How do you go about defining or measuring emancipation of rural women who are oppressed at home and outside by a complex of forces that are independent and yet intimately interconnected?

These were some of the questions raised by rural women from some of the poorest and least developed parts of India, at a session on women’s empowerment held as part of the national conference ‘What it takes to eradicate poverty’, organised by the PACS Programme in Delhi on December 4-6, 2007.

Women speaking different languages, often also representing vastly different perceptions on what empowerment is all about, shared their experiences, raised questions and brainstormed for answers and direction.

The session started off with a theme paper by Professor Rakesh Chandra, director, Institute of Women’s Studies, Lucknow. The paper offered a solution to the problem of evaluating or measuring levels of emancipation through a series of quantitative markers including health, education, participation in decision-making and political processes, opportunities, land rights, violence and so on.

This was followed by three sessions on ‘Women in Governance’, ‘Empowered Women: Agents of Social Change’ and ‘Women and Livelihoods -- Opportunities and Challenges’.

During the sessions, a large number of rural women shared experiences about their efforts to fight the barriers that curtail their lives.

Radha Devi, a panchayat president from Bihar, recounted how crippling rampant corruption in the state machinery could be to an elected representative trying to function honestly. “Main mukhia hone ke saath-saath dukhiya bhi hoon (I am the leader of the panchayat, but still a harassed person),” she quipped.

Prakash Rani, former panchayat member from Raisen district in Madhya Pradesh, who has had to struggle against a patriarchal and caste-ridden society in order to be able to function at all, vividly described the struggles of the women in her village to find a place in the gram sabha and the panchayat, and replace corrupt panchayat members with honest ones.

Jamuni Masomat, an elderly member of Gurhet panchayat, in Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh district, talked about how she and other elderly women in the village had to confront the panchayat and force it to pay attention to the problems of the elderly, especially issues related to pension.

Social change is agonisingly slow and complex; not easy to bring about, not easy to understand either, said Paan Bai Ahirwar from Chhatarpur in Madhya Pradesh.

Paan Bai and members of the Jai Hind Sankul (a self-help group cluster) had to confront untold problems and make umpteen trips to various government offices all the way from the village panchayat to the collectorate just to get a well dug to solve the village’s water problems.

“A single cheque of Rs 25,000 was returned three times,” she said. “And despite the fact that the women of the village raised Rs 1 lakh for the purpose, the well is still incomplete one whole year after we started efforts to dig it.”

Sarju Bai of Thorisagar village in Uttar Pradesh’s Lalitpur district recounted the role of the women of her village in the mixed success of struggles for entitlements such as land allotments and benefits under various schemes such as the public distribution system (PDS) and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS).

“What we have got through our struggle is a very big thing,” she said, “but we are told that our rights guarantee more than we have got. We have a long way to go yet.”

The debate on whether women need their own independent organisations or need to work in mixed groups has been going on in development circles for years, but Pramila Devi of Bhagwanpur in Nawada district of Bihar made an emphatic point in favour of the former when she recounted how the establishment of mahila dalans has helped women get both justice and counselling in property and family disputes and their rightful place in the arena of public decision-making.

The final session on livelihoods threw up a number of inspiring stories. Malti Devi of Pagua village in Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh, spoke in detail about the women farmers of her district who firmly took charge of agricultural practices, rejected harmful inputs and raised yields through natural and sustainable farming practices.

Vandana Gagoi of Taroda village in Buldhana, Maharashtra, described how cooperatives had helped women make their presence felt in local markets. Meenatai Londhe of Wangdari in Latur, Maharashtra, explained the unique approach of organising under trade unions to press for land rights.

Among those present at the occasion was the firebrand activist of yesteryear Dr Mohini Giri and chairperson of Guild of Services, Delhi, and Rajya Sabha member Supriya Sule.

Dr Giri spoke about the pressing need to ensure speedy justice for women, while Sule talked about the importance of striking the right balance between public life and one’s duties as a wife and mother.

Well-known women’s land rights expert Bina Agrawal spoke about the need to broaden the scope of women’s issues at the local government level.

Ranjeeta Mohanti, research head of PRIA, Delhi, highlighted the pitfalls of relying exclusively on self-help groups for women’s mobilisation in the political sphere.

Anju Dube, president of the Gender Training Institute, Delhi, and Ranjana Kumari, director, Centre for Social Research, spoke about the need to address violence as the key issue in women’s empowerment because of its all-pervasive nature.

Among others who spoke were senior development consultant Meenu Vadhra, Zakia Joher of ActionAid, Jaya Srivastava of Jagori, chief executive of Friends of Women’s World Banking (FWWB) Vijaya Lakshmi Das and Sejal Dhand of Anandi.