, survive and make their way up the ladder in this very inhospitable environment. Moreover, it is a system that does not reward specialists, male or female. Survival requires that women neither advocate nor antagonize, and being women’s rights advocates would marginalize them in those early stages. Political parties in India do not encourage issue expertise, and they do not encourage independent issue-based advocacy or coalition across party lines. Therefore, we can and do have women in legislatures who are not necessarily gender-sensitive and women in power for whom women’s rights are not necessarily a priority.

Women’s participation in politics and better representation at every level is intrinsically important. However, it must be accompanied by an integration of gender concerns in the thinking and rhetoric of the political class. This, we would look for in party manifestos but perhaps more meaningfully, in the track record and speeches of political candidates and leaders. Setting aside our habitual cynicism, were we to seriously evaluate political parties and candidates on their gender rights credentials, what would we want to see? For me, the two most important issues would be sexual and gender-based violence and women’s participation. I also consider women’s economic rights and livelihood issues important, and I would like to see political parties take cognizance of militarization as a problem but for today, these two issues are enough to serve as a gender sensitivity filter.

Today, in India, violence is the first issue that comes to people’s minds when “women” or “gender” are mentioned. Indeed, discussion on women’s status begins and ends at violence, although there is much more to women’s lives than this ever-present threat. Having said that, in 2014, a political party whose manifesto and main campaigners do not seriously talk about sexual and gender-based violence is probably not worth considering seriously.

First on my checklist would be to see if the party has nominated or given tickets to politicians charged or convicted for sexual or gender-based violence. It’s a very straightforward criterion. Second, I would reject a party that continues to back members who have expressed views that are sexist and misogynistic. Is sexism a part of their style—jokes about women peppering their speech, for instance? If members of a party have gone un-reprimanded for saying women invite rape, I would not want to vote for them.

Third, I would look at the track record of politicians from a given party on laws relating to gender-based violence. How have they voted? Did they even bother to attend Parliament on the days when recent laws were passed? If I heard that a particular party or politician had sought the opportunity to consult with women from their constituency or with women’s groups, I would be inclined to vote for them. It would signal to me that they were sincere in their commitment to ending violence.

Finally, what is the track record of a particular party in the states where it has been in power? One way to measure this is by looking at National Crime Records Bureau numbers. But even without the statistics, we can now search newspaper archives online or ask around for a pretty clear idea of how women in that state feel. For instance, when groups that support moral policing surface, how does the state respond? What is an administration’s response to a particular incident or piece of information on gender-based violence?

To me, enabling women’s participation is an important issue. Where has a particular party stood on the question of the Women’s Representation Bill? Most parties and politicians oppose the Bill for various reasons, and so that is in itself a quick filter. A second measure might be to see whether the Panchayat reservations for women have yielded a new cadre of young women leaders from the grassroots. If it has, the party is doing something right. If it hasn’t, then it is nominating ‘token’ women and it is not tapping into the talent that has now come into the public sphere. I would not vote for a party that is not eager to draw talented and experienced women to its fold and encourage them. Related to both of these, I would like to see the track record of various political parties with regard to appointments in states (and at the Centre) when they were in power. How many women did they appoint to various official positions and how many women served as Ministers in their Cabinets, at what ranks and holding which portfolios? Having a woman Chief Minister does not exempt a political party from this test.

Beyond this, given what we have learned recently about how many women remain unregistered as voters, for me, a party that goes out of its way to check the electoral rolls and facilitate registration for women voters would get bonus points. This, of course, cannot be an election season party, but perhaps right after elections, they could undertake such a drive. NGOs are doing this, but do our political parties care enough?

It is perfectly possible that not a single party will meet these criteria in 2014. This presents an opportunity to those who would work for change. Using our disappointment in 2014 as a baseline, feminists and others who care about inclusive democracy could strategize how to use the upcoming five years to bring about a change.

How will I vote if no party meets these criteria? I do not know; but vote, I will. Inadvertently then, this time I will give people a chance who have no commitment to gender equality or justice. That unpleasant prospect will motivate me (and you?) to work very hard in the five years to come. We must; who else will?

Swarna Rajagopalan is a political scientist and the founder of Prajnya. Gender-based violence and women's participation are central to both her work and Prajnya's.

