THIS paper is not the place for a comprehensive discussion of the issues we raise and take up. But we can indicate that some of the major tasks for AIPWA to take up in the present phase are as follows:

  • Mobilising working women against neo-liberal policies that are increasingly giving poverty a feminine face; costing women their jobs; casualising and contractualising women’s work; resulting in corporate land grab that costs women their means of survival; and creating highly exploitative conditions of work for women (such as in SEZs);

  • Exposing and challenging the anti-woman character of the communal fascist agenda of the Sangh Parivar – an agenda which promotes the subordination of women in the name of ‘community honour’ and ‘tradition’, and also makes women of the minority community the target of organised sexual violence during communal pogroms;

  • Taking up the issue of political representation for women, in particular, the demand that the Bill for 33% Reservation for Women in Assemblies and Parliament be put to vote in Parliament; (in its original form, rejecting all moves to dilute the Bill, passing the buck either to political parties or to state assemblies, rejecting all misogynistic arguments against the Bill in the name of ‘social justice’);

  • Demanding that employment for women and legally mandated facilities like creches and equal wages be guaranteed under the NREGA;

  • Demanding remuneration and job benefits on par with other Government employees for ASHA, anganwadi and other workers in sectors like health; campaign against the Governments’ habit of basing all social welfare schemes on the unpaid labour of women;

  • Demanding implementation of pro-women laws relating to prevention of dowry, domestic violence, sexual harassment at the workplace, prevention of sati etc...; resisting moves to dilute these laws and demanding adequate budgetary allocation to ensure proper implementation of these laws (such as for setting up of state-run shelters for women seeking refuge from domestic violence);

  • Campaign against all kinds of obscurantist practices such as the branding of women as ‘witches’; sati; child marriage; etc; against ‘honour’ killings of women who marry against wishes of the family/community; against all kinds of anti-woman personal laws of all religions; against all obscurantist anti-woman diktats by religious leaders;

  • Resistance to state repression of women activists, custodial rapes and sexual abuse;

  • Campaign to end discrimination against women in all spheres: intimidation and violence targeting women political activists and elected panchayat representatives; discriminatory rules relating to weight/appearance for air hostesses; discriminatory behaviour and treatment meted out to women in the Army, etc...

  • Protest against price rise; demanding universal PDS coverage; cheap essential commodities for the poor; against anomalies in the system of BPL cards and rations; highlighting the fact that hunger hits women first and worst;

  • Finally, the task of mobilising women to play an even more assertive, organised and effective role in all sorts of economic, political and social struggles and movements.