Abstract 2011 Devika Sethi

Devika Sethi, Jawaharlal Nehru University/University of Göttingen

Email: devikasethi@hotmail.com

'Girl clerks', 'Lady officers' and 'Officers' wives': Women's employment in the Indian state

This paper looks at the issue of women’s employment with the colonial and early post colonial Indian state at different moments in time, and at different levels in the hierarchy. The first part of the paper focuses on the 1920s, when the civil branches of the Government of India not only advocated that women be employed as clerks, but also paid them higher wages than they did male clerks. Why they did so, and how and why they rationalized this are the questions raised here. The second part examines the state’s attitude to the question of employing married women at two levels in the hierarchy: as clerks in the 1920s, and as officers in the 1950s. In the context of the latter, it examines the ‘marriage bar’ rule, that applied --  at the government’s discretion --  to female officers of the Indian Administrative Service till as late as 1972. The third and last part focuses attention on the wives of Indian officers posted abroad in the 1950s, who were forbidden from taking up ‘gainful employment’. As the result of Prime Minister Nehru’s personal intervention in the matter, the rule was amended partially, but in a way that reinforced bureaucratic hierarchy.

This paper focuses attention on moments where gender issues intersect issues of bureaucratic hierarchy. Often, the state is seen as merely drawing on existing patterns of gender inequality, but here we see it as an agent that in fact introduces gender inequality, and delineate the variety of ways in which it has done so in a historical context. It is argued that while in the late colonial period women were only allowed to participate in the activity of government at the lower rungs, in the post colonial period – in keeping with the self image of the Indian state as a liberal one – they were allowed access to the higher rungs of the bureaucracy. When they began climbing these rungs in the 1950s, the state used the ‘marriage bar’ as a means of exerting its power. Even though, as the testimony of female officers indicates, this bar was applied infrequently and selectively, its very existence mediated the relationship of the state with its female employees in a decisive way.

Abstract 2011 Julia Grünenfelder

Julia Grünenfelder, University of Zurich

Email: julia.gruenenfelder@geo.uzh.ch

The discursive constitution of the 'Pakistani Working Woman'

This paper provides a historical examination of ‘women and work’ in Pakistan. It does this by reviewing how state projects in Pakistan have affected gender relations and by discussing implications on women’s opportunities to work. Based on a critical re-reading of secondary sources such as literature on the political history of Pakistan and feminist writings, the paper argues that ‘Pakistani Women’ are constituted at intersections of discourses on gender, nation, religion and modernisation. It concludes that intersections are used variably to de/legitimise women’s engagement in working activities.

Gender norms have always played a crucial role in Pakistan, yet studies on women and work in Muslim contexts stress that they have had supportive as well as restrictive consequences for women’s work activities (Syed, 2010; Khan, 2007:8-9; Mirza, 2002; Cook, 2001; Weiss, 1984; Papanek, 1971). Nowadays, even though more and more women take up paid work, discourses of the ‘modest and decent Islamic woman’ are present in much of the everyday talk in Pakistan, restricting women’s daily practices including formal employment (Syed, 2010; Ellick, 2010; GoP, 2009; SDPC, 2009; Khan, 2007; Mirza, 2001; Grünenfelder, forthcoming/unpublished). Yet, different times have opened up different opportunities to work for different groups of women. Since women play important symbolic roles in societies (Rouse, 2004; Yuval-Davis, 1997, Weiss, 1994:412; Jalal, 1991; Mernissi, 1987), a state’s interest in promoting a certain image of women that serves its purposes can be very powerful in defining what kind of work is possible for Pakistani women.

Post-structural feminist and postcolonial scholars have long called for research that tries to understand how monolithic and homogenising categories such as the category ‘Woman’ are discursively constituted in specific contexts. They encourage attempts that analyse how various discourses intersect to constitute gendered subjectivities and what material consequences these constructions entail (Mohanty, 1988; Spivak, 1985). For the context of Pakistan, Nancy Cook has nicely shown how intersecting discourses of gender, nation and Islam have strengthened a disciplinary regime with effects on Pakistani women (Cook, 2001). She does this by illustrating how various idealised ‘Pakistani Women’ – such as the ‘women as biological reproducers of the state’ and the ‘women as transmitters of national culture’ – have been discursively constituted through state discourses between 1947 and the late 1990s. What she does not discuss in her analysis are the effects of the different constitutions on women’s opportunities to work. However, Cook’s work suggests that we can gain a better understand of the working opportunities of the ‘Pakistani Woman’ through an analysis of state projects.

With this paper, I aim at showing how (different groups of) Pakistani women have had different opportunities to work at specific historical conjunctures from the 1940s to the late 2000s. I do so by outlining how idealised ‘Pakistani Women’ have been discursively constituted and by discussing the implications of these constitutions on women’s working opportunities. The findings will contribute to the disruption of the monolithic category of the ‘Pakistani woman’ and show that this category is in a process of constant production. The review will provide a ground for further studies that intend to analyse how women in Pakistan and other Muslim countries individually negotiate the category ‘woman’ in their everyday practices.