Women on the 2014 Ballot

This was published as "Why more women must participate in the 2014 elections" on February 5, 2014.

In the run-up to the last round of Assembly elections in 2013, a Gender Manifesto was released by women’s organizations setting out a series of priorities across demographic groups and economic sectors. It is safe to assume that no political party or candidate engaged with this list and made it a part of their campaign. The only gender issue that featured was safety in Delhi, with the incumbents on the defensive. But there is more to a feminist agenda than safety, and women’s participation is high on that agenda.

That the participation of women was desirable was axiomatic for many streams of the anti-colonial struggle. Gandhian marches and prayer-meetings drew thousands of women, who would finish their daily chores and walk miles just to be in his presence. Women worked in the Seva Dal, marched to both Dandi and Vedaranyam, learnt Hindi and spun and wore khadi. The Indian National Army also had a women’s regiment, led by Captain Laxmi. At meetings, we hear that women donated their jewellery to support both the Gandhian movement and the INA. Major armed attacks against the British Empire also involved women revolutionary activists. And in the first years of Independence, stalwart women were appointed to important positions, with no hint that these were token appointments.

The Indian constitution recognizes gender equality as a fundamental right and places no barriers to women’s citizenship, including eligibility for the highest offices. The 73^rd Amendment to the Indian Constitution expanded Panchayati Raj institutions, introducing reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and for women (one-third) both within those quotas and in the general category of seats. Leadership at the local level was also to rotate so that it was sometimes held by women and others. Moreover, women candidates would face direct election, so that the reservation meant that many women had to contest election too. The 33% quota has been increased to 50% in many places. The 108^th Amendment Bill, also known as the Women’s Reservation Bill, which introduces reserved seats in Parliament and in the state assemblies, only managed to get through the Rajya Sabha and that after many years of being introduced.

Perhaps the lessons of the Panchayat experiment are actually intimidating to male politicians. Although a large number of women who initially entered the Panchayats were “proxy” candidates, over time, this has changed in two ways. First, political experience has encouraged even the “proxy” women to speak up, act independently and show initiative. They do not remain “proxy” forever. Second, their example has brought other women into the political sphere. In rural India, the entry of large numbers of women is beginning to alter not just the political but also the social sphere. It is reported that women are less inclined to put up with violence and injustice in their homes after the experience of autonomy and agency in the public sphere.

The good news is that legislative and constitutional quotas are not the only way to get women into Parliament. Political party quotas may actually be the best way, because they are voluntary, and they signal a shift in attitudes that we should be calling for more vigorously. Political parties would commit to and deliver on including a certain percentage or number of women in their list of candidates. To illustrate, if a certain party is going to contest in 30 constituencies, they might commit to fielding at least 10 or 15 or another specific number of women candidates. Just as important, the party commits to seriously backing and supporting the women candidates, and not just fielding them in “lost causes” constituencies. Similarly where there is a list of candidates, women should not lumped together at the bottom, fated to lose in a run-off situation.

While technically women make up about half the population (without taking into account declining sex ratios, for instance), quotas tend to range between 30 percent and 50 percent. A 50 percent quota serves both men and women in a gender neutral way, but it creates a ceiling for women. Committing to a critical mass of say, 40%, assures a large number of women of entry, without limiting access to them alone.

The experience of post-conflict states like Nepal and Rwanda shows that quotas can make a huge difference very quickly to increasing the number of women in public life. But Nepal’s experience, closer home in every way, suggests that just getting women into the Assembly is not enough. Women members of the Nepal Constituent Assembly talk about not being taken seriously by their senior male colleagues. Social barriers don’t come down as fast as institutional and political barriers might.

Another long-standing challenge for women remains what Mrinal Gore once described to me as “money power and muscle power.” It is hard for most women to raise money and to gather around them the army of volunteers (forget the thugs and political violence for now!) that election work takes. Without the 300% percent visible and vocal backing of the party’s most important leaders, even support from party colleagues is likely to be half-hearted. This is not a problem unique to India. In the US, women have found a way to start changing this. Emily’s List was founded in 1985 by Ellen Malcolm and other women to help women who held a particular set of views get elected to office. They find suitable women and train them; they raise funds for them and help them campaign; they get women to show up and vote and they also work to hold others accountable in election season.

