Question

Discuss briefly the efforts made by various Women’s Movements in India, to root out the social evils of :
(i) Dowry.
(ii) Domestic violence in the 1970s and 1980’s.

Answer 1

(i) The Progressive organisation of Women in Hyderabad organized new and fresh protests against dowry. In the late 1970s, Delhi became the focus of the movement against dowry and the violence inflicted on women in the marital home. Groups which took up the campaign included ‘Shree Sangharsh’ and ‘Mahila Dakshita Samiti’. Later, a joint front called the ‘Dahej Virodhi Chetna Mandal’ (organization for creating consciousness against dowry) was formed under whose umbrella a large number of organizations worked. The anti-dowry campaign attempted to bring social pressure to bear on offenders so that they would be isolated in the community in which they lived. Experience in the campaign revealed the need for counseling, legal aid and’ advice to women.
It was in response to this that legal aid and counseling centers were set up in different parts of the country. Women’s organizations also succeeded in getting the dowry law changed,

(ii) The battered women’s movement, as it was called, exposed the failures of the law, medicine and society at large in responding to the 2-4 million women who were beaten in their homes annually. A massive outpouring of feminist activism and service provision for battered women in the mid-1970s quickly caught the attention of Government officials, law enforcement, social workers and other non- explicitly feminist professionals. By the end of the decade, many groups took on the work of the battered women’s movement.