Women’s Leadership in India

In my last column I called attention to the solutionary/revolutionary role that women play when one society is coming to an end and a new one is emerging because women’s work of raising and caring for home and family is ongoing. It never stops and it doesn’t count the hours.

This is what is happening in India today, according to an article by Frances Moore Lappe who spoke with members of the Deccan Development Society network of 5,000 women farmers in 70 Indian villages who are ending hunger by growing organic, diverse food crops, at the same time creating new lives of courage, dignity, and inclusion.

When Lappe asked them what it was like 20 years ago, they replied:

"We were so poor that in the rainy season our hut floors would turn to mud and we had to pile up branches to sleep on. We were always hungry. We depended on government ration cards. Sometimes the big landowner would pay us for a job with some grains and that would be the only food for our children. We were so poor we had only one sari—not even a second one to change into when we bathe..."