Abstract
Based on an analysis of the work done by a field action project addressing issues of violence against women which then went on to become a national state sponsored scheme, this article talks about the flavor of feminist social work that it has proposed in the Indian context. The dimensions of feminist social work and the nuances such as working with women, men, families, and communities and addressing the systems and structure have been discussed. Finally, what it means for social work education in Indian context has been deliberated.
Keywords
Introduction
Much has been written about feminist social work and what it entails (e.g., Dominelli & McLeod, 1989; Langan & Day, 1992; Tangenberg & Kemp, 2002). Feminist social work has feminist praxis at its core. Typically, feminist praxis derives from the liberal, socialist, radical, and postmodern feminist theories. Embedded within is an understanding of the nature of violence, power, domination, patronage, exploitation, and hegemony from the standpoint of women and their subjectivities. Feminist social work is essentially social work from an engendered lens, commencing with women centered and gender aware work toward a more political feminist stance. Feminist social work has various strands—working with women, men, families, communities, systems, and structure—thus, revealing the multidimensional and multisystemic framework of practice. The complexities are due to the fact that women’s realities are not universal and essential, but differential; intertwined with categories of caste, class, ethnicity, and faith which create layers and intersections of power, domination, and hierarchy that need to be countered (Pandya, 2014). Essentially, feminist social work is about working with women—gender is the central social division and the development of women’s well-being and empowerment is prioritized.
Historically, realities of women in India are narratives of oppression, invisibility, and subsequent revolt. This gets further intertwined with issues of caste, class, and religion to create intersectionalities. In the Indian context, the era of the independence movement (1900–1947) saw women’s participation in the nationalist movement. This was the first kind of liberal feminism in India where women began to be visible and assert themselves in the public sphere. In the 1970s, issue-based campaigns of women in arenas of livelihood, ecology, and objectification (media related), predominantly spearheaded by political party affiliations, were launched. In the middle and late 70s, autonomous women’s organizations adopted issue-based “protest politics.” Gandhi 1 contributed to women’s mobilization and their participation within the political struggle; however, women remained in a domesticated role within the movement.
Linked to this, there is an important flavor of patriarchy that emerges in the Indian context—that of the Brahminical tradition or Brahminical patriarchy. 2 Women’s roles are thus conceived, entailed, and reproduced within a complex of relationships. Family and kinship structures along with the institution of caste coalesce to form the female identity. Brahminical patriarchy is based on the proposition that caste hierarchy and gender hierarchy are the organizing principles of the Brahmanical social order. Caste and gender form the central factors for the subordination of the upper-caste women. There is the need for effective sexual control over such women to maintain not only patrilineal succession (a requirement of all patriarchal societies) but also caste purity, the institution unique to Hindu society. The purity of women has a centrality in Brahminical patriarchy, because the purity of caste is contingent upon it. A fundamental principle of Hindu social organization is to construct a closed structure to preserve land, women, and “ritual quality” within it. The three are structurally linked and it is not possible to maintain all three without stringently organizing female sexuality (Chakravarti, 1993).
On the other hand, there are the Dalit 3 (lower caste) women whose realities are different. The Dalit feminist standpoint emerged from the black and Third World feminist work in the 1980s and 1990s. The assertion of autonomous Dalit women’s organizations in the 1990s threw up several crucial theoretical and political challenges, besides underlining the Brahmanism of the feminist movement and the patriarchal practices of Dalit politics. Looking at difference as a standpoint, the attempt is to historically locate the “difference” of Dalit women’s voices in their real struggles. A historical reinscription of Dalit women’s struggles into the historiography of modern India then poses challenges for the established understanding of nationalism and the women’s question in 19-century India. 4
“Difference” or “different voice” of the Dalit women is not an issue of identitarian politics or some “authentic direct experience,” but from a long lived history of lived struggles—over caste and patriarchy and very often class hierarchies. These non-Brahminical renderings of feminist politics have led to some self-reflexivity among the autonomous women’s groups and their responses could be broadly categorized as a
The subject/agent of Indian women’s standpoint is thus multiple, heterogeneous even contradictory, that is, the category “Indian woman” is not homogenous. Hence, this requires a sharp focus on the processes by which gender, race, class, caste, sexuality, and all construct each other (Kannabiran & Kannabiran, 1991; Rege, 1998).
