Energised by the agitations and new questions arising during the late 1960s, the early 70s saw women creating their own organisations. Stirring in the Himalayan region led to the Gandhian Chipko andolan/movement. Starting off as an anti-alcohol movement that addressed the suppliers of alcohol, Chipko soon became an ecological forest conservation movement that was mainly led by rural women who made the connection between deforestation, land erosion and the drying up of water sources. By women literally placing their bodies between the logger’s axes and the trees and addressing the link between the forest and survival, they started an eco-feminist movement in India with impact across the world.
Gandhians and Left groups, Lal Nishaan, Socialists and Communist Party Marxist began to organise women workers into trade unions. In cities and small towns self employed women, women workers in the formal sector joined in large numbers. Women agricultural workers were also being mobilised. Some Left groups started creating women’s wings within parties and movements.
Many other women’s organisations were formed across the country, many of them inspired by the urge to express women’s questions in distinct women’s groups, by the need to address women’s oppression more holistically through investigating patriarchy and speaking of the necessity to liberate women from an overall oppressive system.
Progressive Organisation of Women, march against sexual harrassment in public spaces, Hyderabad 1973
READ more about the p.o.w. Manifesto
The slogan by the P.O.W. (in Telugu), translates to “We are not slaves, we are not goddess, we are human”
Furthermore, the active exchange with practices and discourses of women’s movements and other political struggles internationally (Vietnam, China, Black liberation movement in the US, the feminist movement in Europe and the US) as well as many regional meetings that brought together students, urban lower and middle class women, peasant women and women factory workers, shaped the political atmosphere and the questions of the time.
Tamil and English Magazine covers published by womens’ Groups.
The Towards Equality: The Report of the Status of Women in India brought to light how the conditions for the majority of women had deteriorated severely: a declining sex ratio, and livelihoods and survival were at risk. Data showed reducing levels of participation in agriculture, the rural informal sector and the urban formal sector and very poor representation in all levels of the elected government. The report was historic for activists and feminists in that it demanded an interrogation into the existing theories of “development “and “upliftment” of women as beneficiaries of state largesse. New research which challenged those categories was needed in multiple sites which made women’s status visible.
Yugantar also worked with findings from this report as part of their wider research process. Within the emerging women’s movement an organic and vibrant relationship began between feminist scholars and activists, both feeding into each other.
