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A frank portrait of the South Asian woman
Women and Governance in South Asia -Re-imaging the State
Edited by Yasmin Thambiah
Published by the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo, Sri Lanka

Review by Vijitha Fernando

It is common knowledge that despite some differences and a whole range of similarities, the women of the South Asian region are equally disadvantaged in all aspects of their lives.

The majority are poor, living well below the poverty line, bedeviled by conventions and traditions with little or no access even to the basic requirements of life. This well researched and documented study by Yasmin Thambiah gives the complete detailed picture, illustrating how the significant changes in development and national infrastructure, especially of the last two decades, in their separate countries have impacted on the lives of their women.

In all the five countries featured in this study India, as two entities, North and South, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, women have been affected by both micro and macro political transformations.

However except in the most basic roles as biological reproducers and home makers, women have been largely overlooked by planners and implementers responsible for national policy. Even where women figure prominently when their rights or resources or their bodies threaten to become sites of contests for state power, the active participation of women to articulate their rights and responsibilities has generally been overlooked. The irony here is that while the State and its institutions rarely include women as autonomous citizens, and women are nearly always considered second class, as appendages to men, the same State is looked upon to provide succour and setting of standards - the welfare state that enacts laws and standards and sets out policies to rectify social and economic inequalities and impact on the community, on men and women both. At a time when international women's rights movements and other forces on behalf of social and economic justice for women are posing critical questions and challenging the State and the governments of the South Asian region, we have to look realistically at what obstacles women face regarding their role in political participation. Many questions arise here - how can women be empowered to stand for election and take part in decision-making? Do we have examples from the South Asian region that can be emulated? What do women think of the State? What role does gender play in the affairs of the State? These are crucial questions. And they need responsible answers. This is broadly what this study has attempted to do, taking the five countries as separate entities and then collectively as a region, in which political, economic and social realities mesh with one another and where there are overwhelming similarities as well as critical differences. This has been an enormous task and in a review of this nature it is not possible to give an indepth analysis of all the ramifications of the nature of political participation or non-participation of women in all five countries.

However, I would like to congratulate the author on her meticulously detailed analysis of her findings, the honesty with which she has presented them and more for the fact - where many fail - of presenting the situation of women in South Asia without patronage and without clouding the issue with sentimentality.

For a realistic view of the larger picture, the study has focussed on two main themes - womens' engagement with formal political processes and women's engagement with and vision, of the State. The study has been organised under six main themes of look in at women's political participation in the five countries, the relationship between gender, politics and the state, the interface of state and women, mediation of civil organisations, women's visions of the state and what conclusions can be drawn from these observations. Statistics, observations, interviews with key informants, the contribution of the non-governmental community all point to the unhappy situation of women and their political participation in all five countries.

True, all of them except Nepal, have had their shining hour - with the Bandarnaikes and Kumaratungas, Bhuttos, Gandhis and Mujibs illuminating the firmament even for short periods. These provide perhaps the best examples of the dynamics of power and patronage that dominate politics in this region.Women are most likely to emerge from these political families, families which are at the top, most importantly in caste, and no less important, class, and close behind, wealth and power.

All these have particular implications for all women of this region. In spite of these barriers, South Asian women continue to make bids for greater and more effective participation in the political life of their several countries. Here they are met with a range of challenges. They are hampered by lack of education, lack of money, lack of mobility and by other forces such as the sexual division of labour, the negative attitudes of the family and the conventions and traditions which prevail in their community.

That is not all. Political situations and systems are not generally inhospitable. Often they can even be prohibitive. There is also a more insidious factor - the possible manipulating of women regardless of the women's own interests by these forces.

There is, however, one aspect of women's engagement with politics, governance and the State where women have exerted the greatest influence in which Sri Lanka differs from the other South Asian countries. Sri Lankan women have always exercised their right to elect members to legislative bodies and issues of governance. From the time the country obtained the right to vote nearly three quarters of a century ago, women have regarded it as their civic responsibility to cast their vote. This has always been voluntary and enthusiastic. But there are snags here too. A woman's vote can often be influenced by the male members of the family. And sadly, it is not always that women consider seriously and impartially the individual qualities of honesty, integrity and leadership of the candidate when they cast their vote.

