Women’s Movement and Communist Party: Ideology, Programme, Practice

HERE is a collection of three papers presented and discussed in the CPI(ML)’s first-ever all-India party education camp for women party cadres, held at Bardhaman (West Bengal) on 26-27 July. Around 60 leading women activists from Bihar, Jharkhand, UP, West Bengal, Assam, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Delhi – including women members of the Central Committee and all State Committees –  participated in the camp organised by the party’s women’s department.

The education camp was held in a context of growing challenges and opportunities for the women’s movement in India. A large number of women are fast breaking barriers and entering the workforce and the vortex of broader public life, but the ideological and cultural climate still remains considerably hostile to them, not to talk about the physical torture, economic discrimination and social hurdles that they have to encounter. While women are fighting against all this everywhere, the ruling class too is making various accommodations, albeit reluctantly, to cope with the situation. The Communist Party must stride ahead of all these changes in order to mobilise the new forces of women workers as a formidable agent of change in their own lives and in society. But patriarchal hurdles existing in society tend to be reproduced within the party, and must be vigilantly fought out here too.

As CPI(ML) General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya observed in his inaugural speech, the topics chosen for the education camp – relating to the communist party’s approach to issues of gender and the women’s movement – were certainly not meant for women comrades alone. Rather, there is probably an even more urgent need to educate male comrades on all aspects of this question. He spoke of the party’s consistent efforts to correct the gender imbalance in membership and leadership and called upon women activists to boldly lead this crucial struggle against patriarchal attitudes – within society and also within the party – in their own right as party leaders.

All three papers generated very animated discussions and debates and comrades went back to their respective states with an urge to organise similar camps there.

“WOMAN, wake up; the tocsin of reason is being heard throughout the whole universe; discover your rights. … Enslaved man has multiplied his strength and needs recourse to yours to break his chains. Having become free, he has become unjust to his companion. Oh, women, women! When will you cease to be blind?”

This was Olympe de Gouges speaking at the height of the French Revolution. The quotation is from her Declaration of the Rights of Woman (1791), a rejoinder to the Constituent Assembly’s Declaration of the Rights of Man adopted earlier. The very next year would see the publication of the epoch-making A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft. de Gouges and Wollstonecraft were certainly not the first in fighting for the women’s cause — early figures like Mary Astell (author of A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694)) easily come to mind – and certainly not the last. Many of them were magnificent visionaries. Wollstonecraft for example argued convincingly for equal suffrage for women and criticised the male prejudices of stalwarts like J J Rousseau who was against this. What these valiant fighters lacked was a scientific understanding of the actual causes of woman’s bondage and the real conditions for her emancipation. But this was no fault of theirs. Such an understanding could evolve only in the middle of the 19th century when, thanks to developments like the advent of the modern proletariat, great breakthroughs in natural and social sciences and so on, dialectical materialism, materialist interpretation of history and scientific socialism emerged. Marxism and its organisational embodiment, the communist party, now began to add a new revolutionary dimension to the centuries-old struggle for women’s enlightenment and emancipation — not by supplying a novel and special ‘theory’ or floating a new banner, but by connecting it, more closely than ever before and both on the planes of consciousness and organisation, with the united movement of all the downtrodden for revolutionary transformation of the entire oppressive social order. Parallel to this communist movement, the autonomous women’s movement also forged ahead, both streams benefiting from a cordial relation of unity and struggle.

IN the progress from group marriage to pairing marriage it was women who took the lead because the former proved extremely oppressive and degrading for them. Ironically, with the development of productive forces (the iron plough for example), generation of surplus product (particularly in agriculture) and accumulation of private property (cattle, slaves, land etc.) the pairing family proved to be a transition to monogamous family, which institutionalised women’s bondage. Gender, class and then state oppression have always been closely connected, and so must be the struggle against the oppressive triad. Such in nutshell was what we learned in Part I. Now we should extend the discussion beyond Origin to cover the present – that is, capitalist – age, but not before taking a brief glance at conditions of women in India of old.

