Studying Women and the Women's Movement in India

This paper is an autobiographical account that draws on the author's research over close to six decades on India as a feminist anthropologist interested in agrarian south India. The feminist lens to her includes looking at all of the issues that concern social scientists, workers in the humanities and in the legal and health professions, as well as political activists, making use of methods already developed (by women as well as men) but now including a crucial women's approach. In addition, as opposed to the male approach which has been dominant until fairly recently (despite the pressure early on from B R Ambedkar), a wide range of feminist approaches has come to include, since independence, the effects of caste and class on women's lives. The paper attempts to provide an account of the author's work especially in Kerala and Tamil Nadu and her current engagements with movements for sustainable agriculture.