Abstract
This article examines the role of rights in both governing and shaping women’s relationship with the reconstruction process and their position in the reconstructed society. Through four years of empirical research in the post-earthquake reconstruction process in Maharashtra, India, this article focuses upon how women’s rights in social reconstruction are contingent upon processes of recognition. From the United Nations to local women’s organising, the article considers how women’s rights to “determine the pattern of their lives and the future of society” (United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (C.E.D.A.W.). General Recommendation No. 23 (1997), Article 7, para. 9.) are dependent upon processes of recognition. Through a critique of cultural, material and spatial acts and frameworks of recognition within the U.N., World Bank, State Government, public interest litigation, personal and nonformal law, rights are seen to actively and hierarchically construct either a modern, liberal subject or a religious, communitarian subject, which both either deny or prescribe agency. The experience of women’s organising reveals the possibility of reconstructing a feminist rights strategy of reflection.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Didi Herman and Ruth Fletcher for their reading of previous drafts and support through the larger research project. I thank S. Krishnadas for providing both access and guidance with regard to the P.I.L. documents, World Bank and State Government Reports. I thank my women-friends within the earthquake-affected area whose voices and experiences have made the most profound impact upon my understanding of women’s needs, desires and vision in society. Finally I thank Rosemary Hunter, for supporting me as I balanced care-giving, women’s organising and an early academic ‚career’ – without her enduring patience, support and critical editing of this article, neither the women’s stories nor mine would have been brought to print, which marks a further tribute to the truly feminist ethos of F.L.S.
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Krishnadas, J. Identities in reconstruction: from rights of recognition to reflection in post-disaster reconstruction processes. Feminist Legal Stud 15, 137–165 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-007-9054-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-007-9054-1