Thus, beyond quotas, there are two areas in which civil society organizations—women’s organizations in particular—must work. The first is the long-term work of changing attitudes at every level—from schools to neighbourhoods to the workplace and beyond—about women’s leadership. It is our responsibility to create a hospitable climate for the quotas we advocate. The second is the short-term task of answering the question the political elite like to ask, “But even if we wanted to nominate them, where are the women?” and to help their campaigns, even if only as a way to create an incentive for political parties. Enough complaining from the outside, can we get the women who want to be in politics on to the political radar and help them stay there?

It is in the intermediate term, though, that the most important work lies. This is the work of giving women confidence to enter, inhabit and work in the public sphere. While it is unfair that questions about competence and suitability never appear to limit men’s opportunities, the hidden advantage here for women is that all the effort that goes into building their capacity also builds their confidence. Women meet and interact with others with similar ideas and aspirations, they connect and make friends, they learn from each other, and the content of the programmes also probably gives them better skills than their male counterparts possess.

Just a week ago, we learned that “women’s empowerment” was literally the answer to every question. Especially if that is so, in 2014, the question should be: are political parties going to commit to nominating an equal number or a substantial number of women candidates for Lok Sabha and other seats? Which is going to be the first party to declare this and walk the talk by delivering a gender-equitable list, with large numbers of women candidates, solidly backed by the leadership? Forget the short, intermediate and long-term, my friends, creating pressure for this is the task at hand now. And political parties, please note, there is a vote in my undecided hand waiting to go to the party with the most unequivocal, tangible commitment to inclusivity and gender justice. Does this vote belong to you?

Swarna Rajagopalan is a political scientist by training and the founder of Prajnya. Documenting women's work in the public sphere is central to Prajnya's vision. 

Why women campaign against guns

This was published on January 24, 2014 here.

Last week, the Indian Ordinance Factory, Kanpur announced that it had designed and manufactured a .32 bore lightweight revolver for women, to be sold in “specially designed boxes lined with velvet to make them more attractive.” The gun was evocatively named “Nirbheek.” Commentators have pointed out that guns rarely make anyone safe and that the guns which cost over Rs. 1 lakh will secure those who can already afford security. Moreover, a gun will not protect someone from violence within the home. Women’s groups usually prefer to put guns away in the interests of safety rather than pull them out and put women indoors; this is an opportunity to reflect on their activism to this end.

Simplified ideas about womanhood correlate femininity with motherhood and assume that all women being (or potentially being or feeling mainly like) mothers, must abhor violence and bloodshed. Therefore, it is “natural” for women to favour gentler modes of human interaction and to oppose (in a motherly way) the use of landmines, small and large weapons and weapons of mass destruction. To rehearse that view would be to caricature over a century of peace activism by women and decades of feminist scholarship on conflict and violence.

Having said that, it is true that motherhood is often a pivot around which women mobilize for peace work. Motherhood offers an easy entry point into the public sphere despite patriarchal ideas about women belonging to the private sphere. And for individual women, it has often been concern about male family members that has motivated them to step outside the home. Disappearances, whether in conflict or under dictatorship, have usually been the prompt. Mothers’ organizations were formed in Argentina and Chile, and later in El Salvador, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay; their objective was to draw attention to their children who had disappeared during the years of authoritarian rule in these countries. The official figures remain much lower than the Mothers’ estimations, and even now, their struggle continues. Closer home, Parveena Ahangar’s Association Of Parents Of Disappeared Persons in Kashmir and Visaka Dharmadasa’s Association of War Affected Women and Parents of Servicemen Missing in Action are examples of mothers taking the political lead to locate conflict’s missing people.

In Nagaland, we also have the example of the Naga Mothers’Association (NMA). With “Shed No More Blood” as a motto, the association which is open to every Naga woman who is a mother, has worked on the ground to defuse tensions as they rise. They approach and speak to leaders on all sides, asking that violence be avoided. The NMA has also built bridges within the Naga groups. Motherhood has outweighed gender to provide women with access and agency that formal political and peace processes deny.

But women’s groups do not oppose arms because they are mothers or might be motherly. It is their lived reality that governs their opposition to the proliferation of weapons and to militarization, in general.