IN this last part of the article we propose to elaborate on two important and interrelated areas of our concern, already touched in Part II: (a) grasping the proletarian approach to women’s movement and (b) promoting communist attitude to women in the party and society. The first we will discuss in light of the words and deeds of some prominent women leaders of the international communist movement; the second in that of Lenin’s teachings. To round off the whole discussion, we will then conclude with a few words on the connection between socialism and women’s liberation.

IN the first session of this education camp, you have studied and discussed in detail the basic premises of the relation between the communist party and women’s liberation movement. Before approaching the subject at hand, we need to summarise the main points of that session again. On the directive of the district committee of the Communist League in Paris, Engels had prepared the draft of the programme of the communist party, titled The Principles of Communism. Engels suggested to Marx that instead of this draft which was in a question-answer format, the League’s programme should be prepared directly as a Communist Manifesto. At the Congress of the League held from 29 November to 8 December 1847, Marx and Engels’ ideas received full approval, and, in Lenin’s words, the work that “outlines a new world-conception, consistent materialism, which also embraces the realm of social life; dialectics, as the most comprehensive and profound doctrine of development; the theory of the class struggle and of the world-historic revolutionary role of the proletariat - the creator of a new, communist society” was presented to the world. In this Manifesto, the founders of Marxism used some of the propositions put forth in Principles of Communism. It will be relevant to begin our discussion by reading some excerpts from this work:

“What is Communism?

“Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.

“What is the proletariat?

“The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labour and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labour – hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition. The proletariat, or the class of proletarians, is, in a word, the working class of the 19th century....

“The class of the wholly propertyless, who are obliged to sell their labour to the bourgeoisie in order to get, in exchange, the means of subsistence for their support...

“(The proletarians differs from his preceding form, the slave, in that) the slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian (who belongs to a higher stage of social development and, himself, stands on a higher social level than the slave); the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general....

“(The proletarian differs from serf in that) the serf possesses and uses an instrument of production, a piece of land, in exchange for which he gives up a part of his product or part of the services of his labour.

“The proletarian works with the instruments of production of another, for the account of this other, in exchange for a part of the product.

“The serf gives up, the proletarian receives. ... The serf is outside competition, the proletarian is in it.

“The serf liberates himself in one of three ways: either he runs away to the city and there becomes a handicraftsman; or, instead of products and services, he gives money to his lord and thereby becomes a free tenant; or he overthrows his feudal lord and himself becomes a property owner. In short, by one route or another, he gets into the owning class and enters into competition. The proletarian liberates himself by abolishing competition, private property, and all class differences...

“... the abolition of private property is, doubtless, the shortest and most significant way to characterize the revolution in the whole social order which has been made necessary by the development of industry – and for this reason it is rightly advanced by communists as their main demand.” (Engels: The Principles of Communism)

In this manner, we can see that the liberation of the proletariat becomes possible only as the liberation of society.

What relation does this “main demand” have with women’s liberation?

It is said that there was a time when there was neither ruler nor ruled; neither owner nor slave. Then there was no property in society and that society was matrilineal. But times changed. Property was born in society. And “Thus, on the one hand, in proportion as wealth increased, it made the man’s position in the family more important than the woman’s, and on the other hand created an impulse to exploit this strengthened position in order to overthrow, in favour of his children, the traditional order of inheritance. This, however, was impossible so long as descent was reckoned according to mother-right. Mother-right, therefore, had to be overthrown, and overthrown it was. (Property was now transformed into private property) ...The establishment of the exclusive supremacy of the man shows its effects first in the patriarchal family, which now emerges as an intermediate form... The overthrow of mother-right was the world historical defeat of the female sex. The man took command in the home also; the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude, she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children.” (Origin of Family, Private Property and the State) In short, the enslavement of the proletariat and the enslavement of women began at the same time and due to the same sort of reasons: that is, due to private property. Therefore, in the programme of the communist party, the programme for the liberation of the proletariat and the programme of the liberation of women are not presented as separate programmes but rather as fundamentally the same programme – the programme for the abolition of private property. That is why the liberation of the proletariat without the liberation of women and the liberation of women without the liberation of the proletariat is not possible. In the programme of the communist party, the agenda of women’s liberation is the agenda of revolution.

