Page:Sharad Joshi - Leading Farmers to the Centre Stage.pdf/242

 experiences to share. This was similar to what Joshi had observed during his visits to Punjab and Haryana where green revolution had given more money in farmers’ hands but reduced the freedom of the women in their households. Earlier, those women used to work in the fields and that gave them an opportunity to step out. Now that work was being done by the farm labourers coming from Bihar and Orissa. Earlier, women used to carry a basket of vegetables on their head to sell in the local market. Now the farmer started carrying it to the Market himself on his tractor. Women got trapped inside the house and were left with the only job of baking rotis for menfolk. Reduction in the status of farming women was the flipside of their prosperity. After several such informal meetings with the women it was decided to have the first Women Convention of SS at Chandwad in Nashik district on 9 and 10 November 1986. Joshi always remained proud of that Convention. He wrote a 54-page book outlining his thinking about the women’s issues. Titled “Striyancha Prashn : Chandwadchi Shidori” that landmark publication was one of the best examples of how a complex issue could be discussed in simple language and with historical perspective. Joshi was aware of the tragic situation in which village women lived. But he tried to go to the roots of why this happened. He was not convinced of the Marxist interpretation which attributed subjugated status of women to the concept of private property. In search of an alternative explanation he came out with some fresh thinking. The book was circulated amongst those organizing the Chandwad Convention. The gist of what Joshi wrote can be roughly summarized as below: The biological differences between the male and the female are not such as to make subordination of women inevitable. Nor Women Power - New Expression

Q

221