From theory to practice : reflections on legal literacy work with women in India

This paper, part of a book on legal literacy as a tool for women's empowerment, considers the methodological implications of gender-based legal literacy. From a theoretical base which considers feminism and the liberal discourse of rights as well as the theory and practice of legal literacy, lessons are drawn from 3 experiences in legal literacy programming. The first experience, which involved a development organization working with women in an urban slum in a northern industrial city in India, highlighted the lack of critical consciousness among the women about the custom of giving a dowry and the inability of the organization, which focused on economic development, to stimulate it. The second case study describes a workshop at an information and knowledge fair organized for village women who were participating in a government program of education for women's equality in Karnataka. Despite limitations caused by the unwieldy size of the group (300-400 women) and the short time span (4 hours) of the workshops, the lawyers focused on stimulating critical consciousness among the women by addressing the specific concerns of a different community of women each day (the davadasi, adivasi, and scheduled castes). After an hour of providing basic information, the workshop broke into small groups for discussions. The third experience was with a 10-day workshop on women and health and women and the law conducted for women who had already developed an awareness of gender disparities. The women's analysis of the issues demonstrated their capacity to articulate their frustrations with the inequities they recognized in their lives and discovered in the law as well as alternatives and solutions. It is concluded from these experiences that legal literacy will only be effective to the extent that it is compatible with broader approaches to education and development, that legal literacy training requires a flexible approach, and that legal information must be placed in context in order for its full potential and its limits to be understood