The development of modern industry and technology, the ripening situation for the transformation of the entire social system through the abolition of private property, leave no possible logic or meaning for the differentiation between women and men on the basis of physical ability. Women have come out of the home on a large scale. And for various reasons this process is fast spreading. This process has also begun to indicate signs of changing relations within the family. The complete transformation of society that will come about with the abolition of private property will no longer allow the family (which has all along been, in the form of the economic unit of society, a prison-house for women) to continue to remain the economic unit of society. The division of work into work inside and outside the home will become redundant. Care and education of children will be publicly provided for. “In this way ... the two bases of traditional marriage – the dependence rooted in private property, of the women on the man, and of the children on the parents...(will be removed)...” This has been expressed sharply in the Communist Manifesto: “Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common... the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of (wives in common) springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.” The means in which this will be achieved has been spelt out in the Manifesto: “a) Abolition of all rights of inheritance and b) Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form.” We can sum up with Engels’ declaration, in Origin, on the question of women’s liberation and the basic programme of the communist party, that when women are economically self-reliant and free from anxieties about their children’s secure future, they will take the first step towards their emancipation. This can be possible only in a socialist society.

In order to reach this final destination, the proletariat of each country must take steps as called for by the concrete and actual conditions of their country. The fundamental points discussed by us till now, while being true as a rule, at the same time centre on developed capitalist countries. No doubt, while the fundamental character of the question is the same in each country, depending on the stage of development of each country, the means of liberation will also differ from country to country. In this context, before we discuss own party CPI(ML)’s programme in the concrete instance of our country India, it is necessary for us to discuss another point.

If the liberation of the proletariat is indivisibly linked to women’s liberation, the question can naturally arise, does there remain any separate need for a women’s liberation struggle? Based on the fundamental indivisibility of the means of the liberation of both proletariat and women, to reach this conclusion is a simplification of the problem. It is a mechanical understanding of the issue. In an article written for Aadhi Zameen (April-June 1993), Comrade Vinod Mishra had written, “Women are a part of the nation, the peasantry and the proletariat. They are therefore a part of all these liberation struggles to this or that extent. Yet the women’s liberation struggle has its own specificities, its autonomy.” The Pol-Org report of the Fourth Party Congress, clarifying this point, had observed, “It is thus no accident that Marxists were the first to raise the question of emancipation of women. Despite this, however, the communist movement did not take up the women question with the seriousness it deserves. The mechanical understanding that socialism will automatically eliminate discrimination against women has been an important factor responsible for such state of affairs that even after seventy years of socialism in Soviet Union and forty of that in China, women do not enjoy full equal status with men. Therefore, our Party is determined to take up this issue in right earnest. This is not to say that the movement for the emancipation of women is a new phenomenon...”

The propositions put forth by Marx-Engels in Origin of Family, Private Property and the State bear out this understanding of our Fourth Congress and deal with the question of women’s liberation with all seriousness and depth. This has been presented to us in detail in the first session. It is relevant to note a particular indication of this text – on the context of the specificities and autonomy of the women’s liberation struggle. Marx-Engels described the overthrow of ‘mother right’ as a defeat of world historic significance for the female sex. This was so because the monogamous marriage that rose on the foundations of this defeat was “based, not on natural, but on economic conditions – on the victory of private property over primitive, natural communal property ...the sole exclusive aims of monogamous marriage were to make the man supreme in the family, and to propagate, as the future heirs to his wealth, children indisputably his own.” (Origin) The anti-woman character of this institution was to the extent that lineage became synonymous with the son; the daughter was excluded from this. If a woman does not bear a child, she began to be humiliated and tortured for being ‘barren’. If she bears children but daughters not sons, she was also similarly humiliated and tortured as though she was ‘barren’.

