“Women’s Equality and Culture in the Context of Identity Politics”

This paper seeks to distinguish culture as it is lived and practised in its fluid and contradictory forms from cultural identity projects that construct it in homogenous and static terms. Cultural projects hide issues of domination, othering and identities both within and amongst cultural groupings – complexities that must be revealed rather than concealed. By positing culture as hostile to women’s equality, cultural identity projects create a binary that simplifies and conceals complex issues of politics, power and representation. Therefore, distinguishing culture from cultural identity projects is at the heart of addressing the culture/women’s equality conundrum. This paper explores the distinction between the two in the context of India/South Asia by considering issues relating to gender and cultural understanding as well as power relations both internal and external to the community and the inter-relationship between the two. This provides the basis for understanding the ways in which human rights discourse contributes towards constructions of cultural identity projects and its potential to challenge these constructions so as to strengthen the politics of gender justice.