9 highlights
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A history of migration of males of Bihar in search of better livelihood has resulted in an environment for women where they are not under the constant and direct control of their male counterparts and it provides for a space where they assert themselves more freely in both private and public space.
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The prevailing perception about Bihari women in a sub-urban or rural setting reduces the different dimensions of their persona into fossilised gender identities like ‘left-behind women’.
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However, a closer look at the society of Bihar would suggest that the role of the women of Bihar is far more dynamic and powerful than a mere passive victim of patriarchal hegemony.
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In any relationship involving power dynamics, the power is always negotiated and re-negotiated by people who are at the receiving end of oppression. In the case of Bihar, what we are witnessing is that the women are constantly re-negotiating the power in their own ways.
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In other words, there is a form of resistance that happens at a public front and there is resistance that lies in private sphere, in everyday actions.
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In the folksongs (women’s genres), women are shown to demand sexual autonomy and keep unpacking the behaviour of men and their nature, and in songs on migration such as ‘Jhoomar’ and ‘Jatsaaris’, they are shown to celebrate the life cycle occasions and accepting male migration as the part and parcel of their life. This is in contrast to the general perception that they are always in a lamenting and pleading mode when the males are away from them.
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Similarly, the Mithila painting, being mastered almost exclusively by the women, has always represented the women in a powerful fashion and celebrates the femininity of women. Shalinee Kumari’s Women can do everything and Rani Jha’s Breaking through the Curtains are prominent examples wherein the women are shown to assert their subjectivity and autonomy.
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Such neo-liberal agenda of these NGOs and their constant rhetoric of ‘empowerment’ suggests that the women themselves, and not the patriarchal fetters, exploitative mode of production and the government, are responsible for their oppression. In other words, the burden is shifted on the women for their own development instead of questioning the fundamental societal structures which inhibit them from actualising themselves.
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In the narration of the empowerment of women of Bihar, the NGOs and the development drives of the government are largely credited for their empowerment in the popular narrative. In this context, it is important to critique the role of NGOs and the ‘empowerment’ it seeks to bring about. The modus operandi of the NGOs has largely been to make the women small entrepreneurs by convincing them to make the products which are more palatable to the needs of the market