The terms 'Woman' and 'Women' have been the organizing concepts for feminist politics and scholarship on women in western countries for several centuries. 'Women', it was assumed, shared characteristics based on biology and experiences of subordination; other aspects of their lives, such as language, national or ethnic identity, 'race', or sexual orientation were considered secondary to the identity of woman-ness. In this work, Dhruvarajan and Vickers call into question feminism's presumed universality of gender analysis, and bring to the foreground the voices of marginalized women in...
The terms 'Woman' and 'Women' have been the organizing concepts for feminist politics and scholarship on women in western countries for several cen...
Why, as Dhruvarajan asks, do most rural Hindu women continue to accept, sometimes even cherish, household arrangements that humiliate, dominate, and depersonalize them? According to Dhruvarajan, the Indian patriarchy successfully socializes millions of females into emulating pativratya--the doctrine of total devotion to one's husband when married and obeisance to male dominance when not married. . . . What distinguishes Dhruvarajan's work from similar studies is her meticulous ethnography of household life as a blueprint for life cycles ruled by traditional sex-role relationships. In her...
Why, as Dhruvarajan asks, do most rural Hindu women continue to accept, sometimes even cherish, household arrangements that humiliate, dominate, an...
The "Laxman Rekha," from the ancient Indian epic Ramayana, was a line drawn to protect Prince Rama's wife, Sita, from the dangers of the outside world. In Hindu culture today, the notion of the Laxman Rekha has shifted from protecting women to actually circumscribing their conduct; it has become a metaphor for the proper behavior of Hindu women. Women have always struggled to stretch these boundaries so as to enjoy more autonomy. This book is about one woman's struggle to transcend the multiple constraints placed on her due to gender, racial, and ethnic biases-from her 1940s childhood in...
The "Laxman Rekha," from the ancient Indian epic Ramayana, was a line drawn to protect Prince Rama's wife, Sita, from the dangers of the outside world...