Gender And Post Colonial Nation Building In India Essay

Gender And Post Colonial Nation Building In India - Essay Example Focus shifted to the problems of social position of women and to the satisfying of their needs and demands. The main issue of the welfare approach was that Indian women were the object of the programmes designed for their development and they acted the roles of consumers, rather than participants in various agencies. This approach was then recognized as unfortunate due to the narrow range of issues defined as essential for women. These main issues were education, health and domestic violence. Besides, this approach defined that the women should be responsible for the housekeeping only, assigning to them the following roles: housewives, mothers and wives. (Banerjee) The period of the Decade of Women started in 1975 and lasted till 1985. At the beginning of this period the scientists started to speak about separating practical and strategic needs, or interests, of women. Among other authors, Molyneux in 1985 determines these needs and Moser in 1989 described them in detail. Here is the example: "finding food or fuel for the family is a practical gender need; women's issues addressing practical gender needs, which if fulfilled, could lead to an improvement in the condition of women". (qtd in Mohanty) But as the experience shows, to provide constant an... ecessary to remove gaps between gender roles in education in medicine, but providing such changes only won't significantly change women's position in the society. The specialists speak about the changes that are to be provided at first on the level of morals. It is necessary to make the notion of gender equity be recognized in the society, and ideological changes are to be provided to reshape social patterns in the state. (Buch) Conception of "strategic gender needs" appeared during the period of Decade of Women, and the process of gender planning started. The purposes of gender planning were elimination of gender discrimination and accepting gender mainstreaming. The concept of gender mainstreaming "meant that the 'Ladies Compartment' approach of having one Gender Unit or a single Ministry for Women be abandoned, because land reforms, fisheries development, trade, school curricula, road construction, taxation, conflict resolution, etc., were all as much the concerns of women as of men". (Mohanty, p.6) All these issues were recognized as those that have different influence on men and women, and, accordingly, demanding different strategies and approaches. Thus, the activists of the movement required that each programme worked out by the government, should include gender analysis, based upon key interests and demands of genders. It was also necessary to create an institution to control this process and to offer the direction of the changes to be made. It was planned that this institution would be provided with high power and would be financed good, and would focus on the women's interests, needs and demands. The authors describe this condition the following way: "Strategic gender needs were identified as ones that challenged the existing division of labour and catalyzed