Feminism and Contemporary Indian Women's Writing

Feminism and Contemporary Indian Women's Writing
Author: E. Jackson
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2010-01-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0230275095

This book is a comparative and developmental study of the expression of feminist concerns in the novels of Kamala Markandaya, Nayantara Sahgal, Anita Desai, and Shashi Deshpande, among the best known and most prolific Indian novelists writing in English, who have been self-consciously engaged with women's issues during the postcolonial era.

Burdens of History

Burdens of History
Author: Antoinette Burton
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2000-11-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807860654

In this study of British middle-class feminism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Antoinette Burton explores an important but neglected historical dimension of the relationship between feminism and imperialism. Demonstrating how feminists in the United Kingdom appropriated imperialistic ideology and rhetoric to justify their own right to equality, she reveals a variety of feminisms grounded in notions of moral and racial superiority. According to Burton, Victorian and Edwardian feminists such as Josephine Butler, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, and Mary Carpenter believed that the native women of colonial India constituted a special 'white woman's burden.' Although there were a number of prominent Indian women in Britain as well as in India working toward some of the same goals of equality, British feminists relied on images of an enslaved and primitive 'Oriental womanhood' in need of liberation at the hands of their emancipated British 'sisters.' Burton argues that this unquestioning acceptance of Britain's imperial status and of Anglo-Saxon racial superiority created a set of imperial feminist ideologies, the legacy of which must be recognized and understood by contemporary feminists.

Indian Woman, Feminism and Women’s Liberation

Indian Woman, Feminism and Women’s Liberation
Author: Saji Narayanan CK
Publisher: Indus Scrolls Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2022-12-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

Capitalism and Communism, the progenies of the semitic culture, have given birth to two different streams of women’s Liberation. These streams, which have stormed western society and communist groups, have now actively intruded into the Indian socio-political milieu. The moment these concepts encounter with Indian realities ,they display their inherent contradictions and limitations. But seldom an Indian alternative to such views is discussed. This book is an attempt to understand the Indian approach through a comparative study aimed at addressing the issues related to the future women

Feminism in India

Feminism in India
Author: Maiyatree Chaudhuri
Publisher: Zed Books
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2005-03-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

This collection is an invaluable overview of the rich history of Indian feminism. It brings together the writing of prominent Indian academics and activists as they debate feminism in the context of Indian culture, society and politics, and explore its theoretical foundations in India. The inevitable association with western feminism, the status of women in colonial and independent India, and the challenges to Indian feminism posed by globalization and the Hindu Right are discussed at length. It deepens our understanding of why, despite the existence of legal and constitutional rights, women are subject to oppressive practices like dowry.

Indian Feminisms

Indian Feminisms
Author: Geetanjali Gangoli
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2016-05-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317117468

Contributing to debates on feminism, this book considers the impact made by feminists in India from the 1970s. Geetanjali Gangoli analyses feminist campaigns on issues of violence and women’s rights, and debates on ways in which feminist legal debates may be limiting for women and based on exclusionary concepts such as citizenship. She addresses campaigns ranging from domestic violence, rape, pornography and son preference and sets them within a wider analysis of the position of women within the Indian state. The strengths and limitations of law reform for women are addressed as well as whether legal feminisms relating to law and women's legal rights are effective in the Indian context. The question of whether legal campaigns can make positive changes in women’s lives or whether they further legitimize oppressive state patriarchies is considered. The recasting of caste and community identities is also assessed, as well as the rise of Hindu fundamentalism and the ways in which feminists in India have combated and confronted these challenges. Indian Feminisms will interest researchers and students in the areas of feminism, law, women’s movements and social movements in India, and South Asia more generally.

The Feminist Revolution

The Feminist Revolution
Author: Bonnie J. Morris
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2018-03-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1588346129

Explores the global history and contributions of the feminist revolution. The Feminist Revolution offers an overview of women's struggle for equal rights in the late twentieth century. Beginning with the auspicious founding of the National Organization for Women in 1966, at a time when women across the world were mobilizing individually and collectively in the fight to assert their independence and establish their rights in society, the book traces a path through political campaigns, protests, the formation of women's publishing houses and groundbreaking magazines, and other events that shaped women's history. It examines women's determination to free themselves from definition by male culture, wanting not only to "take back the night" but also to reclaim their bodies, their minds, and their cultural identity. It demonstrates as well that the feminist revolution was enacted by women from all backgrounds, of every color, and of all ages and that it took place in the home, in workplaces, and on the streets of every major town and city. This sweeping overview of the key decades in the feminist revolution also brings together for the first time many of these women's own unpublished stories, which together offer tribute to the daring, humor, and creative spirit of its participants.

Liberation in Print

Liberation in Print
Author: Agatha Beins
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 0820349518

Introduction origins and reproductions -- Printing feminism -- Locating feminism -- Doing feminism -- Invitations to women's liberation -- Imaging and imagining revolution -- Conclusion feminism redux

White Women's Rights

White Women's Rights
Author: Louise Michele Newman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 1999-02-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198028865

This study reinterprets a crucial period (1870s-1920s) in the history of women's rights, focusing attention on a core contradiction at the heart of early feminist theory. At a time when white elites were concerned with imperialist projects and civilizing missions, progressive white women developed an explicit racial ideology to promote their cause, defending patriarchy for "primitives" while calling for its elimination among the "civilized." By exploring how progressive white women at the turn of the century laid the intellectual groundwork for the feminist social movements that followed, Louise Michele Newman speaks directly to contemporary debates about the effect of race on current feminist scholarship. "White Women's Rights is an important book. It is a fascinating and informative account of the numerous and complex ties which bound feminist thought to the practices and ideas which shaped and gave meaning to America as a racialized society. A compelling read, it moves very gracefully between the general history of the feminist movement and the particular histories of individual women."--Hazel Carby, Yale University

The Essential Gloria Steinem Reader

The Essential Gloria Steinem Reader
Author: Gloria Steinem
Publisher: Bright Sparks
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2014
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9788129131034

Gloria Steinem, one of the most iconic feminist thinkers of the world, spent her early years in India. Her time in the country revealed to Gloria the Gandhian insight that change, like a tree, must grow from the bottom up. Subsequently, her decades of work with the feminist movement in the US and across the world taught her that violence and domination are normalized by the false division of human beings into subject and object, the dominator and the dominated, 'masculine' and 'feminine'. In As if Women Matter, Gloria Steinem and activist Ruchira Gupta bring together a selection of ground-breaking essays by Gloria which, since the time that they were first written, have transcended borders and have laid the groundwork for much of modern feminist thought. In these pages, Gloria demonstrates how racism and discrimination based on caste and class differences cannot survive without controlling women's bodies-she also describes the many ways in which women and men are fighting that control. She brilliantly analyzes Adolf Hitler's obsession with masculinity, and finds a gendered understanding of violence in the making. She distinguishes between erotica and pornography, locating the difference between the two in the inequality that governs relations between the sexes. And, in addition to a trenchant account of a few days she spent as a Playboy Bunny, this volume also carries a never-before-published essay on sex trafficking by Gloria, 'The Third Way'. As if Women Matter is scholarly, profound, and leavened by a lightness of touch which makes the most complex arguments accessible to all readers.