Excerpts from article in Making Waves: An Anthology of Writings by and about Asian American Women edited by Asian Women United of California, Beacon Press, Boston, 1989.
Although numerous regional associations of immigrants from South Asia exist all across North America, these organizations are largely cultural or religious in their concerns, and tend not to address issues of sociopolitical significance. Even where such issues are beginning to be addressed, there has been a noticeable lack of attention to the particular concerns of women immigrants from the Indian subcontinent. This neglect is especially interesting given the important role that women have played in overseeing the functions of the regional associations, from running language classes to cooking for festivals. Ethnographic studies of South Asian immigrants also do not generally acknowledge the contributions and experiences of South Asian women.
However, over the past decade a number of women, recognizing the need for a separate forum for articulating their unique concerns, have formed autonomous grassroots organizations in different parts of the United States and Canada. More than a dozen of these groups have sprung up. Founded by and composed entirely of women, these groups highlight the experiences, concerns, and contributions of women from the Indian subcontinent. In many cases the concerns of these North American groups have been directly shaped by issues that have mobilized South Asian women thousands of miles away.
Who are these groups? How did they form? What areas have their members determined to most need services? And what internal problems have they encountered at various stages of development? ...
A Minority Within a Minority
Ratna Ghosh points out that some of the problems faced by South Asian women are shared with South Asian men because both groups are part of a visible minority. Some are shared with women in general due to sexist attitudes prevalent in North American society. Others are common to all Asian immigrant women, and several are unique to South Asian women...
One factor that has given rise to several of the problems experienced by South
Asian women immigrants derives from the fact that most of them entered North
America as "sponsored" relatives. As Tania Dasgupta observes:
"Being sponsored, our dependent status continues while we try to integrate into
Canadian society. Given our socioeconomic background and often the inability
to speak English, we feel a sense of isolation and alienation. Though more
and more of us are entering the paid work force today, we are concentrated
in low-paying and traditionally 'female' jobs. This is often compounded
by the lack of recognition of our previous skills and education and lack of
access to English language courses. Due to our social dependence, we are
vulnerable to oppression at work, outside, and at home. Being visible
minority women, we are also subjected to racism in every sphere of life.
We are stereotyped as dirty, passive, slow. Thus, we face a triple
oppression as women, workers, and as visible minorities."
...A 1984 survey of foreign-born women in the United States indicated that half as many South Asian women as men (48% vs. 86%) are in the paid labor force. The women tend to be concentrated in service occupations and technical or sales positions, with less than a third (as compared to 72% of men) being employed in managerial and professional occupations. This difference may reflect the fact that many middle-class women work part time or interrupt their careers because their own upgrading of skills, recertification, and preparation for qualifying exams must take second place to the similar needs of their husbands.
For South Asian women who work outside the home, there is the additional problem of a double workload, as they are still expected to take full responsibility for household and parenting demands - tasks that their middle-class counterparts in the subcontinent relegate to servants and members of the extended family. In North America, the woman alone oversees domestic and child-rearing duties simply because these do not fit the South Asian man's concept of appropriate work. Problems resulting from this situation have politicized some women.
In the social domain in particular different standards seem to apply for women and men. As Ghosh has noted, the relationship between men and women is fraught with difficulty, affected as it is by perceptions of male honor and female chastity. However liberal a stance South Asian men may take publicly about women's rights, a rather different attitude is revealed when the women from their own family (whether daughters, sisters, or wives) seek these rights. It is thus not uncommon to find young Indian women who came to the United States as children being sent to India for their undergraduate education to safeguard them from the social permissiveness of Western society.
A similar reasoning underlies the preference of first-generation immigrant parents to have their daughters married in traditional arranged marriages. This practice is reflected in the increased number of matrimonial advertisements in the past decade in immigrant newspapers such as India Abroad, most of which are placed by family members on behalf of the prospective brides. Since many of these second-generation women are permanent residents or U.S. citizens, their secure legal status makes them particularly attractive to men who regard marriage as an easy means of gaining their own permanent resident status. In many instances, this mercenary intent is revealed only after the wedding has taken place. Cases of this type are increasingly becoming a concern for women's groups.
South Asian women who enter North America through arranged marriages are particularly vulnerable targets of exploitation. Lacking other support systems, they become overly dependent on their spouses - sometimes to the point of tolerating neglect, physical abuse, or infidelity. Because the sanctity of marriage is considered very important, such marriages continue until the stress experienced by the woman leads her to take some action. Many such cases have also come to the attention of South Asian women's groups.
