Feminism and Globalisation

Feminists have highlighted how states and nations are influenced by gender. The biases present in these systems often lead to competition and potential aggression. Additionally, nations and nationalism often involve images that stress the importance of female purity.

The organized women’s movement began in the mid-1800s, focusing on getting the right to vote for women, which was the main goal of the first wave of feminism. By the late 1800s, women’s suffrage groups were active in many Western countries. Although women gained the right to vote in developed nations in the early 1900s, starting with New Zealand in 1893, this success ironically weakened the movement by removing a common goal. It wasn't until the 1960s when the women’s liberation movement sparked a renewal in activism. Often seen as the second wave of feminism, this movement believed that improving women's status required not just political changes but also deep cultural shifts, achieved through awareness-raising and changes in family and personal life. While the intense activism of the 1960s and early 1970s faded, the women’s movement continued to grow and gained an international focus.

The effects of social movements like the women’s movement can be hard to measure because their goals are broad and they often influence culture in less obvious ways. However, it is clear that significant political and social changes have come from shifts in cultural values. Beyond the achievement of the vote, feminist activism since the 1960s has led to important changes in Western societies. Women gained more access to education, careers, and public life. Contraception and abortion became more widely available, women gained more legal and financial independence, and issues like rape and violence against women received more attention. These changes altered traditional family and social structures, especially as more women entered the workforce. Similar progress has been seen globally, with women’s empowerment becoming a priority in various international efforts, such as development initiatives focusing on human rights and gender equality.

Despite these advancements, some question the impact of the women’s movement. Some believe that progress in gender equality came more from the pressures of a capitalist society, which values individuals based on their contributions rather than their traditional roles. Additionally, the sexual revolution prompted by the women’s movement remains, in many ways, unfinished.

The growth of educational, job, and political chances for women has mostly occurred in the Global North, but significant gaps still exist. Women remain underrepresented in high-level roles across professions, business, and politics. Additionally, household and childcare tasks continue to be unfairly shared. Over time, the women's movement has also grown more divided. Traditional Western feminism, including liberal, socialist, and radical approaches, faces challenges from Black feminism, postcolonial feminism, and post-structuralist feminism. Social conservatives argue that the women's movement harms society by encouraging women to prioritize career and personal goals over family and social duties.

On 28 February 2002, serious rioting occurred in Gujarat, India. The violence started after the brutal killing of fifty-eight mainly Hindu volunteers the day before, who were burned alive on a train returning from Ayodhya. The riots continued until 3 March, followed by a break, after which more violence erupted starting on 15 March. The death toll from the riots is estimated to be between 1,000 and over 2,000, with Muslim deaths significantly outnumbering Hindu deaths at a ratio of 15 to 1. More than 500 mosques and shrines were destroyed, and large numbers of Muslims were forced to flee their homes; by mid-April, nearly 150,000 people were living in around 104 relief camps. There were signs that authorities were involved in the violence, and the events seemed well-planned, connected to groups like the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), which promotes the idea of India being for Hindus. A disturbing aspect of the riots was the widespread sexual violence against women, with at least 250 girls and women reported as raped and burned alive. Other horrific acts included women being stripped and forced to run long distances, objects being inserted into their bodies, and religious symbols carved into their skin. Women who reported these crimes to the police often found that their complaints were not taken seriously. Hindu-Muslim violence has been a constant issue in India for over seventy-five years. While often seen as spontaneous anger, the role of militant Hindu nationalist groups has led to systematic patterns of riots. The question remains: why was gender-based violence so prevalent in the Gujarat riots of 2002 and in many other communal riots in India?

The answer appears to be that a crisis of identity, linked to the desire to reassert or purify the Hindutva identity in the face of a perceived threat from Islam, has become entangled with a crisis of masculinity.

Young men, organized on paramilitary lines, have connected Hindu nationalism and masculinity and violence. This is apparent not only within Hindu nationalist literature in the image of ‘the man as warrior’, but also in the fact that the political goals of Hindu nationalism are commonly expressed in sexual terms. Stress, for instance, is often placed on the ‘threat’ posed to Hindu identity by the supposedly higher fertility rates of Muslim communities. Hostility towards Muslims therefore tends to be expressed in the desire to dehumanize Muslim women, who are then viewed, and treated, primarily as sexual objects. Hindu nationalists thus rape and otherwise attack minority women to destroy not only their bodies but also the integrity and identity of Muslim society, viewed as the ‘enemy other’ (Chenoy 2002). In that sense, the sexual violence against Muslim women that marked the 2002 Gujarat riots was very much a public act. Attacking Muslim women sexually served two purposes: it brutalized Muslim women and denigrated Muslim men for failing to protect their women. It was therefore an attempt to terrorize Muslims and drive them out of ‘Hindu India’ by violating their communal honour