Collective Powers in Common Places: The Politics of Gender and Space in a Women's Struggle for a Meeting Center in Chitwan, Nepal
Year: 1992
Type: article
Abstract: In 1988, several hundred women in a village in Chitwan District held meetings, rallies and demonstrations to demand a piece of former pasture land on which to establish a women's center.They had begun discussing theirneedfor a place to meet in 1987 in literacy classes organized by local activists.These discussions gradually extended into the wider community.Women marked the beginning oftheirstruggle on International Women's Day, March 8, 1988, when for the first time, they publicly articulated their demand for land for establishing aMahi/a Jagaran Kendra (Women's Social Action Center).After village officials refused their demands, women organized a more far-reaching campaign not only to establish their center, but also to reclaim other common spaces to which they had gradually been losing access.They also brought women's personal problems into community discourse.As women began taking over community spaces, they confronted opposition from conservative, high caste men.Women did eventually win control over four guttas (0.13 hectares) of community land next to the compound which encloses the village paiiciiyat office and Siva temple.They built a two-room brick building and are using it as a center for expanding literacy classes, establishing tree nurseries, and for planning maternal health care, legal aid, and cooperative production programs.Significantly, the literacy classes and movement for community space included women ofvariousjiiti (ethnic/caste groups) reflecting the cultural diversity of Gunjanagar village and Chitwan District.The women's campaign included immigrant Parbatiya Hindus (Brahmin, Chetri, Karni, Sarki, Damai), Tamangs, Gurungs, Magarsand indigenous Tharus.Although "high caste" (miithilo jiiti)Brahmin-Chetri women often dominated village-wide meetings, Tamang, Magar, Gurung and Tharu women participated in and sometimes led village-wide meetings and have become literacy teachers and outspoken leaders in their respective neighborhoods.So-called "low-caste" (thallo jiiti) Karni, Sarki and Damai women have also participated to varying degrees.Although often divided by economic interests and cultural experiences, women shared, at least temporarily, enough common ground to organize as women around broadly defined gender issues.This localized women's campaign challenged me to consider the gendered construction of space as a central arena of political contestation.I initially went to Gunjanagar in 1987 not to study gender and space, but to examine how women's experiences of class were mediated by caste and ethnic constructions of gender.The emergence of the women's campaign to claim space, uniting women across class, ethnic and caste boundaries, gave historical prominence to the spatialization of gender relations.I was forced to ask: why in 1988 did women find enough common ground to organize collectively?And why did they organize around the issue of claiming space?The case study I present here is based on twelve months offield research in Gunjanagar and included active participation in women's literacy classes, meetings and rallies.My relations with both women and men in Gunjanagar were mediated primarily by my social location as a buhari (daughter-in-law) in a local, Brahmin family.Most significantly, by marrying into an extended family which had long been active in social and political work, I became enmeshed in local processes of conflict and change.My own relatives became important actors in initiating women's literacy classes and building a women's movement.1 I helped my niece, mother-in-law, husband, and brother-in-law begin literacy classes for women. 2 My own "illiteracy" in local, COLLECTIVE POWERS IN COMMON PLACES/ ENsLINII
Author: Elizabeth Enslin
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2120712949