Scholarly discourses on violence against women in the Indian context have talked about causes of its perpetuation, women’s complex realities and legislations, and civil society initiatives to counter it. Male privilege which continues in the name of “family values” and “traditions” is seen as one key cause of violence against women (Ahmed-Ghosh, 2004). The prevalence of violence is considerably higher among socioeconomically disadvantaged women. Community- and hospital-based cross-sectional studies have also documented a high prevalence of violence against women (Ahmed, Koenig, & Stephenson, 2006). However, only a minority of women seek recourse when faced with violence because of their own and broader societal tolerance and acceptance of violence, social stigma associated with being divorced or separated, and economic dependence and lack of alternatives (Krishnan et al., 2005).
With the emergence of the women’s movement in the early 1970s, violence against women has received attention from women’s rights activists, lawyers, and many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in India, who have been responsible for bringing the issue to the forefront of national debate (Mitra, 2013; Panchanadeswaran & Koverola, 2005). Successful efforts to mitigate women’s risk of domestic violence have used a family focused and empowerment-based approaches (Krishnan, Subbiah, Khanum, Chandra, & Pandian 2012; McFarlane & Parker, 1994; Pronyk et al., 2006; Tiwari et al., 2005).
Other feminist writings in India have also looked at the issues of violence against women and their subtle nuances. Due to historical and cultural specifications of the region, the feminist movement in India had to think in terms of its agenda and strategies. In the Indian context, several feminist have realized that the subject of violence against women in India should not be reduced to the contradictions between men and women. The woman in order to literate herself and advance needs to empower herself to confess different institutional structures and cultural practices that subject herself to patriarchal domination and comfort. Some of the popular themes in writing by women on issues of violence have been women’s quest for identity, negotiating relationships, and using art as a medium for empowerment and change.
The writings on violence against women in India talk about the different kinds of violence which women are susceptible to and which call for interventions and action (Krishnan et al., 2005; Krishnan et al., 2012; Mitra, 2013; Panchanadeswaran & Koverola, 2005). Due to society’s construction of female sexuality, women are subjected to rape, female circumcision/genital mutilation, female infanticide, and sex-related crimes. Due to dependence on men and relationships with a man/men, women are vulnerable to domestic violence.
Since the 1980s, following this recognition by the academia and practitioners, many more programs to work on issues of violence against women, both at the central and State levels, were initiated, such as the Family Counseling Centers, short-stay homes, and awareness-generation programs, along with activism and social services provided by autonomous women’s groups and organizations. This work included the setting up of family courts, special women’s courts, Legal Aid Cells, amendments to the Indian Penal Codes to respond to family violence and sexual assault, the all-women police stations, Crime against Women Cells and vigilance committees (Dave, 2005).
Historically, the western import and influences of social work education in India have been crucial. With changing polity and shifts and emergence of subaltern positions and voices (of caste, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, age, and ability), the curriculum and hence social work education and interventions are now consciously moving toward decolonizing and indigenizing efforts. Around late 1990s, within social work in India, the need was thus felt to include the realities of women—in particular women-centered and feminist social work (Desai, 2002). This would mean an understanding of feminist theorizations, praxis models, praxis trajectories in the indigenous contexts and developing appropriate skills for analysis. Particularly, the key areas that are included are identified as the study of social construction of women’s labor, sexuality, fertility, and violence; review and impact of economic policies on women lives, engagement with sectoral policies and programs and the role of the state and law in defining their position in society. This entails a review and analysis of intervention models and developing skills of analysis and intervention within feminist lenses. The discourse on feminism is also now entering into discourses on gender with voices of gays-lesbians-bisexuals-transgenders-queers coming to the forefront. Social work in India in this area engages with a critical questioning of notions of heteronormativity and gender binaries. Models of feminist social work which evolve from practice and interventions contribute to this understanding.
