The niece's tale

Development can spawn curious offspring. The prospect of involving rural women in a refresher course on the importance of maintaining vegetable gardens surely qualifies as one of these. And that's precisely what Growing Together, a 28-minute film by Joss Brooks, purports to do.

Women and capitalism

FEMINIST writing normally falls into one of 2 categories: either it is completely simplistic rabblerousing targeted at the lowest common denominator, or it is jargon-ridden academic work that theorises ad infinitum about the reasons for women's oppression. Betty Friedan, Shulamith Firestone and other American women who wrote at the height of the women's movement in the '60s belong to the first category while Marxist-feminist writers such as Michele Barrett fall into the second.

Leaving the women in the woods

When a village watchman self-righteously stopped Navlibehn from cutting firewood in the forests adjoining Kotha village, she retorted, "To kya main apne haath jala kar roti pakaun (Should I burn my hands to cook food)?"

Toiling unsung

ABOUT 1.2 billion women live in the rural areas of the developing world and at least one-third of these are heads of households. These women bear a crushing workload -- at home and in the fields -- but their contribution to rural development is often overlooked.

Questions of gender

FOR the lone woman crusader in a far-flung rural area, the fight for justice can be horrendously daunting in the face of an incomprehensible Indian Penal Code and male-dominated panchayats. In city courts, the course of justice is often longwinded.

If this is emancipation

Women's groups in India are peeved about the draft country paper on the challenges facing Indian women, presented at the Asia-Pacific Inter-ministerial Conference on Women in Development, held in Jakarta in the second week of June. This meet was preparatory to the Fourth World Conference on Women to be held in Beijing in September 1995.

Women to the fore

"WE HAVE to find ways of creating an environment in which the individual most affected (by population control measures), in this case woman, is also part of the decision-making process," Nafis Sadik, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, told the press in New York, on the eve of the preparatory committee meeting of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).

Saved from the axe

WRAPPED AND bound in red tape, the 276 obstinate deodars growing near Tutu village in Rampur sub-division of Himachal Pradesh's Shimla district were an uncomplaining target for freewheeling woodcutters roaming the area. This time round, they were saved from the axe by a bunch of gritty village women.

If words were deeds

If a girl child in India could benefit every time somebody recounted her problems, hers would be a happy lot by now. Unfortunately, efforts to better her condition have been restricted to pieces of paper which do the rounds in various "concerned" ministries, elaborate action plans that serve to make nicely printed handouts, and five-star seminars where long-winded speeches serve to pass time between a five-star lunch and a five-star tea.

Babies made to order

AFTER designer clothes and designer food, will designer babies be next? Are you a black who wants a white baby or a 65-year-old woman who wants to conceive? No problem, except that of ethics. Made-to-order babies are now possible with the rapid development of assisted reproductive technologies (See box).