The feminist movement in Mumbai, India: how women in India organize against gender violence

The nature and forms of violence against women arise from patriarchy- broadly defined as a system of male dominance, legitimated within the family and society through superior rights, privileges, authority and power. The degree to which this happens and the forms in which such power is exercised vary between cultures and societies. The process of subordination is generally achieved by devaluing women's contribution, while at the same time extracting significant contribution from them. The accounts of violence against women in the following thesis illustrate poignantly the conjunction of these processes. They also bring out the cultural specificity of some types of violence. Some avenues available to the victims of violence are through the courts of justice which are not immune to the prejudices of the social order and reflect the male bias of the system. A qualitative research design was used and data collected by doing a feminist ethnography which included interviews, participant observation and content analysis in Mumbai, India. What emerged from the data analysis was that in order to have an understanding of feminism as a validation of women's diverse realities, we must have an understanding of empowerment and how it can enhance our ability to control our own lives. Empowerment is a political activity that can range from individual acts of political resistance to mass political mobilization and is aimed at changing the nature and distribution of power in a society.