In this article, I talk about a program of intervention to counter violence against women in the Indian context and through its sustenance, the flavor of feminist social work that it proposes. The Special Cell for Women and Children was started as a field action project of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, India, in 1984 a deemed university set up in 1936 which had the first program of social work in India. It commenced as a service for violated women within police premises (Dave, 2013) and later took the shape of a state-run program within the police system.
The Special Cell for Women and Children was a response to the environment building of activists on violence against women (VAW) and the development of expectations that the criminal justice system should deal with the ever increasing number of cases, and also that state should respond through the police system to violated women themselves, who required a wide variety of support to combat and survive violence. The TISS, with its rich history of developing context-appropriate social work intervention, embarked once again on exploring possibilities for intervention, by understanding the needs of women approaching the police, a first port of call, after the family and community (Dave, 2013).
The program was first started in Mumbai city of Maharashtra state in western India and in 1999, the State Government of Maharashtra drew funds from multilateral agencies to expand the work of the Special Cells into seven further districts across the state. Then, in 2005, following an evaluation of the Special Cells (a quantitative analysis of process work in 2005), the government incorporated the Special Cells into a state-funded program, leading to the expansion and replication of the Cells first in Maharashtra and then in seven other states 5 across the country. This was given validity under the new Protection of Women From Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA), 2005, an Act that the Special Cells had actively promoted in terms of the form of the definition of violence against women used, the role of Protection Officers as noted, and the role of service providers (Apte, 2004; Dave, 2013).
The thrust of the Special Cells is to give visibility to the issue of violence against women in society, work at multisystemic levels, develop strategic alliance with the police system, and empower women across strata of caste and class. The key defining areas of intervention and social work with women identified over years of practice are providing emotional support and strengthening the psychological self, negotiating for nonviolence with various stakeholders; building support systems, engaging police help, accessing legal aid, development counseling, advocacy for group entitlement, reestablishment of women’s relationships with their economic assets, arranging shelter, and working with men in the interest of violated women (Apte 2004).
A quick appraisal of the impact of the Special Cells tells us that they have worked with a large and varied community of violated women in India and have created a space to work within the criminal justice system and community institutions with families on issues of violence against women. They have also clearly defined the role of trained social workers in work on violence against women, along with an effective demonstration of interdisciplinary work essential to this field. Further through the ideological thrust and strategies, they have evolved a frame of feminist social work 6 which can be deployed in practice.
Dimensions of the Work of Special Cells
The various dimensions of the work of Special Cells includes working with women, men and families, communities, systems, and structures as described subsequently. The Special Cells for Women and Children in India are community organizations located in the police system. The Cells work with women and systems simultaneously within the context of trained social work practice. The work is geared toward developing a strategic alliance with the police system for a more coordinated, coherent, and in-depth response to the issue. The structure of the Special Cells comprises two social workers in each unit and one coordinator for every 10 units. The Cells are housed in a police station/office and share the police’s infrastructure, for example, space, furniture, telephone, vehicle, and administrative support. Organizational development is the responsibility of TISS, the police and a State-level Monitoring Committee consisting of senior police officials, the Departments of Home and Women and Child Development, and representatives of the women’s organizations from the states within the country where the Cells are located. In this section, I attempt to detail the nuances of the intervention strategy of the Special Cells and what then builds up as the core of feminist practice and feminist social work.
Working With Women
Feminist social work by the Special Cells commences with the critical position of working with women. Womanhood is read and defined through a “community of attitudes” that are believed to be shaped by patriarchy. The commencing point for practice is to understand women’s vantage point. The criteria that outline the existential condition and position of women in India are age, socioeconomic conditions including caste and religion and education. Women’s background characteristics are examined vis-à-vis the realities of violence and abuse. This dual examination then reveals the intersectionalities and complexities of women. The way age, education, caste, class, and ethnicity implicate on the fabric of violence which affects women’s life is the dimension explored. The gamut of services and assistance that could be sought by the women are seen. These include the institution of family, women’s groups and NGOs, police, political parties, and the judicial system.
