Women's Rights Issues Among Bombay Parsis: A Legal Anthropologist's Thoughts on Mitra Sharafi's Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (04) ◽  
pp. 1215-1223
Author(s):  
Sylvia Vatuk
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Christian Women ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Road ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
The Common ◽  
Rights Issues

I focus in this essay on legal issues related to women's rights in the British colonial period that are discussed in Mitra Sharafi's 2014 book, Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia: Parsi Legal Culture, 1772–1947. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, the Parsi leadership actively lobbied for laws related to intestate inheritance, women's property rights, divorce, and child marriage that were consistent with their community's customary values and practices. During the same period, legal reform movements were also underway on behalf of Hindu and Muslim women and, to a lesser extent, Christian women. This essay highlights some of the common themes in those movements and discusses, in particular, the similarities and differences in what was achieved for Parsi women and their Hindu sisters, as they and their respective male leaders traversed the road toward greater gender equality under the law.

Violence, Law and Women's Rights in South Asia (review)

NWSA Journal ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 198-200
Author(s):  
Srimati Basu
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Women’S Rights

scholarly journals Women’s Rights and Colonization in The Short Story of The Jakarta Post

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Ferdinal Ferdinal
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Postcolonial Criticism ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Rights Issues

Right after the fall of Suharto’s regime, Indonesia has undergone tremendous changes in almost all aspects of life: political, economic, social, cultural, and possibly ideological lives. The changes bring new breaths to Indonesian future, especially in the area of women’s rights. This article discusses the issue of women’s rights in Indonesia based on a textual analysis. The purpose of this writing is to investigate the representation of women’s rights issues in some stories of The Jakarta Post, one of the most popular media which has also played an important role in popularizing and spreading such issues. Postcolonial criticism is used to see how the stories portray the issues of women’s rights, particularly gender equality and marginality. To study the issues, this analysis looks at two short stories: “Gender Equality” by Iwan Setiawan and “Street Smart Mom” by Eric Musa Piliang.  The two stories represent the fact that Indonesian women fight against colonization for their rights in some different ways, as a smart wife and a poor street mother. The stories signal that Indonesian women struggle to escape from colonization through some actions such as moving forward to the center of power by maintaining superiority against men and living their lives as they wish in spite of being poor.

scholarly journals Filming the Motherland: Gendered Violence and Pakistani Female Empowerment in Dukhtar and My Pure Land

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zainabb Hull
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Female Empowerment ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Pure Land ◽  
Gendered Violence ◽  
Rights Issues

The revival of Pakistani cinema in the mid-2000s has heralded several successful films tackling relevant social issues, such as national identity, terrorism, and gendered violence. Pakistani filmmakers both at home and in the diaspora are using cinema to address women's rights issues within Pakistani communities worldwide whilst challenging simplistic and imperialist western perceptions of Pakistan and its people. This article analyses two recent female-led films from diasporic filmmakers: Afia Nathaniel’s Dukhtar (2014) and Sarmad Masud’s My Pure Land (2017). Each film features female leads navigating gendered violence, patriarchal oppression, and Pakistani cultural identity to explore the filmmakers’ own complicated relationships with the ‘motherland’, expressing a sense of belonging and nostalgic affection for Pakistan whilst holding the nation accountable for upholding patriarchal cultural values, in order to reveal paths towards gender equality and female empowerment in global Pakistani communities. Positive critical reception within Pakistan highlights both the difficulties faced by filmmakers addressing women's rights issues and the desire for Pakistani social dramas, indicating new possibilities within the media landscape. There remains a lack of insight into audience reception to new films addressing women's rights issues, and future research must examine how this new cinema might provoke and inspire positive social change within real world communities and for Pakistani women around the world. Nonetheless, in the production and global critical reception of Dukhtar and My Pure Land, there is evidence of Pakistan’s slow progress and growing enthusiasm for gender equality and safety, and of challenges to oppressive western perceptions of Pakistan that lead to paternalistic and racist treatment of South Asian women. These films prioritise the need for social change to come from within the community, offering up possible role models and futures for a Pakistan that is safe and fair for people of all genders.

scholarly journals RIGHTS OF WOMEN DURING PRE-MARRIAGE FROM QUR’ANIC PERSPECTIVES WITH CROSS-REFERENCE TO THE LAW IN MALAYSIA: AN ANALYSIS

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (19) ◽  
pp. 01-09
Author(s):  
Nadzrah Ahmad ◽  
Rahmawati Mohd Yusoff ◽  
Mohammad Hidir Baharudin
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Cultural Interpretation ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Cross Reference ◽  
Rights Issues

