Getting into Women's Studies

Right from my teens I used to get very agitated 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 would be right to state that I was not politically conscious that this could be a discipline with which I would be involved in future. I still remember one of the many incidents, we used to stay at Allahabad and I was a student of eleventh class and lot of relatives would come down during the Kumbh Mela to have a bath in the ganges. Once a relative brough an aunt who was about seventy and a widow. She lived in an Ashram at Brindavan and she would eat nothing through out the day except at twilight, when she had two small chappatis ( the dough made with mixing little milk and salt )with out any curry. She spent all her time in reading religious books and she had been leading this life since she was eleven years and became a widow. I had big arguments with my mother and other relatives as to what was her fault and my mother answered as she would often do, ”you talk and argue too much. This is how it is”. Today I keep thinking I wish I had spoken to her in detail and asked her questions but this image has stayed with me. As a student of class tenth in our school boys did interesting things in their craft class with repairing a fan, a press a scooter but we had to do knitting and embroidery. I got all the girls together and asked the principle that we would like to do what the boys were doing but were refused stating the Board did not allow it.

I had joined the University of Hyderabad in 1984 and I would leave my son in a crèche and pick him up in the evening, looking fresh and all well dressed. One day I reached home early and when I went to the crèche I was shocked to see fifteen to twenty children lying naked because they would soil their clothes. I was so upset that I stayed home for few days. When I narrated this to few friend involved with the trade Union movement then told me that I could afford to stay home because my husband earned enough but what happens to women who are not so privileged. Hence, along with a friend and colleague, Kameshwari I looked at this issue and we were shocked to see how callous every one was and child care was not at all an issue. It is from here that I really got into women's studies as a discipline.I think women ’s studies places a woman’s own experiences at the centre of the process that establishes women’s reality. Child care is such an important issue but it was never taken up seriously by any one. infact many of the trade Unions which wanted the support of the women to fight issues of wages, over time etc. did not give any importance to the isue of having a creche. We went to factories after factories and found that there were no creche worth their name. Some places only had a board stating creches and this was used either as a tea room or a place to store things. The factoreis had to follow the Factories Act, according to which any institution employing more than thirty women must have a creche. We found 28 women or 29 women in permanent posts and more than thousand women in temporary posts and thus the factory could easily do away with following this Act. We generally write reports and submit them, publish papers and nothing happens. We were very surprised because one day we got a call from the Director of the Women and Child development, Ms. Chandana Khan. She called us for a meeting and when we went we saw that she had invited a few NGO's and Government Officilas. She had kept our report in front of her and she had underlined many sentences. We had a long discussion and a creche for the children of construction workers was established . Our first project had a big success and we were very excited. This gave us a lot of confidence that we could really bring about some change and I became very much involved with women's studies as an academic discipline.