The core aspect is working with the conception of women’s “selfhood,” “womanhood,” and psychological support. “Selfhood” is the innate aspect of an individual woman, “womanhood” is redefined particularly in situations of assault on sexuality and psychological support entails addressing and transforming the woman’s consciousness. This psychological support takes primarily two forms—provision of emotional support and developmental counseling.
Women’s assertions are then seen as negotiations for space—the metaphorical “space” in the domain of conjugal/consanguine relations (as the case may be); support to enable the creation of that space through conciliation and dialogue; strengthening of life skills through developmental counseling; and the jurisprudential domain in terms of looking at property ownership and rights—matrimonial, familial, and filial rights—all from the woman centered standpoint.
The assertions are a movement toward a certain repositioning of women in the psychic and physical domains. This is the “empowering” move wherein the woman has greater space in all domains of her existential self. This notion of empowerment can seek alliance at two levels—one that of freedom wherein the woman will is free to operate and choose in the domains of society. The other is that of capacities and entitlements—greater diffusion, access and equity to resources, relationships, and realms of power. Institutional and familial arrangements are thus geared in the direction of ensuring this emancipation for women.
The ultimate aim of feminist social work from the Special Cell lens is a reinstatement of a certain sense of harmony in the woman’s life. Herein, the sense of harmony means that pieces of her estranged life are realigned in a manner in which there is at once an assertion of her space and a consideration of other realities which are not changeable. Further the woman’s sense of comfort with her womanhood, in the light of her relationships and “home and hearth” are primary in determining the core of all interventions and what ought to be.
Working With Men and Families
The second dimension of feminist social work in the Special Cell context is working with the woman’s meso environ—men and families, who form a crucial dimension of her realities. The commencing point herein is to comprehend the all pervasiveness of patriarchy as an institution and the fact that the roots of feminist practice lie in addressing the same.
One of the key albeit subtle levels of addressing hegemony in feminist social work in India has been the “male psyche and self”—the cognitive and subtle domains. As patriarchy is all pervasive, it is believed that this psychoanalytic approach is essential to understand structures of femininity and masculinity, psychic construction of gender identity, and how engendered subjectivity is acquired based on an internalization of certain norms and values. This dimension of intervention is thus based on addressing hegemonic masculinity through consciousness, language, and meaning. That men need to inherently recognize the essence of equity beyond sexual binaries is the first level of assertion in the interventions. What is then addressed here are those “unconscious mental processes” that lead to a cultural–sexual imperialism. The quest then is at least toward a “positional” identification (if not personal and diffusive identification) with women and the social construction of roles and identity. In practical terms, this translates into developing an egalitarian sense within the cognitive framework of men.
The second aspect in working with men is soliciting male participation in emancipation of women from oppression. This involves looking at men as a support factor—beyond the oppressive framework. Several instances of intervention invoke the “supportive male figure” either in the natal or conjugal setup. This preempts the engendering of men and at the same time is also a step toward moving beyond sexual binaries to seek alliance from empathetic others. Particularly in situations wherein the best possible option for women is reconciliation and/or negotiation for greater “spaces”—this involvement of the “supportive male figure” plays a key role in the sense of helping women use this support to feel secure and liberated at the same time. This is done by talking to men and encouraging them to be sensitive to women’s needs, requirements, and aspirations.
Involving men and deconstructing popular discourses on masculinity/femininity in favor of more egalitarian positions is the commencing point toward developing stances that posit engendered notions. This constitutes reinstating women’s visibility in household and family domains—essentially as key architects of that world. Engendering involves relooking at the very context from which mainstream discourses and notions on family emerge, which is essentially patriarchal in its norms and forms. The stance herein is to reject the Victorian model of women’s essential passivity and domesticity and recognizing their contribution to both male existence and family construction.
