Rai S (2001) ‘Gender and Globalisation and Women’s Activism: Critical Engagements’  Law, Social Justice & Global Development Journal (LGD), 1. <http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/global/issue/2001-1/rai.html>

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ABSTRACT

There is a growing literature on global restructuring and the growing pressures and inequalities across different social and spatial boundaries. This increase in inequalities has also been accompanied by the decline of  class-based movements which have themselves suffered from a failure to recognise social exclusion based on issues other than  class. In this paper I argue that if the feminist challenge is not to be limited, there needs to be a focus on the importance of redistributive policies that are rooted in the structural inequalities of capitalist production and exchange. In this situation alliances between women’s and other social groups and solidarity among different emancipatory social movements, which expand the links between gender activism and other forms of transformative politics become both more necessary and more possible. To reach this conclusion I examine an example of an initiative by the Indian government in the province of Rajasthan, the Women’s Development Programme.

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