Gender Transformation, Power and Resistance Amon The Fish Don`t Talk About the Water

Gender relations in Sri Lanka shift over time, shaped by colonial rule, resource struggles, and women's varied resistance.

In the context of Sri Lanka this study concentrates on the taken for granted unsaid nature of relations between the sexes and the process by which they change imperceptibly over time. Gender relations were substantially transformed during British colonial rule, although these changes often went unrecognized by both the colonizer and the colonized. During this process of gender transformation the position of women deteriorated, not so much due to a direct move to curb their position, but more as an indirect result of an intensified struggle over resources between the more powerful (males), colonizer as well as colonized. This situation finds parallels in the status of women today.

The position of women as rural, unorganized workers still remains unappreciated within (inter)national development planning, which obstructs their entry into a meaningful dialogue with the more powerful, although their strategies of resistance are manifold.

The study concludes with the challenges this lack of legitimacy poses from the perspective of countering a process whereby history otherwise may well repeat itself.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledg xiii
• Abbreviations xvi
• Introduction 1
• PART I
• Chapter 1: Transformation in Women's Access 11 71
• Chapter 2: Transformation in Peasant Women's Access to Paid 74 129
• PART II
• Chapter 3 Gender Property and Power 135 181
• PART III
• Chapter 4 Women and Power today 205 276
• Chapter 5 Resistance and Organisation 284 350
• Annex 1: 359
• Annex 2 Table on Variation 372
• Annex 3 A Women's letter 373
• Glossary 375
• Bibliography 376
• Index 397

Carla Risseeuw graduated as an anthropologist from Leiden University and obtained her Ph.D. from Nijmegan University, The Netherlands. She has worked in Ireland, Kenya and Sri Lanka both as an anthropologist and film maker (main film made together with Amara Amersinghe in 1985, is entitled ‘The Wrong End of the Rope’. It deals with the life and organisation of coir workers in Sri Lanka and won several awards).