Author – Dr Amritpal Kaur

Women’s oppression is the most widespread and the deepest form of oppression in our society. Women all over the world have been relegated to the position of the other, marginalized or colonized as they share an intimate experience of politics of oppression and repression. Based on this fact of their inferior social position, they are also called subalterns (along with Dalits). Voices shouting for liberation in the wilderness of oppression found a collective strength under the term feminism. There are thousands who believe in equal rights but find ‘feminism’ as a word and movement that does not align with their personal beliefs and values.

Why so many people hate the term feminism and the feminist movement, especially men? Let us try to find a few reasons. Feminism has been associated with strong, forceful and angry women and our society continues to punish forceful women. Many people fear that feminism will mean that men will eventually lose out of power, influence, impact, authority and control and economic opportunities.

Many people believe that feminists want to control the world and put men down. Many people fear that feminism will overturn time-honoured traditions, religious beliefs and established gender roles. Many people fear that feminism will bring about negative shifts in relationships, marriage, society, culture, power and authority dynamics in business, jobs and economic opportunities, if and when women are on an equal footing with men. Even women argue among themselves about what feminism is and how women should behave if they are true feminists.

The most pressing social, religious and cultural problem that women face on their daily basis is patriarchy (an institutionalised pattern of male dominance in society). Feminism is an ideological and analytical framework for social change that shines a light on the problems that patriarchy perpetuates (also the problems that perpetuate patriarchy) and also comes up with ways to fix these problems in order to strengthen the position of women.

Feminism can be defined as a range of social movements, political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish political, economic, personal and social equality of sexes.

It highlights that the patriarchal societies prioritize the male point of view and that women are treated unjustly within these societies. It questions the unequal relationships between men and women, challenges the systemic inequalities that women face on a daily basis, breaks gender stereotypes and strengthens the position of women. It helps enlighten every one of this injustice and acts as a way for others to take action to help make equality happen. It recommends the establishment of educational, professional and interpersonal opportunities and outcomes for women that are equal to that of men. It tends to explain that under the patriarchal hold men exploit women for various reasons, profit, success and pleasure being the most common.

The meaning of feminism has changed from time to time with the intrusion of different strains of thoughts depending on the social and historical conditions. Basically, there have been three schools of feminist thoughts (with new thoughts emerging from time to time). These three feminist discourses are gender reform feminism, gender resistant feminism and gender revolutionary feminism. Let’s discuss the most common types of feminism:-

1. REFORMIST, LIBERAL Or MAINSTREAM FEMINISM It focuses on achieving gender equality within the framework of liberal democracy and through political and legal reform to give women equal rights and opportunities. They emphasize on individual rights. It works within the structure of mainstream society to integrate women into that structure. They limit their options to what can be achieved within the present system, they don’t challenge the system. White feminism (upper class) and mainstream Indian feminism (upper caste) work on this principle.

2. RADICAL FEMINISM They view society as fundamentally patriarchal in which men dominate and oppress women. They locate the root cause of women’s oppression in patriarchal gender relations and believe that as long as this inherent oppressive and dominating patriarchal structure and its values are in place, society will not be reformed in any significant way. They see no alternative other than the total uprooting and reconstruction of society in order to achieve their goals. They target male psychology or biology which rather perpetuates separatism to some extent. It is a militant form of feminism and breeds.
3. SOCIALIST, MARXIST or MATERIALISTIC FEMINISM It traces the oppression of women to inequalities that develop in connection with the class system of private property. They view gender inequalities as intrinsic to capitalism which makes vast profits from women’s unpaid domestic and underpaid workplace labour. Sexism divides the working class and allows the capitalists to make super-profits. They seek to eliminate the capitalist system and replace it with socialism, which collectively shares wealth created by human labour. They argue that the leadership of women and other oppressed people in worker-run democracy will be able to root out patriarchal psychology. They assert that women are unable to free themselves because they are economically dependent on men.

Feminism, as an ideology and a socio-political movement, has successfully won many rights for women like the right to vote, work, control our bodies, divorce, inherit, hold political positions, education, right to abortion, reproductive rights, contraception, sexual harassment and many more.

In other countries, these rights were won by women through advocacy, protest, petitioning and violence. But in India, it was Babasaheb who not only fought (selflessly) for our rights but also provided constitutional security to our rights. He instilled confidence and dignity in Dalit women and pushed them to join the movement for social, economic and political upliftment. Historically, Buddha was the first feminist in India who shook the Indian patriarchal society by allowing freedom to women in all spheres especially religious, challenging the religious patriarchal setup that feeds the caste hierarchy.

Feminism is theorised differently in India than in the West. In India, women are oppressed under a system of structural hierarchies and injustices. Due to differences in the historical and social culture of India, Indian feminists face certain obstacles that are not present and prevalent in western society. They negotiate survival through an array of oppressive structures like Brahmanical patriarchy, caste hierarchy, oppressive family and marriage structures, ordinal status, relationship to men, a family of origin, procreation and other patriarchal attributes like dowry, siring sons, kinship, community, village, market and state. Women are still denied opportunities for growth in the name of religion and socio-cultural practices, unnatural indoctrination, unequal and inferior status and rigid caste hierarchy. Religious laws and expectations or personal laws enumerated by each religion often conflict with the Indian Constitution, eliminating rights and power women should legally have. These problems are unique to Indian society.

The heterogeneity of the Indian experience reveals that there are multiple patriarchies contributing to the existence of multiple feminism. Hence, feminism in India is not a singular theoretical orientation. It has changed over time in relation to historical and cultural realities, levels of consciousness, perceptions and actions of individual women as well as women as a group.