Working With Communities
The third titan of feminist social work by the Special Cells is working with communities. This begins from a crucial sense of “collective,” “cooperation,” “organization,” and “action.”
The “real” notions of the community constitute the spaces in the geographical proximity—outside the threshold of the home. This space then constitutes the locale for building interconnections and networks for addressing women’s issues. This juncture then becomes the site (politics of location) for generating collaborative subjectivities and a sense of “sisterhood” on varied dimensions of sexuality and experiences in the personal sphere. Translating this, the neighborhood community becomes the first site to build women’s collectives on issues of oppression, subjugation, and domination and plot endeavors to counter hegemonic forces. A place for countering discourse in the neighborhood also then becomes a space in the larger cartography of women’s emancipation by generating a sense of
Working With Systems
The fourth pillar or dimension is working with systems—a certain element of collaboration with the administrative (government and police) and judicial (law and courts) systems so as to strengthen the purport of interventions.
The key objective is obtaining engendered versions of solutions/judgments primarily in favor of/in the larger interest of the woman. There are levels, strategies, and modes of working with the varied systems. In terms of levels of working, two key levels emerge—the social structural and the psychological. At the social structural level, there is an examination of the institutionalized pattern of functioning, particularly the regionalized and routinized contexts. This means understanding the bureaucracy and its functioning and positing the best interest of the women within that context. This is akin to the ecological paradigm of social work which focuses on the roles, activities, and methods of social work/workers in the field of community organization. This combines notions of social justice and the systems framework which promotes a practice that is integrated, holistic, and synthesis oriented. 7 Efforts for change are directed at the interface between systems and subsystems, the goal being enhancement of relationship between those systems. 8 The Special Cells work focuses on the engendering systems notion as central.
The psychological level, however, is innate—in terms of certain cognitive-level changes which are aimed at. The psychological or cognitive changes that are aimed at are also within the larger umbrella of systemic changes. These cognitive changes/engendering preclude social structural changes at one level and at another, both processes move simultaneously. The strategies then emerge as pathways to tackle the subversive tactics and align with mechanisms and machinery (police and legal) that are supportive. Hence, the approaches that emerge are protectionist; equity promotion; and countering of the embedded patriarchy in the systems. The protectionist strategy is conservative and unproblematically asserts the roles of the systems as protecting violated women. Hence, differential legislations and women as subjects and recipients of protectionist policies are universalized and naturalized norms. The equity promotion strategy posits “systems” as key organs in advancing gender equality—a certain “colonial” frame of operations where systems are posited as instruments of social reconstruction and ensuring equality. There is a certain emphasis on the role of systems as promoting engendered social engineering. The third strategy in intervention as that of countering of the embedded patriarchy in the systems is based on a semantic, semiological, and syntactic analysis of oppressive meanings and hidden agendas embedded in the systems. Operating within the overarching poststructuralist frame, this approach attempts to counter the notions of “normal” and “regulated” within the operation of systems (viewing them largely as outcomes of the male dominated framework), toward shaking the roots of this sustained oppression which is at times subtle and hidden. Awareness and conscientization programs play a key role in the same.
Addressing the Structure
The mature stage of feminist social work is purely in its critical, radical, and deconstructionist forms wherein hegemonies of thought, form, structures, and action are addressed. The way the woman subject is constituted in and through multiple and contradictory discourses, creates space for agency. Hence, there is a continuous process of “negotiation” through a multiplicity of discourses exercising reflection, choice, and action (to address the subordination of women). This means to recognize the multiple and shifting dimensions of women’s oppression and that structures, systems, and institutions have in them embedded dimensions of inequalities that subjugate women. This allows for creation of spaces to deconstruct debates and discourses such as the sameness/difference debate. The insights obtained on the discursive construction of knowledge and subjectivities for/of women and the fact that situations of violence are not either/or (but in a Kierkegaardian sense move beyond) but require a more complex and nuanced analysis of the woman subject and her subjectivities is the main point.