Women’s rights issues have marked their spot as one of the most debated issues throughout the centuries. Whenever the issue is raised, the topic of marriage is the most highlighted concerning the discussion. Marriage is regularly portrayed as an “oppressive sphere” for women, with their rights being oppressed since the moment of pre-marriage, especially in Islam. However, further reflection on the issue has shown that Islamic matrimony liberates women, preserves their honor and place in society, and abolishes injustice when guided in principle from the Qur’an and the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) which will be examined in this research. The paper will also analyse the issue in the law of Malaysia and supported by the case law if any. In addition, reference will also be made to the opinions of the scholars regarding the conflicting issue of the rights of women during pre-marriage. Regrettably, Muslims’ misunderstanding due to cultural interpretation and mispractice of original Islamic teachings have tainted the true Islamic ideal. It is hoped that the study may provide a clear reference and guideline regarding the rights of women during pre-marriage from both the Islamic and Malaysian laws as this topic is highly significant and beneficial to numerous parties in the present day.

scholarly journals Women’s Rights Or Ontological Erasure? A Feminist Insight Into Women Protection Bill (2015)

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-97
Author(s):  
Rabia Aamir
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Islamic Feminism ◽  
The Common ◽  
Insight Into

The schism created between man and woman in recent times of some past centuries has generated critical debates in different social frameworks. In Pakistan’s context, the recently passed bill for women’s protection has garnered a debate about certain structured gender roles that need be addressed to alleviate the sexual polarization that has ensued. While some religious factions have their apparently patriarchal concerns to resolve the perpetration of anti-patriarchal discourse that this bill seemingly initiates, this paper explores the manifestations of very pertinent anti-feminist concerns that this bill ensconces in its text, the discussion of which is mandatory for the peace and stability of this society. Drawing interstitially from Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s concept of the subaltern in a postcolonial context, the questioning of the parochial double-bound concept of post-coloniality and womanhood by Sara Suleri, and the legacy of Islamic feminism are three possible modes of addressing these relevant trepidations in the Pakistani context. Using this multi-pronged approach as a theoretical framework, this exploratory paper impresses an imperative of deconstructing the textual implications initiated by such issues as raised in this bill. Validating the common grounds of the three adopted approaches, this study is an attempt at revealing a multiplicity of meanings for objective cognizance.

Diversity in Dialectics: A Methodological Quest for En-gendering Security

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-174
Author(s):  
Imtiaz Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
South Asians ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
The South ◽  
Dialectical Method ◽  
Yin Yang ◽  
Status Of Women

En-gendering security is as much a political exercise as it is a methodological one. An earlier paper ( Ahmed, 1995 ) flagged the limits of positivism in understanding woman’s state of insecurity in a world informed and dictated by masculinity or what could be referred to as the purush jat. The critique was done by taking recourse to dialectics, of a kind that had its roots in the works of Hegel and Marx. However, after two decades, I see the limits of the effort, particularly when it comes to addressing the dialectic of gender relationship and the disempowered status of women in South Asia. This is not because Western dialectical method is at fault (which surely has a tendency of harbouring determinism) or because the utopias put forward by the Hegelians and the Marxists, although qualitatively different in nature, have foundered and transformed into living dystopias, but more because of a serious appreciation of the diversity in dialectics, including the contributions of the Chinese and Indian dialectics over the centuries. Put differently, approaching woman’s state of insecurity from the standpoint of yin-yang relationship and/or prasangika can make a far more meaningful contribution to the task of demystifying masculinity and ensuring women’s rights. En-gendering security in South Asia otherwise requires not only reimagining dialectics in the light of its diversity but also making the methodological quest local, indeed, related to the lived experience of the South Asians.

scholarly journals Amnesty International and Women's Rights

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Ganzfried
Keyword(s):  
Gender Bias ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Women Activists ◽  
Internal Resistance ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Amnesty International ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Rights Issues

Amnesty International's (AI) focus on civil and political rights has marked their work with a gender bias from the outset. In the first comprehensive look at AI's work on women's rights, Miriam Ganzfried illustrates the development of their activities regarding women's rights issues over twenty years. Through interviews with staff members and activists and unprecedented access to archive material from the Swiss and the German AI sections, she shows how women activists strategized to make AI increase its work on women's rights. Additionally, the book demonstrates that, despite the leadership's commitment to the Stop Violence Against Women campaign, internal resistance hampered the integration of women's rights into the organization's overall work.

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