The mainstream feminism in India has changed from being gender reformist to radicalism with advancement in education but it couldn’t become minority or caste friendly. Due to its lack of vision regarding multi hierarchies in Indian society, it fails to recognize the three intersecting identities of Dalit women at caste, class and gender levels. They have overshadowed the struggles of not only Dalit women but also the women of other minority faces like LGBTQ women, tribal women and women belonging to religious minorities. The individual struggles of these women (excluded and isolated) found a common voice under the term INTERSECTIONAL FEMINISM.

Intersectionality is a term used to describe how different factors of discrimination can meet at an intersection and can affect one’s life. It is an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person’s social and political identities (gender, caste, class, race, sexual orientation, religion, disability, physical appearance, height, etc) combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. These intersecting and overlapping social identities may be both empowering and oppressing.

The term INTERSECTIONAL feminism was first coined by Kimberle Crenshaw, an American law professor in 1989. She explained the term as a prism for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other. These inequalities (poverty, casteism, racism and sexism) intersect with each other denying people their rights and equal opportunities. Those who are most impacted by gender-based violence and by gender inequality are also the most impoverished and marginalized e.g Dalit women, black women, young girls, girls living with disability, trans youth and gender non conforming youth. It also sees all the ways our society reproduces these inequalities, which includes the privileges as well as the harms.

INTERSECTIONAL feminism can be defined as the study of overlapping or intersecting social identities and related systems of oppression, domination or discrimination. It means that women experience oppression in varying configurations and in varying degrees of intensity. It shows how different power structures interact in the lives of minorities. This theory has come out of Black feminism which, like Dalit feminism, has suffered exclusion from mainstream upper class white feminist movement and marginalisation in the mainstream Black Liberation movement headed by black men.

Intersectional feminism is a form of feminism that stands for the rights and empowerment of all women taking seriously the fact of differences among women including different identities based on radicalisation, sexuality, economic status, nationality, religion and language. It attends to the ways in which claims are made in the name of women as a class (or a privileged caste) can function to silence or marginalize some women by universalising the claims (universal sisterhood) of relatively privileged women. It is an idea that gender or women don’t just refer to a single unified concept. All women have a race, whether white, black, Asian as well as a class, caste, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc and their experiences as women differ because of those differences. The different aspects of our identities intersect and produce specific situations where getting exploited becomes easier like caste-based sexual atrocities on Dalit women, where the caste identity precedes the gender of a dalit woman.

The effects of different forms of discrimination combine overlap or intersect. Discrimination doesn’t exist in a bubble. Different kinds of prejudice can be amplified in different ways when put together. When we look at a person, there are many different facets that you need to take into consideration to understand their position, power or privilege. A girl might not simply be facing issues caused by her gender. When you dig deeper into her experience you may find she is a girl from an ethnic minority or black or Dalit who has to drop out of school to get married early or because of her low caste status or she is a lesbian struggling to be herself while living in a society that doesn’t support the LGBTQ community. The patterns of oppression are interrelated and bound together.

Indian feminism, being the movement of and by the privileged, works in an exclusionary manner by marginalising and invisibilizing less powerful and less privileged women and allies, the very people who need feminism the most. The framing of reproductive rights in terms of choice by the mainstream feminists is the best example to prove their narrow approach towards diverse realities women face in our society. The choice discourse presumes that all women have economic means or social backup to afford an abortion if they so choose. Privileging attention to abortion rights over other reproductive justice issues such as forced sterilisation, forced pregnancies and forced abortions after caste-based sexual assaults, which Dalit women suffer in abundance without any legal or social help, overshadows the hierarchical reality of our society.

The concept of intersectionality in India is much older.

Buddha opened the doors of Sangha for all women and admitted women without considering their social attributes (virgins, married, divorced, prostitutes, rape survivors, Brahmin women or Dalit women). Savitribai Phule set an example of intersectionality by providing education to girls and women from all castes, class, religion and community. But none can replace Babasaheb in pioneering the concept of intersectional identities of Dali women. He not only showed the real status of women in Indian society but also provided the right direction to the discourse of future feminism. He was not only the father of Dalit literature which, today stands firmly as a challenge to the mainstream literature, but also the father of intersectional feminism in India in the form of Dalit feminism. He deeply understood the caste realities at the ground level and how Dalit and upper-caste women are a gateway in maintaining the caste hierarchy.

Today, Dalit feminism is a well-established form of intersectional feminism working on the principle of self-representation (as taught by Babasaheb). Ruth Manorama deserves much of the credit for giving organisational face to Dalit feminist in the form of the National Federation of Dalit Women in the early 90s. What is needed today is that various intersectional feminist groups all over the world corresponding to their different historical, social, cultural and religious identities, must unite under a global platform to initiate a common struggle against the dominant regimes. Dalit feminism must take the desired step as this will provide more exposure (global) to its specific issues which have been brushed under the carpet deliberately for centuries.

Babasaheb was not only a Dalit leader but a true national leader who did his very best to liberate all women, especially women from the lowest rung of our society, from the clutches of religious patriarchy, in order to build a progressive nation. Let us try to understand feminism, Ambedkar’s way. All Ambedkarites must aspire to become feminists (intersectional), because only intersectional feminism has the potential to tackle discriminatory forces functioning inside the mainstream feminist movement, having its origin in the oppressive psychology of dominance. Feminism is an integral part of Ambedkarism whereas Ambedkarism is incomplete without feminism.

Ambedkarism without feminism and feminism without Ambedkarism is like a sailor, stuck in the middle of an ocean, having lost the paddles.

About the author – Dr Amritpal Kaur, Institute of Ambedkar Studies, Jalandhar, Punjab.