1985, causing controversy that continued with the
subsequent Muslim Women’s Bill, an effort to shore
up personal law. Many women’s organizations,
such as the Joint Women’s Programme, a national
association with members of various religious
backgrounds, opposed the Muslim Women’s Bill.
Muslim women were divided on the issue (Engineer
1987, 237–42). The increasing political power of
Hindu nationalists and their support for a uniform
civil code continues to alarm many Muslim politi-
cians. Many analysts feel that political considera-
tions rather than equity concerns have steered
much policy regarding minority women (Hasan
1999, 123).
The actual impact of constitutional and legal
provisions for women on their status was scruti-
nized most thoroughly by the Committee on the
Status of Women in India in their 1975 report,
which documented continuing gender imbalances
in terms of sex ratios, work participation, literacy,
and election to political office (India 1975). The
women’s movement in India continues to press for
change in all of these areas, yet faces internal divi-
sions along caste, class, regional, and religious lines.
Amendments to the constitution in 1992 re-
served one third of seats for women in the pancha-
yat system of local councils. Legislative attempts to
amend the constitution and reserve one third of
seats for women in the parliament have failed, in
part because of controversial demands for sub-
reservations for Muslim and lower caste women
(Jenkins 2003). In addition to such challenges to
women’s unity, feminist legal scholars have drawn
attention to the way legal discourses, despite for-
mal legal equality, continue to reinforce ideologies
of female duty and dependence (Niranjana 2000,
273).
In South Asian polities, group-based policies,
particularly religious personal laws, have resulted
in gender inequities even when constitutions purport
to assure gender equality. Likewise, many initia-
tives to advance women in South Asian countries,
such as reserved legislative seats, are group-based,
“women’s” rather than universal policies. Rights
activists have often struggled with balancing their
interests as women and as Muslims in political and
constitutional contexts that rarely reflect the
nuances of overlapping identities and interests.Bibliography
S. S. Ali, Law, Islam and the women’s movement in
Pakistan, in S. M. Rai (ed.), International perspectives
on gender and democratization, New York 2000,
41–63.
S. Akhtar, The status of widows in Bangladesh, in
P. Grimshaw, K. Holmes, and M. Lake (eds.), Women’s84 constitutions
rights and human rights. International historical per-
spectives, Basingstoke, Hampshire 2001, 220–28.
Asian Development Bank, Women in Bangladesh, Manila
2001.
Commonwealth Secretariat, Women in politics. Voices
from the Commonwealth, London 1999.
E. Cotran and M. Yamani, The rule of law in the Middle
East and the Islamic world, London 2000.
A. A. Engineer (ed.), The Shah Bano controversy, Hyde-
rabad 1987.
J. L. Esposito with N. J. DeLong-Bas, Women in Muslim
family law, Syracuse, N.Y. 2001^2.
Z. Hasan, Muslim women and the debate on legal
reforms, in B. Ray and A. Basu (eds.), From independ-
ence towards freedom. Indian women since 1947,
Oxford 1999.
India. Committee on the Status of Women in India,
Towards equality. Report of the committee on the sta-
tus of women in India, New Delhi 1975.
L. D. Jenkins, Women’s reservations and representation,
in L. D. Jenkins, Identity and identification in India.
Defining the disadvantaged, London 2003, 156–74.
R. Kapur and B. Cossman, Subversive sites. Feminist
engagements with law in India, New Delhi 1996.
S. Khan, Good governance and judiciary. Equal rights of
women, in H. A. Hye (ed.), Governance. South Asian
perspectives, Karachi 2001, 137–44.
G. Larson (ed.), Religion and personal law in contempo-
rary India. A call to judgment, Bloomington, Ind. 2001.
S. Niranjana, On the women’s movement in India, in P. R.
de Souza (ed.), Contemporary India. Transitions, New
Delhi 2000, 264–81.
B. N. Ramusack and S. Sievers, Women in Asia. Restoring
women to history, Bloomington, Ind. 1999.
A. M. Weiss, The consequences of state policies for
women in Pakistan, in M. Weiner and A. Banuazizi
(eds.), The politics of social transformation in
Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan, Syracuse, N.Y. 1994,
412–44.Laura Dudley JenkinsSub-Saharan AfricaThe many countries that make up Sub-Saharan
Africa lodge numerous ethnic groups within their
borders. Most of these groups still hold to their
customary laws, and are Muslims, Christians, or
followers of African traditional religions. Gender
refers to ways in which masculinity and femininity
are constructed, lived, reconstructed, and negoti-
ated by people living in the context of different
communities (van Santen and Willemse forthcom-
ing). There may be apparent conflicts between the
constitutional guarantees of gender equality and
the traditional status of women in many cultures in
Africa, including the various Muslim communities,
for example, over forced or child marriages (Ibha-
woh 1999, 11). Cultural traditions may contain
norms, institutions, and constitutional provisions
that support gender equality – fairness of treatment
by gender – as well as norms and institutions that
are antithetical in relation to globally accepted rela-