Of Woman Caste : The Experience of Gender in Rural India

Contents: Preface. Introduction. 1. The woman researcher. 2. Folklore and the Malvani ethos. 3. Aba and Kaki, a village couple. 4. Woman of work, Akka. 5. Earth woman, Parvati. 6. Woman of Faith, Savitri. 7. The myth of the money-order economy. Conclusion. Appendix. Glossary. References. Index.

"This major study of village women\'s lives demonstrates the many creative strategies women use to cope with the dual stresses of poverty and patriarchy. Focusing particularly on women farmers in her ancestral village, Masure, on the Konkan coast of western India, Anjali Bagwe highlights the \'grassroots realities\', and examines critically the patriarchal myths and stereotypes about rural women that hide the hard truth: it is the women who keep the agriculture-based rural economy going. Far from being dependent on remittances from their menfolk in urban centres, the women work the land, head the house-holds, free the men to go to the cities for work and often subsidize them.

"Of major significance are the case studies where village women reveal a variety of strategies of compromising with, yielding to, subverting or transcending the traditional system of male dominance. Discussing the ways in which individuals cope with rigid prescriptions of behaviour, Bagwe exposes the considerable wastage of creativity and intelligence expended in combatting counterproductive systems like patriarchy.

"Anjali Bagwe also writes on the ravages of bad planning, corruption and ecological devastation in what was once a rich agricultural region. Taking us through the villagers\' season-bound experiences, she relies predominantly on the life-history genre." (jacket)