In Search of Answers: Indian Women’s Voices from Manushi

In search of answers offers a selection of the most incisive records–analysis as well as testimony–to have appeared in the journal in the first five years. Vividly portrayed are the living and working conditions and the day-to-day struggles of millions of ordinary Indian women. The articles explore why, even four decades after independence, women remain oppressed, and need to toil endlessly for basic necessities–food, fuel, and water. This culture of women’s oppression is seen not as a hangover from a traditional past, but as rooted in modern economic and political developments of the last century or more. In this context critical issues are studied, such as the patriarchal bias of our social and legal system, women’s near total disinheritance from property rights, the exclusive male control over land, the devaluation of women’s labour, their marginal role in decision-making, and the violence they encounter from the family, society, and the police as agents of the state.