The International Action Network on Small Arms reports from research by IANSA members across the world to say that guns or access to guns are used routinely to threaten, intimidate or facilitate violence against women. Women’s organizations support arms control and disarmament programmes because small arms and light weapons are often used to facilitate sexual and gender-based violence but during and outside conflict contexts. Research shows that when there are guns handy, they are likely to be used also in domestic violence. In the American context, where there is a constitutional right to bear arms, the presence of a gun in the home was found to increase the risk of suicide among women fivefold and the risk of homicidal violence against them threefold. If acts of sexual and gender-based violence are a leading cause of death among women, the proliferation of small arms has been seen to contribute to making them more fatal.

In post-conflict settings or in highly militarized contexts, where violence is the lingua franca of politics, the habit of brutality carries over into homes. Rehn and Sirleaf’s now-classic assessment on “Women, War and Peace” drew out these connections clearly. Demobilized soldiers and surrendered militants, for instance, can be violent in their private interactions. If demobilization is not accompanied by disarmament, this means they keep weapons that can be used against family members or others in the community. Given the challenges of reintegrating them into society and helping them find a livelihood, if disarmament does not accompany demobilization, then these former soldiers are available to organized crime, can take to random thuggery and for political violence. (Demobilized women soldiers have other problems that we can discuss in another column.)

Militarized settings—which include areas where police or army action is common and they are a visible presence or where non-state armed groups are active—build this violence into the very fabric of everyday actions and interactions. Neighbours become informers, and trips to buy tomatoes end in death. It is not just sexual and gender-based violence that women’s organizations worry about but also the long-term implications of living with anxiety about the safety of one’s family, of strategizing every excursion and limiting one’s movements outside, of limiting one’s life-chances because of safety concerns and of living with increasingly severe and violently imposed moral policing. The guns, literally and metaphorically, change the quality of life drastically in such places. Everything is fragile. Men are more likely to lose their lives in these situations, and women who are left to rebuild the peace become very invested in ending violence. The ManipurWomen Gun Survivors Network is an example of women’s activism motivated by such experiences.

Women oppose the proliferation of guns and light weapons not because they have motherly instincts but because they see that easy access to these has a negative impact on everyday life. They present an increasing risk and fear of violence and intimidation as a result of which educational, livelihood and quality of life are affected in the moment and in the future. Living with injury, trauma and bereavement are hard; to find yourself responsible for your household without any means and without the freedom to step out for fear of violence is an impossible situation. Small weapons bring that risk of violence into the home, into service spaces (like hospitals and schools) and into the workplace. And at the end of it, these weapons do not secure lives, in the public or the private sphere.

Do guns cause violence? Of course not, people use guns to cause violence. However, the easy availability of guns makes it possible for anyone to use them without much thought. In an age where we oscillate between seeking excuses for violence and bloodthirsty outrage, the commercial availability of another small weapon cannot be good news for anyone—even if it comes packaged in an attractive velvet-lined box.

Swarna Rajagopalan is a political scientist by training and writes on gender, peace and security issues. She is also the founder of Prajnya.

Three steps to safety

This was published on January 7, 2014 as "3 steps to make your city safer."

2013 has been a year in which we have talked again and again about safety. There is a standard structure to what we say—we review a recent incident, we are outraged that it occurred and we assign blame, usually to the government. For me, there is a fourth component: what could I have done and what can I now do? After all, citizenship also comes with duties. Over the years, I have learnt that I can take charge of my own safety in at least three ways.

1. Safety audits 

The Women’s Safety Audit is a tool that was first developed in Toronto, Canada in 1989. The idea is very simple: neighbours survey their locality and determine its safety. The premise is that people who live in an area are the best-placed to tell you if it is safe or not. They are also the best to identify what makes it safe or unsafe, and how something can be remedied.

Residents walk around an area, mapping it for actual use—not just streets and landmarks, but also perhaps, where there are street vendors, where lots of bikes are parked or where there is a makeshift temple under a pipal tree. They also carry a questionnaire or checklist that asks about practical, physical amenities—streetlights, for instance. They write down details like whether there is anyone at the police chowki structure at the end of the road and at what times, someone is likely to be stationed there. They make a note of when various vendors set up their stalls and how long they keep them open, what they can see from where they sit; for instance, how early does the ironing shop open, when does it close and when does she not come to work. The exercise makes them truly familiar with their surroundings. It should also open up conversations that might not otherwise happen. At the end of the safety audit, residents have a very practical list of things that can be fixed in their area. (Here is an example of the report from a very simple audit exercise.)

