Rural Women and the Family in an Era of Liberalization: India in Comparative Asian Perspective
Author(s)
Omvedt, Gail
Abstract
This essay looks at some aspects of the effects of liberalization on rural women and the family in Asian societies, with a particular focus on India. The author maintains that the “era of liberalization” has neither fulfilled the extravagant promises of liberalizers nor has it been as much of a burden for women as opponents of structural adjustment programs have argued. The author’s perspective is that to move ahead from the stagnated development seen especially in South Asian societies, we need to transcend the sterile and politically dead-end debates that brand either the state or the market as the enemy and engage, instead, in a clearheaded and value-oriented examination of how and in whose interest to use the market, and what the state should be doing. The author concludes that efforts to change the family in India as elsewhere should move in the direction of democratization. The question is not one of rejecting wider kinship networks and the “extended family aid” that often comes with them, but of ensuring human rights to all family members, so that the cooperation and solidarity shown in family activities becomes a voluntary one, not one enforced by the sheer lack of alternatives (as is the case for so many women) .