If South Asian women including the women of Sri Lanka are to be empowered in the real sense of that overworked word, their understanding of the concepts of politics, governance, democracy and the state has to be widened. The study points out that the majority of women do not differentiate between government and State. In spite of information in the languages of the people and women's healthy response to the media in at least a few of the South Asian nations, women's perception of politics seems to be limited to voting and electoral processes. They have no understanding of politics as a concept that underpins the individual, civil, economic, social and other rights that women are heir to. What comes through loud and clear from the interviews is a deep seated disillusionment with both political parties and political processes. Here women are thinking beyond violence - that is part of the political process in almost all these countries - to the failure of successive governments to deliver.

And who wants to nominate women? Not the men, no. If we look back at the recent parliamentary elections we can see the paucity of women nominated by the various political parties. A number of unsavoury reasons come to mind. Caste is a strong barrier, at times the main obstacle. If, in spite of these obstacles, women do get in they are not always allowed to carry out their mandates as happened in India after a 33% quota for women was provided for representation in the panchayats. The study refers to instances where women have been put in place as proxies for husbands or other male relatives in several of the South Asian countries.

Against this backdrop one would expect women's vision of a State to be incisive, at the very least. But the majority of South Asian women see no need for change. They expect the State to continue its many roles, rather than reduce its interventions, even if the State was corrupt and repressive as an institution. At times even a desire to see the state increase its interventions and mediations was apparent from the interviews with a number of women. However, ironic as it may seem, at the same time women interviewed felt that the State fell short of what they expected it to do to improve their lives.

The ideal, as envisioned by the women of the South Asian countries in the study, was one of a democratic, participatory, non-discriminatory, gender sensitive one, transparent in its processes of governance. To them the state was a provider of law order and peace as according to the reports all the countries, women are being victims of violence of all types. They also saw a State which would not use religion and ethnicity for political gains. Women from minority communities saw the state guaranteeing them both physical and economic security, maintaining the rule of law and respecting their fundamental rights and rights to land ownership. They also saw a decentralised State addressing their day to day concerns better than a centralised one. A participatory government would guarantee that development plans would not be foisted from outside but be prepared internally and when that happens the women believed that governments would be more sensitive to women's needs.

Where caste plays a predominant role in politics as in North India, women felt that ensuring equitable distribution on economic lines will ensure equitable distribution along caste lines as well. All in all they wanted the welfare State to go on providing resources, employment, being the arbiter and the owner and maintainer of essential services and to administer distribution. They would like civil society to play a role here, and in areas as health and education, they welcomed private sector intervention, especially if the women were from the urban middle class.

In the Pakistan segment of the study while women and men were both concerned with good governance and unemployment, the women prioritised inflation and men, corruption. Women were also concerned with sanitation, electricity, roads and similar basic facilities.

The women in the rural areas were aware of how Islam could be negatively used for political ends and their vision of a State was one where this would not happen. Sri Lankan women despite the many economic transformations in the past few decades continue to see the state as a provider of essential services and employment to their children, a continuity which is essential to their own survival. While they are mostly frustrated at the failure of the state to deliver at times, many respondents in this study still expect the state to increase its responsibility in crucial areas of social reform, community services and employment. There were many who felt that the welfare burden could be shifted to civil society groups and that social change could be best effected through the non-governmental community.

Even a cursory reading through this study shows that even though women and girls constitute half the population of the region and while they are directly affected by both micro and macro political transformations, the absence of women's opinions visions and experiences seriously affects the projected results of these transformations of all these countries.

Looking at the overall picture of women in this region, I am left with a feeling of sadness. In spite of the economic, social and political changes of the last two decades, any effective participation of women in the political processes, let alone in governance, seems a distant dream. One has only to read through their expectations of the state to see that many of them, except for some activists and dynamic NGOs, are content to receive handouts and wallow in welfarism. There are many forces that can be blamed for this state of affairs, but the most insidious, I feel, is women's own conditioning.

At this point one is tempted to ask - what next? Will this wealth of material serve as a point of departure for more investigations and greater detailed research into women and governance in South Asia and will it, hopefully, be a spring board for some positive action in the future?

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