Reclaiming rights
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GENDER JUSTICE, CITIZENSHIP AND DEVELOPMENT: Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay and Navsharan Singh — Editors; International Development Research Centre, Canada and Zubaan, K-92, Hauz Kaus Enclave, New Delhi-110016. Rs. 495.
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Cavery Bopaiah
Why do women need, ever so often, to reassert and reclaim their constitutionally guaranteed rights? Anne Marie Goetz suggests that this may be because social institutions such as the family, the community, the state and religion have not absorbed the message of the Constitution, and traditional bad habits die hard. Why else are “satis” venerated, inheritance laws flouted, “talaq” condoned, and abortion condemned?
Citizenship
This book is an attempt to veer the development debates back to the fundamental issues of women’s rights to equal citizenship, and to equality in the eyes of the law. It begins by establishing a conceptual framework for issues of gender justice and citizenship, and then examines regional perspectives from Latin America, the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. These indicate that the underlying problematic areas for most women are an unequal access to justice and a devalued citizenship.
The authors show us that citizenship is not just a relationship between the state and an individual but also that between the state and groupings of “particularistic” identities and kin based formations. This is so especially where state power is derived from these groupings within society; a clear explanation of what goes on with our vote bank politics. Perhaps, our hope lies in charismatic leaders with relatively “autonomous” sources of state power, as in Turkey and Tunisia at the time of their becoming modern nations. These leaders were somehow able to push through legislation to give women equality and to enforce these new norms. A beam of hope, for all of us, has been the work of Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel Prize winning lawyer whose fresh interpretations of Sharia law have helped to expose the contradictions in the application of the law, and have created support for a more equal justice for women. It is a pity that, as Ratna Kapoor shows, in Bangladesh and Pakistan pro-women’s activists are branded as pro-American and thus discredited.
Application of law
We in India have the additional burden of a professed pluralism that has not found its stable state of equal citizenship and justice for all. We have personal laws within each religion that seem to override constitutional law. These personal laws powered by tradition are often anachronistic and unfair to women. It seems to me that gender justice is one area where individual rights should trump community rights, but the law in many countries, acts as a poor enforcer of women’s equality and a good enforcer of patriarchy. This we saw in the much-cited case of Shah Bano, a recently divorced Muslim woman who had appealed for alimony under the secular criminal law and was granted it. The reaction from Muslim leaders was so strong that “she publicly rescinded her right to maintenance and declared herself a loyal Muslim.”
Perhaps, the only way out of this stranglehold is for all young couples in India to be able to choose to marry, under the Special Marriages Act, which is a secular and more balanced look at the marital relationship and the responsibilities of each partner. Maitreyee Mukhopadhyay sees “citizenship in development ….as a form of personhood that links rights to agency.” Can women be considered full citizens if they cannot act on their own or claim equal access to the justice system? If not, what kind of development best addresses equality and gender justice issues for women? Would economic empowerment give them more control over other aspects of their lives? Or is it protections such as reproductive choice, just inheritance rights, laws against rape, dowry and child marriage, and political representation that make them less vulnerable?
Most of the contributors to this book are established academics, with a good grasp of the issues, but their cautious tone, especially when referring to governments or the “international development institutions”, makes for a less interesting read. Perhaps the book is just meant to document and synthesise women’s issues in the legal and political domain and lay the groundwork for future research on gender justice and citizenship, in the context of developing countries. I do hope they achieve their aim to “re-energise and re-politicise the gender equality agenda in international development.”
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