Essays On Gender And Governance - United Nations Development ...

Locating Gender in the Governance Discourse
nature (such as teaching or nursing) or compatible with
family responsibilities. A survey of government
recruitment agencies in 1985 showed that only 6% of public
sector jobs were open to women, and the remaining 94%
were open exclusively to men (Paidar, 1995:331). (3) A study
of women’s politics in North Bihar, India, contrasts the role
of women in politics in the 1930s with that in 1989. The
participation of women in the freedom movement in the
1930s was critical (albeit in clandestine activities, because
they were less likely to be searched by the police), but in
1989, a kind of ‘political purdah’ had come into being, so
that women experienced and participated in local politics
through a system outside the electoral arena (Singer, 1993).
Hence, whether women move from active participation in
an anti-colonial nationalist movement, or in an Islamic
revolutionary movement, or indeed a post-Communist
transition to democracy, the results appear not to be
markedly different.
2. Universalism or Historical and Cultural Specificity? The
variability of women’s lives and experiences, depending
upon history, cultural and social practices, and political
trajectories, is well-known, as is the fact that patriarchy is
experienced differently - depending upon and filtered
through, caste, class, race and ethnicity. Is it, therefore,
possible to have a conception of women’s interests and
strategies to advance these, which can be couched in
universalistic terms? There are certain undeniable
similarities in terms of both private and public patriarchies.
(a) The sexual division of labour within the household
suggests that private patriarchies are not irreducibly
specific to cultural contexts. (b) There are broad similarities
of public patriarchies, too, in terms of gender stereotypes
of female politicians (either the ultra-feminine mother
model or the masculine/androgynous model of leadership).
Indeed, across all the three major domains of governance,
we observe a concentration of women at the middle or
bottom rungs, rather than at or near the top. (c) Even among
the matrilineal tribes of Manipur in north-east India, for
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