Organising women for empowerment: a study of an experiment in Goa

Abstract

Social movements require organised activity for collective action to meet their well-defined objectives and goals. The same is true for the women’s movement. Within the broad conceptual framework of the ‘women’s movement’ in India, there are organisations with varying perspectives and ideologies, divergent understandings of patriarchal oppression and its outcomes and these organisations, therefore, also adopt varying strategies to combat injustice and inequality. The organisation structures too range from very formal bureaucratic ones to those that hold hierarchy as a symbol of patriarchy, domination and oppression and therefore functions using strategies that are contrary to formal structure. These are chiefly those that are based on feminist ideology and that have aligned with democratic principles of organisation. The widely held view in both Sociology of Organisations and Organisation Theory is that organisations have to be structured around some organisation principles and ‘hierarchy’ is treated as axiomatic. Most organisation structures have largely been bureaucratic because formal organizational structures that function with co-ordinated and controlled activity are held as essential ingredients for efficiency and efficacy. This might hold true for profit-oriented organisations where there is a clear, quantifiable index by which productivity and efficiency can be measured. However, women’s experiences of gender discrimination, gender stereotyping and rigid institutional structures which are built on the foundation of patriarchy, have resulted in the alignment of feminist thinking with democratic principles and collective organisation and participatory decision-making. These organisations often have diffused and non-quantifiable goals. This study investigates whether it is in fact possible to successfully organise without a hierarchy and whether hierarchy should be the definitional criterion for movement organisations as well. Collective action has been adopted by labour movements in lobbying for their interests against the ruling class. It was ‘collective action’ that brought forth two moral political ideologies, namely, democracy and communism. While a vast body of literature exists on collective action of the left, very little exists on collective organising of women. Very little information is available on how organisational goals can be achieved through more egalitarian processes, where control and accountability are the duties of every individual in that organisation and not just the powers vested in the hands of a few.