The critical step is determining the nature of structure itself and what needs to be addressed. The reality of structures in feminist social work interface with the key pillars of governance—(particularly in the democratic regime they are the executive, legislature, and judiciary)—the police, executive machinery, and judiciary/legal systems. Understanding the colonial temperaments of the structures and determining spaces and visibility for women is the key component herein. The modicum lies in presenting “what needs to be addressed” in the existing structures. The answers lie in: colonial histories that carry with them the inherent baggages of domination; the social fabric of democracy which although posits equity for women does not portray it in actuality; and the nature of jurisprudence itself, all of which are not always equitable for women. Democracy proposes a gender equity on paper, but whether it translates to micro practice is what needs to be addressed. Further, whether jurisprudence really asserts gender equality moving beyond protectionist and equitarian domains, toward radical changes in worldviews favoring women, is what needs to be addressed.
Changes in the police system, law, and governance are sought through the mechanisms and machinery embedded in those very systems. If for the police system, it is sensitization and gender awareness (a liberal socialist frame) then for governance it is engendering visions and mechanisms of action (with corresponding schemes and programs to comply the same). For law, it is a feminist jurisprudence and creating tools and instruments that facilitate gender justice. Hence, the pathway is a certain abiding by of existing instrumental and practical reason. The desirable ideational frames are absolute ethical standpoints—values of justice, liberty, fairness, and equality that amalgamate to form realities that need to be attained. It is about “decolonization of the lifeworld” of violated women and reinstating and reasserting cultures (of equity) and spaces that generate engendered vision.
The climax is to determine the utopia—the vision of “what ought to be?” Radical notions of addressing structures, systems, and institutions eventually lead to a deconstruction or a realignment of sorts (of familial structures, system structures, and functions) which is a marked departure from earlier arrangements, norms and forms.
Offering a Direction for Feminist Social Work in India
We can thus say that the variety of Indian feminist social work as developed by the Special Cell intervention is essentially about tackling notions of selfhood, sexuality, and identity of women. Men and families comprise of the near and tangible realities of women—which affect the very notion of production, reproduction, and sexuality; determining to a great extent women’s lives and stories (and also experiences of violence and abuse). Working with communities is a move toward collectivization of sorts. To attain utopia, the final dimensions are negotiations, arbitration, reconciliation, and reassertions—all to be derived from (at one level) and addressing (at another)—systems and structures.
Social work education in India has undergone six phases till date. Broadly they could be incorporated in the following phase-oriented development. The period from 1936 to 1946 was that of American and Eurocentric influences. The period from 1947 to 1957 which was also the early postcolonial era for India was the period of beginning of indigenization and state influences on social work education and curriculum. This was also the phase where state and establishment activities and interests in welfare activities played an important role in the development of thematic specializations. The period from 1957 to 1970 was also the growth of specializations, indigenous knowledge development, and the insertion of justice and rights discourses in an essentially state welfare oriented scenario. The next three decades continued this trend. Postliberalization in the 1990s and the withdrawal of state actors from several welfare activities, social work education in India has to respond to the demands of being a crucial nonstate voluntary actor in Indian civil society. State withdrawal, global political economy dynamics, and market dynamics spearheaded several people’s struggles and structural issues. Hence, contemporary social work education has to rise to challenges of structural hegemony and cultural diversity. This has to be done in keeping with the social work mandate (global/local) as well as in tandem with rights and justice discourses. For women, the realities get further complicated. Social work in India now has a very pressing need to address the women’s questions.
One of the great strengths of social work education in India is thus its capacity to link the structural and the personal. The injunction from the anticapitalist movement to think global act local provides a fresh basis for social worker education in India to actively make the connections between the neoliberal global agenda and their day-to-day experience. There is considerable overlap between some of the core values of the anticapitalist movement, postcolonialism, decolonizing social work (Gray, Coates, Bird, & Hetherington, 2013), and critical social work education values in India. The core is to appreciate a world of diversity and hence social work education in India is worth defending. A new paradigm can be invented with elements of traditional social work, radical social work and the experience of new social movements, both user-led and anticapitalist, in a kind of Hegelian synthesis. Social work education in India today is at the juncture of becoming that material force. This makes a very strong case for an indigenous/India postcolonial model of feminist social work practice, some insights into which are provided by the Special Cells program.