The depth and scope of this question is illustrated by Marx-Engels’ proposition: “The first division of labour is that between man and woman for the propagation of children....The first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male. ...It is the cellular form of civilized society, in which the nature of the oppositions and contradictions fully active in that society can be already studied.” (Origin) it can be said that the worker, originally a slave, becomes comprehensively enslaved in capitalist society; that is, the slave or the bonded slave used to be slaves of one particular master, but the entire proletariat class is a slave of the entire capitalist class. From the very moment of this historic defeat, women became slaves of men. A slave even of the slaves. In India the husband himself has been declared to be God. Since then women are born dependent and captive. Dependent as a child on her father, on her husband in her youth and in old age on her son. This has been decreed to be ‘natural’ and this is the system created for the woman. Distressed by this bondage of women, one poet of the middle ages wrote: “Why did the almighty cause women to be born captive, so that she cannot be happy even in dreams.”

In Marx-Engels’ exposition, each phrase – a defeat of world historic significance; first division of labour; first class opposition; first class oppression; family as cellular form of society – serves to underline the seriousness and importance of this question: a mechanical view of women’s liberation and the women’s movement or its simplification go against this. In order to implement this directive, the Comintern had proclaimed in 1924 (after the Russian revolution): “Until old conventions of family and family relationship are not transformed, the revolution will remain impotent.”

In the article in the April-June 1993 issue of Aadhi Zameen cited above, Comrade Vinod Mishra had observed that the women’s organisation would have the specific task of enhancing the role of women in struggles for their own rights, because women liberation could be achieved only by women themselves – not through any paternalistic benevolence of male reformers. He had also noted that there continue to be instances of violations of women’s dignity even in our own party, and while the party does take action in such matters, “I feel that the communist women’s organisation must also have the task of keeping watch and creating pressure on the party in such matters.”

The character of state and society in any country determines the goal of revolution in that country. The goal of revolution determines the programme of revolution. Based on the understanding of this programme, the communist party of that country decides the importance of their work among various classes, social groups and sections based on their attitude towards revolution.

So what is the character of state and society in India? Come, let us begin a discussion afresh. In Economic and Political Manuscripts 1848, Marx wrote – The relation between man and woman is nature’s oldest relationship, so it is a natural relationship. From this relationship of man and woman in a society, one can therefore judge that society’s whole level of development. If relations between men and women are based on mutual cooperation, equality and friendship, we can estimate that relations between other people in society must also be likewise. If it’s is based on bondage, repression, exploitation, contradiction and loot, we can imagine that the relation of humans with each other in that society as well as the relation of that society to nature will likewise be based on exploitation and loot.

In the concrete conditions of India, what is the character of this relationship?

Our Fourth Congress for the first time put forth concrete propositions on the character of women’s oppression in India, put together the broad policies for work among women, and gave directives for the nature of such work. The Fourth Congress Document says, “In the specific conditions of India, the oppression of women is the very characteristic of the all-pervasive feudal culture and the feudal economic structure in the countryside. The discrimination against women is sanctified by numerous religious codes and customs, which over the centuries have not only numbed the general consciousness against such evil practices, but have even rallied women to accept their deprivation in servility and apparent willingness....Therefore, the struggle for the emancipation of women is a cardinal feature of the new democratic revolution, which aims not only at the complete elimination of the feudal economy and politics but also that of feudal culture. Hence, the struggle for building a democratic India is inseparably linked with the struggle for the emancipation of women. This is the specific feature of the women question in India. However, it is also part of the struggle against oppression of women throughout the world (the character of which may differ from that of oppression of women in India – RR), which has its origin in the class society. Where our Party Programme (General Programme adopted in the 8th Party Congress) speaks of  “effecting a modern democratic cultural transformation of the whole society”, its essence and spirit must be understood as the total destruction of feudal culture. Secondly, to characterise the character of women’s oppression as feudal is not to disregard the distorted capitalist aspects linked to it; rather it is to recognise the truth that “in the Indian conditions, this feudal outlook, approach or attitude towards women prevails everywhere, be it city or countryside. Even in the so-called modern bourgeois families, you will find that the relations with women are directed by the same feudal outlook... To term the character of women’s oppression as feudal is therefore to sharpen the edge of the issue.” (Explanatory Answers on Fourth Congress Document). Although capitalist expansion in India have created a large and independent section of working and professional women, but through its propaganda mechanisms, it has propagated only ideas that enslave women, feudal values and images. The low/devalued status of women at the workplace only helps to maintain their low status in society and family. The reason is that denying women even equal wages for equal work and minimum wages, etc... allow capitalists, and landlords in rural areas to earn profits to the tune of crores of rupees. For this profit, the feudal chains of bondage are maintained.

