From: Jassal Smita, Centre for Women's Development Studies, New Dehli <stj89 at yahoo.com>
Daughters of the Earth: Women and Land in Uttar Pradesh by Smita Tewari Jassal Manohar Publishers, New Delhi, 2001
The book problematizes women's relationship to land from historical, anthropological and socio-legal perspectives, the underlying assumption being that legal title to own land as well as exercise control over it as a productive resource, have hitherto been denied to them. Hence, the significance of identifying those socio-historical processes which are likely to have resulted in the marginalization of women within the power and resource systems that govern agriculture.
As subjects in their own right or as contributors to agrarian production women's invisibility remains a charactersitic feature of Indian socio-historical studies, a lacuna which is sought to be redressed by locating women within the structures of caste and class in Uttar Pradesh. The institutionalization of gender inequalities and patriarchies and the role of states in reproducing them is a theme that runs through the book.
Drawing insights from colonial Awadh and participatory research conducted in Banda and Varanasi, the author argues that unless the problem of landlessness per se is addressed, gender equality in land and productive resources is likely to remian a chimera. It is precisely in this realm that pragmatic and creative solutions as well as the construction of new forms of social relationships may be envisaged.
Smita Tewari Jassal is a sociologist working as a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Women's Development Studies, New Delhi