The Rise of South Asian Women's Organizations
The factors just mentioned have prompted the formation of new South Asian women's organizations and have determined many of the groups' services. The eleven groups surveyed for this essay are located across the continent, three in Canada and eight in the United States. [My observations are based on a detailed survey circulated in 1985 to eleven of the sixteen exclusively South Asian women's groups in North America. The groups include: Anamika (NYC), Asian Indian Women's Network (Los Angeles, CA), Association of Asian Indian Women in America (NYC), Committee on South Asian Women (formed in East Lansing, MI and now based in College Station, TX), Committee on South Asian Women (Madison, WI), Indian Women's Association (Pullman, WA), Manavi (New Jersey), Samaanta (Vancouver, BC, since disbanded), South Asia Community Center (Montreal, PQ), South Asian Women's Group (Toronto, ON), and Women from the Indian Subcontinent in Ann Arbor, MI (no longer in existence). The groups not surveyed were the Cercle de Femmes du Quebec d'origine Indienne (montreal, Quebec), the Club of Indian Women (Chicago, IL), the Indian Women's Club (Houston, TX), Diva (Toronto, ON), and the International Sikh Women's Organization (NYC). I relied on newsletters and telephone interviews.] The oldest group was founded in 1980, the newest in 1985. The groups are relatively small, ranging in size, ranging in size from just two or three to fififteen core members. All of the members are middle-class women in their mid-twenties to early forties. Marital status runs the gamut: unmarried, divorced, widowed, married. Some members are single persons. Some are very recent arrivals, here only a year; others have been here for as long as twenty years. The women tend to be highly educated, most either possessing or pursuing graduate degrees. They work as social scientists, doctors, businesswomen, computer scientists, journalists, filmmakers, lawyers, counselors, librarians, and community social workers. The groups' core members include few women who work at home or in working-class occupations.
Most of the group members emigrated from India, although a afew of them are from Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. There is little representation of Indian women who have immigrated to North America from countries outside of South Asia, such as Uganda or Trinidad. Some minority groups, such as Ismailis, do not participate in the groups, even though they form sizeable immigrant communities in certain regions of North America. Some women active in these groups are also involved in their ethnic communities. There are also several South Asian women, many of whom are students or professionals, who are members of feminist or progressive organizations but who tend not to join the South asian groups.
Factors Leading to Group Formation
Although all the groups surveyed are concerned with promoting the status of women, their orientation and priorities - which reflect the factors leading to their formation - differ. For one set of groups, events in the Indian subcontinent, such as dowry-related deaths or the impact of Islamization on women's legal rights, served as the impetus. These groups formed to work with women's groups located in South Asia. A second category includes groups which were mobilized by a desire to address specific problems experienced by South Asian women immigrants, such as domestic violence, unequal social and economic opportunities, or discrimination. The last set of organizations formed because the members wished to establish a visible identity, whether along lines of ethnicity or sexual preference.
... The services and activities offered reflect what these women feel are the priorities for their community. ..[T}he activities fall into four general categories: 1) information, referral, and networking, 2) counseling and crisis intervention, 3) direct social services, and 4) advocacy on issues affecting women's rights.
Activities may focus on issues in South Asia or North America. For instance, the Committee on South Asian Women has donated books and given small grants to autonomous women's groups in South Asia and sponsored visits by feminists from these groups. Montreal's South Asia Community Center circulated an anti-dowry petition in 1984, which was delivered to the Indian prime minister. On a more local level, the centre's members also started a drop-in center and women's cooperative. Along with teh South Asian Women's Group in Toronto, they participated in the Canadian government-sponsored workshops on visible minorities and race relations in the workplace. Similarly, the New York-based Association of Asian Indian Women in America took part in a White House briefing on Asian American women.
Many of the groups have used newsletters and other publications to disseminate information about South Asian women from their own perspective...
Internal Problems
Despite the groups' achievements, members acknowledge that they have met with some problems, ranging from the pragmatic to the ideological. One of the most obvious and most prevalent problemsis financial insecurity....
Another obstacle is limited time...
The respondent from the Asian Indian Women's Network in Los Angeles cited "lack of support from spouses" as one of the most controversial internal problems of her group...
A related danger is failure of sister groups to recognize the efforts of the women's groups..
Many yet unanswered questions confront the South Asian women's groups. Organizations that have gained some stability must decide whether to develop a more formal structure. While most of the organizations have a written statement og their aims and objectives, decision making follows informal lines and is based on consensus. Many of the policy-related questions are often left to the discretion of the groups' coordinator. There is also the question of whether to expand and, if so, in what direction. Should regional branches be established, or should the groups join existing national women's organizations? .. Should special links be forged with autonomous South Asian groups in North America, or, perhaps, in South Asia as well?..
Another problem concerns the position that the group should take on issues that are ostensibly not "women's issues" per se, but on which women are increasingly taking an active stand, such as nuclear disarmament, apartheid, or communal conflicts within South Asia. The question is twofold: where to draw the line between women's issues and other issues and whether such a line even can be drawn.
Because of the sociopolitical context of most women's issues, one danger that some groups face is that of misconstrued political intent... To what extent can the group afford to have members with strong political ideologies and still claim to function autonomously? Though some criteria may be used to insure independence, such as refusing donations from other groups, it is difficult to refuse time and other resources.
Here, more questions must be faced: what model of social change should be advocated for South Asian women settled abroad, and which solutions offered by whichbrands of feminism are appropriate or desirable for which South Asian women?.. Most groups have not yet resolved all these issues, but increasingly recognize the necessity of periodic self-appraisal. They also agree that to achieve their goals sister organizations need to improve mutual coordination and cooperation...Where this movement will ultimately lead will depend largely on the continued commitment of the women who founded these first few groups and the receptiveness of the society at large to the changes they promote. * * *