We can say that India’s democracy is a democracy whose colours are suffused with feudal blood, in spite of the fact that India is today being considered a rising Asian power and a superpower in the field of information technology, despite the fact that India has the world’s largest Parliament. Just as blood has two kind of corpuscles, feudal blood has two kinds of corpuscles – communalism and casteism – which are distinct features of Indian feudalism. “The phenomena of religious fundamentalism, communalism and casteism, prevalent at different layers of Indian polity, are not simply relics of a bygone feudal-colonial era, they are very much part and parcel of ‘modern’ India. The ruling classes and their parties utilise these instruments in a calculated way to weaken and disrupt the growing democratic unity and awakening of the working people. (General Programme, 8th Congress) Needless to say, these two distinct features are weapons which are deployed to intensify women’s oppression and which also make women their prey. “The women question is not merely a problem of a specific section or class of women, but of the womenfolk as a whole, although, poor and landless peasant women, tribal women and women of the working class are the worst victims of oppression.” (Fourth Congress Document) And we don’t hesitate to raise this question forcefully on a national level and on national platforms.

This feudal character of relations between men and women in India is expressed in other relations in our society too. In its concrete analysis of Indian society, our party holds Indian society to be semi-feudal-semi-colonial. “This determines the stage of our revolution – the stage of people’s democratic revolution with agrarian revolution as its axis. Though the primary aim of this democratic revolution will be to abolish all feudal remnants and the concomitant autocratic and bureaucratic distortions in the polity, it will necessarily have several socialist aspects as well. (General Programme, 8th Congress) The struggle to build a democratic India is indivisibly linked to the struggle for women’s liberation. The Party programme presents this in its entirety in this manner: “Abolition of all types of social, economic and sexual exploitation of women and ensuring their equal status and rights in all spheres of life, eradication of caste oppression and discrimination, protection of the rights of indigenous people and various minority communities, helping all weaker sections of the society to catch up in the race of social progress and ensuring their equal status.” (General Programme, 8th Congress)

The Communist International had declared as part of its programme: “social equality between men and women in law as well as in real life; revolutionary transformation of the relations between husband and wife and of the family code; motherhood to be accorded the status of social work; responsibility for the care and education of babies and young children to be in the hands of society; and relentless struggle against all ideologies and traditions that enslave women.” This very programme of women’s liberation struggle defines our basic direction even today. The CPI(ML) Programme is a programme to implement this basic direction in the concrete conditions of our country.

