Seeing Like a Feminist

It's mostly a 4.5.

I bought this book because my dear friend Prachi loved it and while it's taken me a while to read it, it's really an eye opening book.

I think the main reason I wanted to pick this up is because I've only gotten to know about feminist movements after I moved to America and as such have hardly any knowledge about the movements that have come before in India, the diverse scholarship on the issues, as well as how the law works with respect to women's issues in the country and it's evolution over the decades. So, this was a very interesting and enlightening read for me where the author broadly discusses various issues that are intrinsically considered part of women's rights like the right to dignity, the right to work, the right to bodily autonomy, right to make choices in a system that is entrenched in patriarchy and heteronormativity - while also ensuring to elaborate that women's rights movements can't be separated from other movements happening in the country like those about caste discrimination or equality for LGBTQI+ people, nor is it possible to have uniform law across the board when we have multiple personal laws based on religions and no single one among them is completely on board with women's rights across every provision. The author stresses the importance of nuance in understanding these issues and intersectionality when we are trying to make changes to existing laws (even if she doesn't use that term) because the issues that we are fighting for are diverse and there is no one solution for them all.

Even though this book is about a decade old, I really appreciated the inclusivity in it and also how the author expounds on feminist scholarship from across the globe while also differentiating between the needs of the movement in western countries vs those like India which were colonized and western norms of patriarchy and family forced upon us, making us lose the various other forms of familial structures or local indigenous traditions we had. I really liked this book and will definitely want to go back to it again and again, and also try to read more about the feminist movements in India.