[News] Women Hold Up More Than Half the Sky
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Thu Oct 14 09:14:34 EDT 2021
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*Women Hold Up More Than Half the Sky: The Forty-First Newsletter (2021)*
Illustration: Junaina Muhammed (India) / Young Socialist Artists
Junaina Muhammed (India) / Young Socialist Artists, A woman working in
the korai fields, where women often work from a young age to earn a living.
Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social
Research
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*Reminder*: Indian peasants and agricultural workers remain in the midst
of a country-wide agitation sparked by the proposal of three farm bills
that were then signed into law by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party
government in September 2020. In June 2021, our dossier
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summarised the situation plainly:
It is clear that the problem in Indian agriculture is not too much
institutional support, but inadequate and uneven deployment of
institutions as well as the unwillingness of these institutions to
address the inherent inequalities of village society. There is no
evidence that agribusiness firms will develop infrastructure, enhance
agricultural markets, or provide technical support to farmers. All this
is clear to the farmers.
The farmers’ protests, which began in October 2020, are a sign of the
clarity with which farmers have reacted to the agrarian crisis and to
the three laws that will only deepen the crisis. No attempt by the
government – including trying to incite farmers along religious lines –
has succeeded in breaking the farmers’ unity. There is a new generation
that has learned to resist, and they are prepared to take their fight
across India.
In January 2021, the Supreme Court of India heard a series of petitions
about the farmers’ protests. Chief Justice S. A. Bobde reacted to them
with the following startling observation
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‘We don’t understand either why old people and women are kept in the
protests’. The word ‘kept’ rankles. Did the Chief Justice believe that
women are not farmers and that women farmers do not come to the protests
of their own volition? That is the implication behind his remark.
A quick look at a recent labour force survey shows
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that 73.2% of women workers who live in rural areas work in agriculture;
they are peasants, agricultural workers, and artisans. Meanwhile, only
55% of male workers who live in rural areas are engaged in agriculture.
It is telling that only 12.8% of women farmers own land, which is an
illustration of the gender inequality in India and is what likely
provoked the Chief Justice’s sexist remark.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation pointed out
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a decade ago that ‘Closing the gender gap in agricultural inputs alone
could lift 100-150 million people out of hunger’. Given the immense
problem of hunger in our time – as highlighted in last week’s newsletter
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– women in agriculture must be, as the FAO notes
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‘heard as equal partners’.
Illustration: Karuna Pious P (India) / Young Socialist Artists
Karuna Pious P (India) / Young Socialist Artists, Brick work, locally
known as /pakka me kaam./
>From Tricontinental Research Services (Delhi) comes a superb new dossier
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on the status of women in India, /Indian Women on an Arduous Road to
Equality/ (no. 45, October 2021). The text opens with an image of five
women working at a brick kiln. When I saw that drawing, I was
transported to a calculation
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made by Brinda Karat, a leader of the Communist Party of India
(Marxist), about the labour of women construction workers. Bina, a young
woman working in Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand, carries between 1,500
and 2,000 bricks to masons in a multi-story building. Bina carries at
least 3,000kgs of bricks every day, each weighing 2.5kgs, yet she earns
a pittance of under ₹150 ($2) per day and suffers from severe body
aches. ‘The pain has become an intrinsic part of my life. I don’t
remember a single day without it’, Bina told Karat.
Illustration: Daniela Ruggeri (Argentina) / Tricontinental: Institute
for Social Research
Daniela Ruggeri (Argentina) / Tricontinental: Institute for Social
Research/, /Childcare workers protest the Modi government’s unfair
treatment of women and workers.
*Reminder*: Women in India have been an integral part of the farmers’
movement, the workers’ movement, and the movement to widen democracy.
Does this need to be said? It seems that something so evident requires
constant repetition.