Outlining the concrete conditions of our country, our party programme identifies four main contradictions that mark Indian society — “the contradiction between imperialism and Indian nation, that between feudalism and the broad masses of the people, between big capital and the Indian people, the working class in particular, and the contradiction among various sections of the ruling classes.” The Party programme goes on to say, “While all these contradictions can be separately identified, imperialism, big capital and feudal remnants also present themselves as a veritable nexus and the masses of our people are groaning under the dead weight of this alliance. But this alliance can only be overthrown by grasping and resolving the principal contradiction between feudal remnants and the broad Indian masses, for the feudal remnants constitute the biggest stumbling block on the road to free and rapid development of productive forces in the country.” The identification of the contradiction between feudalism and the broad masses of the people as the primary contradiction distinguishes the CPI(ML) Party Programme from that of other communist parties and gives it a genuine revolutionary direction. In this context, the struggle within the party against liquidationism is not just a struggle against negation of the need for a communist party or restriction of the role of the party. It is also a struggle against the weakening of the anti-feudal peasant struggle. Because liquidationism starts with negation of the need for a communist party and restriction of the role of the party and eventually and inevitably goes to the point of denying the need for a revolutionary peasant struggle. No doubt, women as woman, as worker, and as citizen, i.e in all these roles, are oppressed by this nexus of imperialism, big capital, and feudal remnants. Then it is follows naturally that their struggle will be against imperialism, capitalism, and feudalism; but without centring the struggle against feudal remnants, the struggle for women’s liberation will be scattered rather than focussed. We have already seen that regarding the basic character of women’s oppression in Indian society, that in the specific circumstances of India, women’s oppression is in fact a distinct characteristic of the all-pervading feudal culture and the feudal economy of rural areas. Therefore the entire CPI(ML) programme becomes a programme for women’s liberation and every struggle for women’s liberation becomes a struggle for the liberation of the proletariat. That is why the communist women’s organisation must try to mobilise women to participate in large numbers in every struggle conducted by the party. This will not only increase the self-confidence of women who come out of their homes and participate in all kinds of struggles and movements, it will also make the women’s liberation struggle wider in scope by weakening feudal values and traditions. And “All units and bodies of the Party must make a serious effort to mobilise women in as large number as possible in all mass movements and recruit Party members in the course of these mass activities. We should try to increase the participation of women comrades at all levels including its highest bodies, develop them as theoreticians as well as leaders and fighters. The success of our efforts in this regard will be judged by the increase in the number of women comrades in the ranks and leadership of the Party.” (Fourth Congress Pol-Org report)

The Diphu Organisational Conference had called for taking the women’s membership in the party to at least 20% and to include at least 10% women in party structures at all levels. In the 15-20 years since then, we have certainly made progress in this direction but in spite of the renewed emphasis on this direction in the Bardhaman Conference and the recently concluded 8th Party Congress, we have not been able to achieve the goal of women’s membership of at least 20% of the total membership – stabilising this level and moving beyond it being a far cry. We have more or less stabilised the presence of 10% women in each committee, and it seems that we have satisfied ourselves that this is the best that can be achieved. We are not trying to induct an even larger number of women in our structures. The lack of even an attempt in this direction perhaps suggests that we are satisfied with the existing level. This leads to a problem which is not less important and must be pointed out here. That problem is that as such, the question of relation between party and mass organisation keeps coming up and we resolve it time and again and move ahead. But this problem arises in a newer and more complex form due to the low numbers of women in the party and party structures. Because of this, the party appears to be of the men and the women’s organisation appears to be an organisation of the women. As a result, in spite of all the consciousness, the mindset of gender-difference remains present between women and men comrades in the party. If we put this differently, we can say that this is nothing but a remnant of a feudal viewpoint towards women in the party. So the essence of the struggle against this mindset in the party is to completely end the imbalance in ratio of men and women in the party and party structures. The Bardhaman Conference and the 8th Party Congress have raised the women’s question from this perspective. On the rest – developing women members as party theoreticians, leaders and fighters – in spite of some successes in this direction, much remains to be done. This education camp too highlights the need for us to pay attention with sufficient seriousness in this direction.

