No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
GROUP RIGHTS, GENDER JUSTICE, AND WOMEN’S SELF-HELP GROUPS: EXIT, VOICE, AND LOYALTY IN AN INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY IN INDIA
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2024
Abstract
This essay addresses tensions within political philosophy between group rights, which allow historically marginalized communities some self-governance in determining its own rules and norms, and the rights of marginalized subgroups, such as women, within these communities. Community norms frequently uphold patriarchal structures that define women as inferior to men, assign them a subordinate status within the community, and cut them off from the individual rights enjoyed by women in other sections of society. As feminists point out, the capacity for voice and exit cannot be taken for granted, for community norms may be organized in ways that deny women any voice in its decision-making forums as well as the resources they would need to survive outside the community. This essay draws on research among the Gond, an indigenous community in India, to explore this debate. Given the strength of the forces within the community militating against women’s capacity for voice or exit, the question motivating our research is: Can external organizations make a difference? We explore the impacts of two external development organizations that sought to work with women within these communities in order to answer this question.
Keywords
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- © 2024 Social Philosophy & Policy Foundation. Printed in the USA
Footnotes
*
Department of International Development and Faculty of the Institute of International Inequalities, London School of Economics, n.kabeer@lse.ac.uk; Chief Executive Officer, Charities Aid Foundation India, nivedita.narain@cafindia.org; Department of Psychology, City University of New York, Graduate Center, varora@gradcenter.cuny.edu; (formerly) Professional Development and Human Resource Development Unit, Professional Assistance for Development Action. We deeply mourn the unfortunate demise of our coauthor and colleague, Vinitika Lal, who passed away in December 2022 while this essay was under publication. Competing Interests: We wish to clarify that this research was carried out independently of PRADAN. The organization provided logistical support, but had no input into the analysis and writing up of the research. The research was supported by the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity (AFSEE) program at the London School of Economics International Inequalities Institute.
References
1 The PESA Act emphasizes the village as a community managing its affairs in accordance with its traditions and customs. This Act empowers the gram sabha, made up of all members of villages in these Scheduled Areas, rather than elected representatives of the official gram panchayat, to decide on social and economic projects in the area.
2 Eisenberg, Avigail and Spinner-Halev, Jeff, eds., Minorities within Minorities: Equality, Rights, and Diversity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Cornwall, Andrea, “Spaces for Transformation? Reflections on Issues of Power and Difference in Participation in Development,” in Participation: From Tyranny to Transformation? ed. Hickey, Samuel and Mohan, Giles (London: Zed Books, 2004), 75–91 Google Scholar.
4 Hirschman, Albert O., Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970)Google Scholar.
5 See, e.g., Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dworkin, Andrea, Right-Wing Women: The Politics of Domesticated Females (New York: Putnam, 1983)Google Scholar.
6 Kukathas, Chandran, “Liberalism and Multiculturalism: The Politics of Indifference,” Political Theory 26, no. 5 (1998): 686–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 See, e.g., Sandel, Michael J., Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Taylor, Charles, Hegel and Modern Society (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Kymlicka, Will, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).Google Scholar
9 Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship.
10 Raz, Joseph, Ethics in the Public Domain: Essays in the Morality of Law and Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).Google Scholar
11 Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, 169.
12 Raz, Ethics in the Public Domain, 86.
13 Kukathas, “Liberalism and Multiculturalism.”
14 Phillips, Anne, “Multiculturalism, Universalism, and the Claims of Democracy,” in Gender Justice, Development, and Rights, ed. Maxine Molyneux and Shahra Razavi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 115–37Google Scholar.
15 Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship.
16 Kukathas, “Liberalism and Multiculturalism.”
17 Oonagh Reitman, “On Exit,” in Minorities within Minorities, ed. Eisenberg and Spinner-Halev, 189–208.
18 Gurpreet Mahajan, “Can Intra-Group Equality Co-Exist with Cultural Diversity? Re-Examining Multicultural Frameworks of Accommodation,” in Minorities within Minorities, ed. Eisenberg and Spinner-Halev, 90–112.
