Author Description

In the last decade, international feminist scholarship has undergone a paradigm shift as the women's movement has adopted a more militant and radically analytic stance in Third World societies, in none more so than those of South Asia. As women from many walks of life now consciously strugglewith the inequitable burdens they bear in relation to their livelihood and their political life, these burdens are increasingly understood as being imposed on them by systems that support their subordination, both to men as well as in a larger sense. Growing out of this understanding, a vigorous literature has developed on gender from a political-economic perspective. This literature represents a global attempt to understand social transformations of gender which flow out of such world processes as the penetration of colonialism, thedevelopment of world economies, and the historical coalescence of a world economic system. The volume contributes to these global dicsussions from within a framework which focuses on the region of South Asia, with its own particularities, traditions, and historical roots. The essays here tie together conditions for women in rural and urban sectors as well as the several subregionaleconomies, with the intensifying pressure of the world system as it has evolved over the last century. The increasing politicization of women at the most market-penetrated margins of the region contrasts with the deepening obfuscation of the interests of those in the rural heartland. This volume is intended to form a bridge between those engaged in gender studies on a world scale, and those engaged in studies of South Asian societies and cultures.