IN this session, we will discuss the broad policy orientation for the women’s organisation. There are many specific issues, struggles and debates with which we are already quite familiar, and on which we will not dwell in detail in this session. Rather, in the light of the systematic understanding and perspective we have already discussed in the previous two sessions, we can draw a broad outline of AIPWA’s policy approach and its emphasis and direction. Some of the questions we can consider are: What differentiates AIPWA from other women’s organisations and trends in the women’s movement, and what is AIPWA’s approach towards the latter? What is AIPWA’s relationship to the party? Naturally, in the course of our discussion, we will also try to review some of our own popular perceptions and ways of articulating positions, keeping in mind what we’ve learnt in the last two sessions.

This note is far from comprehensive and is quite open-ended: it is intended to open up our own ideas, practice and experience for introspection and discussion, rather than to foreclose the discussion.

EXCERPTS from the Political-Organisational Report adopted by the 8th Congress of the CPI(ML), December 2007, Kolkata

34.     Coming to the women’s front, the Seventh Congress had called for “laying maximum emphasis on organising working women, urban as well as rural, and challenging the feudal-patriarchal order and especially the growing fascist offensive in every sphere” while regaining and improving the initiative of the women’s organization ensuring vigorous implementation of the mass orientation and regular functioning of its offices and committees. Viewed in this context, we can say that while some progress is clearly visible in terms of advancing our work among working women, a lot remains to be done with regard to the other aspect. The growth of our trade union work in the organized sector and the development of Party work among teachers and government employees have increased our direct reach among working women in the industrial and service sector. Simultaneously, the expansion of the AIALA network and our work in panchayats has also helped us develop closer ties with women in the agricultural field and those employed in rural health sector or organized around self-help groups. Women engaged in the rural health sector get a paltry amount as honorarium and have to face all the hazards emanating from our rural society and an apathetic public administration. The demand for better working conditions and proper remuneration, rights and recognition of these women workers is an important issue before the entire women’s movement. In Bihar, a state-level organization of women health workers has been formed and it has begun to take agitational initiatives against the state government. In quite a few areas, women working as domestic helps have also been organized under AIPWA/ AICCTU banner. To realize the full potential of expanding our work among working women closer coordination is necessary between AIPWA and AICCTU/employees’ organisation on the one hand and AIPWA and AIALA on the other. This however cannot happen as long as it is seen merely as an organizational arrangement. Leading cadres among women will have to increase their involvement and initiative with regard to the issues and struggles of agricultural labourers and trade unions having significant women membership; at the same time the trade union centre and the agricultural labour organization too will have to increase their sensitivity towards the issues and problems faced by women in their respective fields.

35.     While objective developments continue to draw more and more women out of their so-called domestic domain into the vortex of the broader public or social life, the ideological and cultural climate still remains considerably hostile or at any rate prejudicial to women, not to talk about the physical insecurity, economic discrimination and social barriers that women have to encounter every now and then. This is the stark reality that women have to face behind the deceptive rhetoric of ‘feminisation of labour’ and ‘empowerment of women’. Even in panchayats and municipalities where women usually have some reservation – one-third in most states and fifty per cent in Bihar – women have to fight against heavy odds to assert their independence. In Assemblies and Parliament the issue of women’s reservation has of course been lying in cold storage for more than a decade now in spite of a rhetorical consensus on the issue among all parties and coalitions. Against all these visible and not so visible barriers women are fighting back valiantly. Like in the battle against the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act in Manipur or in struggles against corporate land-grab as at Singur and Nandigram or against the ubiquitous criminal-police nexus and cases of patriarchal-feudal oppression, women can increasingly be seen in the forefront of people’s struggles. If the revolutionary women’s organization has to march at the head of this growing assertion of women, it must increase its own role and initiative many times over. Resumption of regular functioning of the central office of the women’s organization must be treated as an absolute first step in this direction. The emphasis laid at Bardhaman convention on increasing the proportion of women members has brought about a positive change. The momentum must be maintained and simultaneously efforts must now also be stepped up to develop women cadres for discharging various responsibilities. The women’s department will have an important role to play in this regard. Apart from assisting with the implementation of various tasks related to the women’s front, the department must study and sum up experiences and provide theoretical and practical inputs to guide the Party’s work on the women’s front.