19 Okin, Susan Moller, “‘Forty Acres and a Mule’ for Women: Rawls and Feminism,” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 4, no. 2 (2005): 233–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20 Phillips, “Multiculturalism, Universalism, and the Claims of Democracy.”
21 See, e.g., O’Neill, Onora, “Justice, Gender, and International Boundaries,” in International Justice and the Third World: Studies in the Philosophy of Development, ed. Attfield, Robin and Wilkins, Barry (London: Routledge, 1992), 47–72 Google Scholar; Fraser, Nancy, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” Social Text 25, nos. 25–26 (1990): 56–80Google Scholar.
22 Phillips, “Multiculturalism, Universalism, and the Claims of Democracy”; Kabeer, Naila, “Empowerment, Citizenship, and Gender Justice: A Contribution to Locally Grounded Theories of Change in Women’s Lives,” Ethics and Social Welfare 6, no. 3 (2012): 216–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 Naila Kabeer, Nivedita Narain, Varnica Arora, and Vinitika Lal, “Group Rights and Gender Justice: Exploring Tensions within the Gond Community in India” (Working Paper 33, International Institute of Inequalities, London School of Economics, August 2019), https://www.lse.ac.uk/International-Inequalities/Assets/Documents/Working-Papers/LSE-III-Working-paper-33-Kabeer.pdf.
24 Pereira, Melvil, Dutta, Bitopi, and Kakati, Binita, eds., Legal Pluralism and Indian Democracy: Tribal Conflict Resolution Systems in Northeast India (London: Routledge, 2018)Google Scholar.
25 Ghurye, Govind Sadashiv, The Scheduled Tribes (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1963)Google Scholar.
26 Sundar, Nandini, Subalterns and Sovereigns: An Anthropological History of Bastar, 1854–1996 (London: Oxford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Baviskar, Amita, “Adivasi Encounters with Hindu Nationalism in MP,” Economic and Political Weekly 40, no. 48 (2005): 5105–13Google Scholar.
27 Sundar, “Subalterns and Sovereigns”; Ramachandra Guha, “Adivasis, Naxalites, and Indian Democracy,” Economic and Political Weekly 42, no. 32 (2007): 3305–12.
28 World Bank, Poverty and Social Exclusion in India (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2011)Google Scholar; Xaxa, Virginius, Report of the High-Level Committee on Socioeconomic, Health, and Educational Status of Tribal Communities of India (New Delhi: Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Government of India, 2014)Google Scholar.
29 Shachar, Ayelet, “On Citizenship and Multicultural Vulnerability,” Political Theory 28, no. 1, (2000): 64–89 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
30 Ilina Sen, A Situational Analysis of Women and Girls in Chhattisgarh (New Delhi: National Commission for Women, Government of India, 2004).
31 Sundar, “Subalterns and Sovereigns.”
32 Alpa Shah notes a similar trend among adivasis in Jharkhand to reimagine the notion of adivasi communities in purer form through greater regulation of the social and sexual tribal body; see Shah, Alpa, “The Labour of Love: Seasonal Migration from Jharkhand to the Brick Kilns of Other States in India,” Contributions to Indian Sociology 40, no. 1 (2006): 91–118 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sen, A Situational Analysis of Women and Girls in Chhattisgarh.
33 Prabhu, Shraddha, Wolf, David Patterson Silver, Dulmus, Catherine N., and Ratheeshkumar, K. S., “Prevalence, Nature, Context, and Impact of Alcohol Use in India: Recommendations for Practice and Research,” Journal of Global Social Work Practice 3, no. 2 (2010)Google Scholar.
34 Cornwall, “Spaces for Transformation?”
35 This methodology is used by feminist organizations across India. It became part of PRADAN’s SHG strategy when it shifted its focus from livelihoods to building the capacity for self-governance among its members. PRADAN partnered with Jagori, a feminist organization in India, to develop its own approach.
36 It is possible, given their past fears of “speaking,” that the ability of SHG women to speak forcefully about the gender injustices they experienced in their community reflects the processes they had gone through as a result of SHG membership.
37 Gaining the courage to speak about their personal lives with others like themselves through these processes may be one reason why they were so articulate when we spoke to them about their experiences of gender injustice in their community.