Women in Movement (Routledge Revivals) by Rowbotham Sheila

Author:Rowbotham, Sheila [Rowbotham, Sheila]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2013-10-13T16:00:00+00:00

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INDIAN WOMEN AND SELF-RULE

Countries that have been subjected to imperialism, either through direct colonization or indirect economic pressures, were, by the early twentieth century, developing movements of resistance. Examples include Ireland, Egypt, Turkey, India, China, the Caribbean countries, and later Algeria and the new African countries, which gained independence after World War II. Struggles for national liberation were to take various forms in the course of this century; some aimed to set up Western liberal economies, whereas others were inspired by aspects of the Russian revolution.

Although every country has its own history, and there are many strands in nationalism, which has been in some cases a top-down reorganization of the state and in others a popular grass roots mobilization, in which national liberation has linked with socialism and communism, women have been important in several ways.

First, nationalist movements have questioned how gender is seen. They have brought new ideas of how a man should be, how a woman should be, and how they should relate. There has been a particular interest in defining new ways of seeing women as mothers.

Of course these ideas have been mainly thought out by men who have sought to impose them on women. But it would be wrong to see women as entirely passive recipients. Women have been crucial communicators of these new images to other women and to their children. They have also shaped them to fit their own purposes in the process. Moreover, there has been an active intellectual minority creatively and theoretically connecting the emancipation of women to nationalism. Two examples from the 1930s in the Caribbean are Una Marson, the poet, and Amy Bailey, who theorized domestic labor.

Second, women have played a significant part in nationalist and antiimperialist struggles in many countries—even though the men have not always wanted them to become involved initially. In the 1950s, for example, in Algeria women were able to act as intermediaries in the resistance to the French because the soldiers did not suspect them.

Third, these movements have reached and affected the lives of millions of women who faced very different problems than Western women, both workers and peasants. In the 1930s in Trinidad, Elma Françoise was active in both the workers‘ movement and in nationalism. The Vietnamese National Liberation Front in the 1960s mobilized thousands of peasant women.

There was considerable interaction between Western feminists and women in nationalist movements from the late nineteenth century into the 1930s. The extent of this is only just emerging in historical accounts. However, it was not just a matter of borrowing concepts from Western liberal feminism, for these were not always appropriate. Some Western feminists too assumed they would be the teachers without understanding that in countries such as India there was already a tradition of women’s resistance. Nor did they often understand the social impact of changes.

From the 1920s communists were involved in nationalist movements and raised questions of women’s emancipation. One example was Iraq in the 1920s.

Both nationalism and communism effected extraordinary changes for women in mapping out the new public sphere that women entered.

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