Sustaining Power: Women's struggles against contemporary backlash in South Asia

Women in South Asia have struggled for many decades to improve their lives within their families, in their communities, for securing their livelihoods, and in getting their voices heard as citizens by the state, with women's movements being critical in advancing their rights. However, contemporary social, economic and political changes have created new and multiple forms of backlash and contestations. How do women defend their rights, and secure their gains against these regressive forces and backlash? This question leads our research on the strategies and mechanisms that women use to retain power and sustain gains in women's rights. This research is particularly interested in how different groups of women understanding power and struggle, and how these change over time. We aim to assess what works to defend women's rights, and explain why some struggles are more successful than others in sustaining gains. We think that success of women's struggles depends on a) the types of strategies they use to counter different types of backlash; b) the ways in which struggles include voices and perspectives of different groups of women; and c) the ways in which struggles connect to other movements and groups across local, regional and national levels. The central research question therefore is: When, how, and why do women's power struggles succeed in retaining power and sustaining their gains against backlash?

South Asia provides a valuable opportunity to investigate women's struggles. The region has witnessed rapid and large changes over the last decade, including urbanization, rising employment precarity, new electoral laws and regime changes, shifts in social norms, and the spread of digital technology. We aim to examine how these changes create new and multiple forms of backlash; and how women's struggles for power are variously challenged, opened up or are closed down by these changes. We are interested in unraveling the similarities and differences in processes and strategies used by different women's movements to retain power in the face of backlash; and in women's own experiences and interpretations of their struggles as these evolve and adapt over time.

We will select 16 cases of women's struggles in four countries that represent the largest populations of South Asia: Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan. Within each country, we will select on-going and contentious cases of struggle in one of four arenas within which gains in women's rights are being sought: family, community, market and the state. This research will use a variety of methods including:
a) identifying and analyzing the types of backlash created by processes of contemporary change;
b) mapping critical players and what shapes their motivations for action;
c) tracing the struggles, nature and trajectory of each movement to counter backlash - through oral history methods, reflective and participatory techniques, qualitative interviews and archival research;
d) undertaking comparative analysis to compare how different movements may have triggered, galvanized or been strengthened by power struggles across different arenas; and
e) identifying and systematizing which combinations of mechanisms and strategies work to defend women's rights in South Asia and beyond.

This is a collaborative research project that draws together a multi-disciplinary research team with deep in-country and conceptual expertise on women's rights and contemporary power struggles in South Asia. This project includes strong capacity building initiatives and opportunities for learning through reflective processes with women's movements and research partners. This research is ambitious in its scope and we hope that our findings that will be grounded in real life experiences of women, will be relevant and useful for feminist scholars, activists and policy actors to set their future course of action to defend women's rights across the world.

This project seeks to investigate cases of women's struggles in South Asia, to understand when, how and why women's struggles are able to sustain gains in light of increasingly vigorous backlash. We aim to provide evidence and opportunities for shared learning through our activities and events, in order to co-construct knowledge of the strategies and mechanisms that work to push women's struggles beyond singular fights to embed gains across social, political and economic institutions. This study acknowledges that backlash is both explicit and indirect, and that co-option and appropriation of women's agendas through downplaying and marginalising their narratives and experiences is prevalent in contemporary narratives. Our research seeks to counter this politics of knowledge by according primacy to women's own understandings of power and struggle, in addition to recognising intersectional differences.

We engage in a responsive process to identify user groups and opportunities through a continuous Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning framework that will be developed during the initial stages of the research. Our theory of change emphasizes two distinct pathways to impact: 1) change in conceptual framing of women's power struggles and their outcomes and 2) build capacity of women's groups and networks through shared understanding of struggles and gains.

We will work with diverse groups active in the struggle for women's rights in South Asia including feminist groups, social movements, political leaders, government officials, trade unions, (I)NGOs, feminist and academic networks and in-country researchers. We will engage with these groups throughout the research project in co-constructing knowledge, via the following activities: a) inception workshops and reflective movement diaries to identify spaces for change; b) identify and work with "champions" of women's rights who can influence public debate in the media and in policy circles; c) in-country and regional knowledge sharing workshops to share analysis and resources about opportunities, strategies and how to deal with blockers; d) develop accessible learning materials and quality academic outputs which will be shared and disseminated via Interactions for Gender Justice platform and across IDS' and research partner's communication channels and networks; e) media outreach through newspaper opinion pieces, animated film and telefilms in each country to access wider, non-academic audiences; and f) methodology training, on-site guidance, co-authorship opportunities, and reflective workshops to enable two-way learning process between researchers and activists.

We have substantial experience and expertise in working collaboratively with women's groups and feminists in South Asia. Together with strong capacity building initiatives and opportunities for learning through reflective practices, this research will deliver contextualized and relevant knowledge for change that is co-constructed with women's struggles and research partners. This research recognizes that change processes are not linear. Women's struggles for power are deeply political and involve perennial contention against backlash. This project links up different struggles and networks that can better withstand such backlash, strengthened both by new evidence, broader knowledge, and reinforced networks. We will use our prior collaborations to reach out to both in-country and global networks to ensure that our research findings are disseminated.

Our work will strengthen grassroots struggles by creating learning opportunities and developing knowledge and shared resources to understand conceptualisation of power gains - an understanding that women's struggles can take to higher level debates and institutions to shift discourses around norms, laws and policy. Our in-country reference groups will provide continued guidance and support to ensure access to relevant networks, and champion uptake of our findings.