This is only one part, and the easy part, of the audit process. What do you do with this information? Someone—you or I—needs to make this information available to those who can fix problems like the streetlight bulbs or broken signage. Safety audits are thus an excellent project for neighbourhood or resident welfare associations. Once a team (ideally, mostly made of women, visible minorities and maybe, persons with disabilities) has completed the audit exercise, then someone needs to draft the letters and emails and make the phone calls that it will take to convey the information. Perhaps one option is to organize a meeting with the local councillor and police officials where you can share the findings of the audit. There are also new mobile applications that permit individuals to enter information into an accessible, virtual database. 

2. Bystander intervention

“Bystander intervention” is when you or I see some act of violence take place and choose to step in to stop it. If you have watched the BellBajao videos, those are excellent examples of bystander interventions—someone hears violent fighting, goes upstairs, rings the bell and uses a simple (if dubious) excuse to break that moment of violence.

Organizations worldwide are developing their own training schemas on bystander intervention. They have the following common elements. First, you make an assessment of the situation—what do you think is happening? If you feel something is not right but are not sure, it’s still better to intervene rather than not to do so. If indeed there is a problem, the benefit of the doubt will not benefit the victim—whether it is street sexual harassment or office harassment or domestic violence. After all, you can keep your intervention very low-key. One very common tactic is to simply distract the aggressor in some way—this is the function of the doorbell in those videos. That simple act gives the victim time to regroup and makes it hard for the aggressor to return to the same level of violent fury. If you feel like it would not be safe for you if you intervened, you can also seek the help of others. Don’t go into a situation on your own if you are afraid. In certain settings, getting a person in authority involved may also work. For instance, if students in a college are picking on a first-year student and you feel helpless to intervene on your own, you could go to the principal or a professor.

Finally, if you think something is amiss, someone is looking unduly upset, there’s no harm in saying to a stranger, “Are you okay?” Maybe they will snap at you and say, “Yes.” But you will feel better for having shown you care. And should that person tell you, “Something is wrong, someone groped me,” make sure you know what to tell them: Don’t judge, don’t advise (you shouldn’t have taken that bus) but offer useful information. This means that you should also teach yourself about what that person’s options are: What numbers to call? Who offers support services? Who would know what to do? How does one file an FIR? Lots of NGOs make that information available on their websites. Take a moment now to find out.

It does not take heroism for a bystander to intervene. All it takes is the resolve to intervene when you see something wrong.  Alertness, presence of mind and concern are what it requires. Anyone can do it, and if each of us does, the world will be a safer place.

3. Choosing to feel invincible

We are surrounded by stories of bullying and cruelty and the world sometimes seems like a really horrible place. Most acts of violence, including sexual violence, come from the same place as bullying—the need to demonstrate that you have power and control over someone else. A bully is likely to pick on someone who looks and feels powerless.

We could respond to this by cowering and choosing to be in the world very little. This is the path that the well-meaning but paternalistic person would choose for us: Keep “our” women safe; keep them separate and maybe covered from head to toe and indoors (and never talk about what goes on indoors). There is a harder, longer road: the one that teaches girls (and boys) to grow up confident. Treating our daughters (and sons) as individual human beings, with minds and hearts, and with views of their own, is one way to do that. Another is to encourage them to play sports and be physically active so that they have confidence in their reflexes and their stamina. This is one of the things that a good self-defence instructor promotes.

Of course, people with incredible courage and confidence do experience violence. What I want to say is this: Invincibility can be a choice we make, a choice that is underscored by the civic activism of safety audits and that reinforces our resolve not to be passive onlookers in the face of violence and injustice. The more I think about violence and safety, the more I am convinced that it is up to us to make this change in our world, and these are three practical (not easy) ways to get started today.

Swarna Rajagopalan is a political scientist by training who spends time doing gender violence awareness work for Prajnya. Many of Prajnya’s activities, including Community Cafés, promote bystander intervention.