Violence Against Women: New Movements and New Theories in India

by Gail Omvedt

One of the most important issues that the Indian women's movement has taken up has been that of violence against women. From the very early campaigns around rape and dowry deaths, to the continuing struggle against all forms of domestic violence and, increasingly, political rape, the issue of violence has remained in the forefront, both for the movement and for Indian women in general. By making an assessment of the theories which attempt to explain the origins of violence, this booklet prepares the ground for a deeper understanding of a phenomenon which has systematically kept women in fear and subordination for centuries. In addition to a discussion of the radical feminist and traditional Marxist analyses of violence, the author puts forward three recent theories which see a nexus between economic exploitation and patriarchy; caste, patriarchy and violence; and ecological crises, maldevelopment and violence.

42 pages, Hardcover

Published June 30, 1995

About the author

Dr. Gail Omvedt is an American-born Indian scholar, sociologist and human rights activist. Omvedt has been involved in Dalit and anti-caste movements, environmental, farmers' and women's movements.

She was born in Minneapolis, and studied at Carleton College, and at UC Berkeley where she earned her PhD in sociology in 1973. She has been an Indian citizen since 1983.

In recent years she has been working as a consulting sociologist on gender, environment and rural development, for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Oxfam Novib (NOVIB) and other institutions.

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