Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

Recasting Citizenship for Women’s Livelihood and Development 29
property (Shaila Desouza, Chapter 13, this volume). As all property is
considered to be held jointly, a husband cannot sell his property without
the consent of his wife. Sons and daughters get an equal share of family
property. Despite such gender egalitarianism, there are many ways of
circumventing the law. Unless a wife insists that her name be included in
the land records, which is a rare occurrence, it will be solely in the husband’s
name. He then only has to conceal the fact of his marriage to dispose of
the property. Desouza points out that the law has not enabled women to
access economic resources because it has not been ‘assimilated into the
lifestyle of the people’. Legal and social reforms have to go hand-in-hand.
Women’s Collective Agency and Struggles
In classical economic thought, women’s agency has been simply defined
as the capacity of a female economic agent for rational decision-making.
Across many cultures, it was long believed that women lacked rationality
because of their biological attributes and that, therefore, they were not fit
to participate in public affairs. One of the early tasks of the suffragette
movement was to establish that women were rational, discriminating
beings who were indeed fit to vote and stand for election. Since then,
feminists have expanded the concept of agency to encompass other aspects
of empowerment, including the power to make life choices and define
the meaning of things. Women’s agency (as exercised by individuals and
by groups of women) is a significant aspect of their gender identity, sexuality,
economic independence and socio-political participation in institutions
of governance. As individuals and as members of groups, women
are deprived of their agency in multifarious ways by the state, by their
own communities and even within people’s political struggles of which
they may be a part. Poor tribal women are disempowered as both tribals
and women (see Bhaskaran 2004); so too poor Dalit women are disempowered
as Dalits and as women (see Bama 2005). ‘Interlocking
patriarchies’ (Anandhi 2002) ensure that Dalit women are rarely able to
claim their legitimate political rights as citizens. Even as new spaces in
local governance and resource management open up for women, patriarchy
systematically destroys women’s agency, their livelihoods and their
capacity for self-determination, thus advancing the process of subordination
(see Krishna 2004a, d, 2007).