During this pandemic, women public health workers and women childcare
workers have played a central role in holding together society, all
while being disparaged and having their work trivialised. On 24
September 2021, ten million scheme workers – those who work for
government schemes such as public health (Accredited Social Health
Activist or ASHA workers) and crèches (/anganwadi/ workers) – went on
strike to demand formal employment and better protection for their work
during the COVID-19 pandemic. ‘Tax the super-rich’, they said
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repeal the farm bills, stop the privatisation of the public sector, and
defend women workers.
Over the past few years, ASHA workers have complained about routine
harassment, including sexual harassment. In 2013, the Indian government
enacted
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the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act to protect both formal
and informal workers. No rules have been framed for ASHA and other
scheme workers, nor are these workers able to lift up their experiences
of harassment to the front pages of corporate media.
Our dossier carefully dissects the prevalence of patriarchal harassment
and violence, making sure to identify the different ways that such toxic
behaviours strike at women of different classes. Working-class women in
unions and in left organisations have built a kind of mass sensibility;
as a result, their struggles now incorporate demands against patriarchy
that had otherwise been distant from their lives. For instance, it is
now clear amongst many working-class women that they must win maternity
leave, equal wages for equal work, guaranteed crèches, and redressal and
prevention mechanisms against sexual harassment in workplaces. Such
demands cascade back into the family and community, where other
struggles – such as against patriarchal violence in the home – expand
the horizon of democratic movements in India.
Illustration: Vikas Thakur (India) / Tricontinental: Institute for
Social Research
Vikas Thakur (India) / Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, A
cycling training camp in Pudukkottai, Tamil Nadu.
The dossier closes with wise words about the importance of the farmers’
movement for the women’s movement:
Though the Indian women’s movement has seen many ups and downs over the
decades, it has remained resilient, adapted to changing socioeconomic
conditions, and even expanded. The current situation might present an
opportunity to strengthen mass movements and to steer the focus towards
the rights and livelihoods of women and workers. The ongoing Indian
farmers’ movement, which started before the pandemic and continues to
stay strong, offers the opportunity to steer the national discourse
towards such an agenda. The tremendous participation of rural women, who
travelled from different states to take turns sitting at the borders of
the national capital for days, is a historic phenomenon. Their presence
in the farmers’ movement provides hope for the women’s movement in a
post-pandemic future.
*Reminder*: Nothing in the slogans coming from the farmers’ encampments
is unique. Most of these are long-standing claims. The demands made by
women farmers at the protest sites and amplified by the farmers’ unions
echo
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the Draft National Policy for Women in Agriculture put forward by the
National Commission for Women in April 2008. This policy included the
following key demands, each one applicable today:
1. Ensure that women have access to and control over resources,
including land rights, water, and pasture/forest/biodiversity resources.
2. Guarantee equal wages for equal work.
3. Pay minimum support prices to primary producers and ensure that
sufficient food grains are available at affordable prices.
4. Encourage women to enter agriculture-related industries (including
fisheries and artisanal work).
5. Provide training programmes for women including agricultural
practices and technologies that are sensitive to the knowledge that
women possess as well as the practices they carry out.
6. Provide adequate and equal availability of services such as
irrigation, credit, and insurance.
7. Encourage primary producers to produce and market seeds, forest and
dairy products, and livestock.
8. Prevent women’s livelihoods from being displaced without providing
viable alternatives.
The left women’s movement has put these demands back on the table. The
right-wing government will not hear them.
Illustration: Ingrid Neves (Brazil) / Tricontinental: Institute for
Social Research
Ingrid Neves (Brazil) / Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, A
seaweed harvester facing the rough seas.
Once more, our dossier comes to you designed with great care and love.
This time, our team has worked closely with the Young Socialist Artists
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(India). Together, we found powerful photographs from the history of the
Indian women’s movement and from the farmers’ protests and used these as
references for the illustrations in the dossier. We look forward to
inviting you to an online exhibition of this art, our small gesture
towards expanding a possible pathway to a socialist future.
Warmly,
Vijay
Website <www.eltricontinental.org>
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