My Tryst with Women’s Studies

What is it about?

As I look back on life, I think and feel strongly that my intellectural biography would be totally bankrupt without my discovery of feminist politics. Getting into women’s studies was the most important discovery of my life and it has made me what I am and will continue to be so. I recount my story here for it is high time that the story of the next generation of feminists be told so that the future generations would know the struggles and efforts that went into making women’s studies a reality. In this story, using a narrative mode, I make an attempt to capture my life, through my lived experiences and insights of being involved in women’s studies. Feminism, to which women’s studies is linked, assumes that we live in a patriarchal society and that women are systematically disadvantaged under patriarchy, that this system of sexist oppression is unjust and action ought to be taken to end it. Patriarchy also subjects to feminine socialization. This socialization encourages women to be passive, dependent, maternal and nurturing, always concerned about others, compromising, un ambitious and less competitive. It encourages women to accept a subordinate position in society and indeed hardly to recognize it as subordinate. One of the ways in which oppression disadvantages individuals is by making their subordination invisible. One it is seen as natural order of things rather than a situation of injustice and so it is not something that we notice. We often have a tendency to look at each individual, which does not encourage us to identify or recognize conditions of oppression in our lives. I used to get very agitated early on when I saw a lot of disparity in families and the attitudes of boys and men but then I could never comprehend the situation in terms of the structures and systems in our society. It was my personal experiences with child care that lead me into research in women’s studies. Studying and teaching history made me realize that history did not talk about the experiences of women and hence I attempted to incorporate feminism and women’s studies into history which has its own rigid scheme of divisions and periodization. As a historian, I am concerned with the theoretical and methodological problems of reconstruction of women’s history and in understanding the historical roots of women’s subordination and oppression in the past and the ways in which this subordination has been reproduced and perpetuated in the present. As a woman I have closely linked this academic disciplinary interest at looking at the past, to my concern and awareness of the problems faced by girls and women in society in the present. Recognition of women as a group, and of ourselves as members of this group, is an important step in recognizing sexist oppression, for it enables us to see patterns of wrongful social practice. Seeing ourselves in relation to a group captures the collective context with out individuals falling out of the picture. I take examples from my researh to show this. When women in Andhra dealing with drunken husbands and domestic violence at the individual level decided to do something collectively, they brought forth a movement which made women aware of their strengths and ability to effect change in their village and in their society as a whole.Women’s studies can help in seeing this pattern and knowing that conditions are systematic and we are socialized in oppressive conditions, yet we do have agency. We can become effective agent against our own oppression by acting against it. If we see ourselves in relation to other women, then we can develop an understanding of situations different from our own but similar in so far as they are oppressive. So we cannot ignore difference but the difference cannot be divisive. We have to find a common ground and hence women’s studies becomes as much a point about practice as theory.

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