Title: From The Margins: Revisiting The Concept Of `Marginalized Women’ By Shalu Nigam
Headings: 
From The Margins: Revisiting The Concept Of `Marginalized Women’
By Shalu Nigam
03 September, 2014
Countercurrents.org
Relooking at the Term `Marginalized’
Women are `Marginalized’ in the World Dominated by Men
The Social Complexities that further Accentuate Inequalities
Inequalities that are Relegating Women to Margins
State’s Perception of Marginality
Marginality as a Space for Contestation, Resistance, Negotiation and Struggle
Conclusions
Comment (1)

Content: The report observed that the promise of gender equality remained on paper and failed to reach a large number of women. It further held that though many women contributed to the freedom movement but that notion quickly evaporated and in the independent India the `women’s question’ remains ignored7. The committee further noted, “All indicators of participation, attitudes and impact come up with the same result…though women do not numerically constitute a minority, they are beginning to acquire the features of minority community by the three recognized dimensions ….economic situation…social position and political power. If this trend is allowed to continue the large masses of women in India may well emerge as the only surviving minority continuously exposed to injustice”8. And this became a reality today where a large majority of women, are being denied the basic social, economic and political rights and those who got it are struggling to maintain their acquired positions. This is mainly because `women’ as a group or category has been overlooked by the State while framing and implementing policies. Though policies and schemes for women were framed as a part of five year plans or otherwise, however, the main intent of these programmes is to grant `welfare’ to women where services are being doled out. The policy makers over the years have failed to see women as equal participants or partners to change, growth and development of the country. The authors of the ‘Towards Equality’ Report while commenting on the role of state in marginalization of women observed, “”Women” were positioned – marginally and precariously – with the confines of a narrowly conceived social welfare sector. Marginally, because women had to jostle for space and resources within this poorly endowed sector with many other groups of citizens;