Progressive Women and Political Identity

This book deals with Progressive Women and Political Identity. It gives an critical account of women’s participation in politics and politicalisation of women issues. Women’s Liberation Movement has concentrated on the women’s oppression which include the sexual division of labour, control of sexuality and the relation of reproduction, access to education, jobs and power over our lives. These issues set an agenda for gender analysis which should produce strategies for change. The feminists movement in India raised several questions – What it is to be a woman? How our feminity and our sexuality have defined for us and how we might begin to redefine them for ourselves? They also include complain against the objectification of women as sexual object for male consumption, against pornography, rape and other form of violence against women within and outside of the family. Today, gender theory has responded in a strange ways to this political agenda, as can be seen, in gender approach to the family. These issues have been highlighted in following chapters: Identity and Individualism; The Politics of Sexuality; Feminist Consciousness in India; women in Political Process; Gender, Leadership and Representation; Feminism from Theory to Politics; and Emergence of Women’s Autonomous Organisations.