Thus, the work of Special Cells offers a direction of feminist social work through its following repertoire: It subscribes to and promotes an ontology whereby embodiment, interrelationships, mutuality, fluidity, and interdependence are central. The episteme of feminist practice validates a variety of forms of knowledge, and resists the dominance of traditional science and its claims to universalism. This epistemology is contextualized, experiential, complex, and provisional—one that captures a range of lived experiences of women in rich and variable ways.
In terms of practice it means: comprehending the movement from psychoanalytical to poststructuralist frame of reference (not in a binary way) in working with women emphasis on multistrategic, multisystemic, and multipronged approach and appreciating and addressing the dialectics of “what ought to be” and yet continuing to see “utopia” (in this case women’s emancipation) as endearing.
Concluding Remarks: Insights for Teaching Feminist Social Work in India
The work of the Special Cells offers the following insights for the teaching of feminist social work in India. They are in the domains of theory, practice, and social work education.
In terms of theory, the focus is to develop an alternative paradigm. This is done in a decolonizing mode wherein western frames of feminism and patriarchy are put aside to promote the Indian lenses such as rejecting Brahminical patriarchy and asserting voices of women at the margins or oppressed by the caste hierarchy through Dalit feminism. The argument is that the patriarchal theoretical system fails to recognize interconnections and the fluidity of women subjects. In sexualizing discourse, the false universalism of theoretical statements and the ontological frailty of traditional scientific discourse is exposed. Embodiment is considered as central and that the physical, sociocultural, and care aspects of lived experience of women are given attention in postconventional gender sensitive social work ontology. Everyday experiences of women are important in Indian feminist and women-centered practice. This also looks at changes in terms of Indian women’s participation in the labor force, rethinking motherhood, and femininity by Indian women and changing notions and definitions of marriage. This also means deconstructing power relations and addressing a hegemonic masculinity which still limits women’s choices in how gender relations are organized and experienced. Looking at the life politics of Indian women from their lenses as well as acknowledging the changing circumstances in which different groups of women negotiate their lives is the core of the deliberations. 9
For the practice of feminist social work in India, the Special Cells program offers the following. It has opened up new processes of intervention into traditionally repressed “private violences,” helping to “detraditionalize” family forms and secrets. The knowledge that has come from the new public awareness of violence against women is used to give the issue and violated women rights and visibility at all forums. Contrary to traditional radical social work practice which is ambivalent about any focus on individual life, this form of feminist social work looks at both the personal and the political (here the personal is not only a metaphor for the political). This reflects in their clinical work with women as well as work at the level of police and legal systems and societal structures. The argument is that women’s life politics is critical in itself as well as contains a much broader more personal universe of action and experience than emancipatory politics of radical action alone. Interventions into life politics directly and indirectly contribute to emancipatory politics and vice versa.
In classroom transactions and teaching feminist social work in India, the following aspects are emphasized. The idea that feminist social work can be applied to all settings of interventions and practice is promoted. Since the core of feminist social work is the engendered lens, it is considered as universal. Feminist principles and practice are gradually being incorporated as an integral part of social work in India. This is done by transforming the hierarchical language toward the language of conscientization and entitlements. New “client–worker” relationships in terms of a dialogue with women clients are emphasized in teaching feminist practice. The focus is that women clients should be encouraged to locate themselves within their social context and connect with others experiencing similar difficulties. This also entails linking personal change with social change. In general, there is a commitment to egalitarianism, letting women speak for themselves; seeking changes that will transform gender relations; recognizing the existence of a community of women (albeit not homogeneous) and concepts of power and powerlessness within personal and social relationships.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.