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Mobility Towards Work and Politics for Women in Kerala State, India: A View from the Histories of Gender and Space*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2010

J. DEVIKA  and
BINITHA V. THAMPI
J. DEVIKA
Affiliation:
Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India695 011 Email: devika@cds.ac.in
BINITHA V. THAMPI
Affiliation:
Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India695 011 Email: binithavthampi@gmail.com
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Abstract

In this paper, historical analysis and qualitative fieldwork are combined to question the belief that recent efforts in Kerala to induct women into local governance and mobilize poor women into self-help groups implies continuity with the earlier history of women's mobility into the spaces of paid work and politics. For a longer view, the histories of gender-coding of spaces and of women's mobility into paid work and politics are examined. In the twentieth century, while the subversive potential of paid work was contained through casting it within ‘feminine terms’, politics was unquestionably ‘unfeminine space’. However, recent efforts have not advanced women's mobility in any simple sense. The subversive potential of women's mobility towards work in self-help groups is still limited. In local governance, unlike the experience of an earlier generation of women, the ability to conform to norms of elite femininity now appears to be a valuable resource.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 5 , September 2011 , pp. 1147 - 1175
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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63 While some studies have found much less bias in beneficiary selection along political lines, and corruption, as well, in Kerala's LSGIs, they do admit that a clear political affiliation to the ruling party is certainly an advantage. One study, a comparison between a Left-dominated and a non-Left-dominated panchayat, observed that party involvement at all levels was evident in the former, and while non-Left people were not necessarily excluded, the power to include or exclude lay overwhelmingly with the local party. Nair, People's Planning: The Kerala Experience.

64 It may be interesting to probe the experience of women PRI functionaries who have defied these tendencies; at this stage of fieldwork, we are unable to make clear statements on their experience.