HERE is a collection of three papers presented and discussed in the CPI(ML)’s first-ever all-India party education camp for women party cadres, held at Bardhaman (West Bengal) on 26-27 July. Around 60 leading women activists from Bihar, Jharkhand, UP, West Bengal, Assam, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Delhi – including women members of the Central Committee and all State Committees –  participated in the camp organised by the party’s women’s department.

The education camp was held in a context of growing challenges and opportunities for the women’s movement in India. A large number of women are fast breaking barriers and entering the workforce and the vortex of broader public life, but the ideological and cultural climate still remains considerably hostile to them, not to talk about the physical torture, economic discrimination and social hurdles that they have to encounter. While women are fighting against all this everywhere, the ruling class too is making various accommodations, albeit reluctantly, to cope with the situation. The Communist Party must stride ahead of all these changes in order to mobilise the new forces of women workers as a formidable agent of change in their own lives and in society. But patriarchal hurdles existing in society tend to be reproduced within the party, and must be vigilantly fought out here too.

As CPI(ML) General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya observed in his inaugural speech, the topics chosen for the education camp – relating to the communist party’s approach to issues of gender and the women’s movement – were certainly not meant for women comrades alone. Rather, there is probably an even more urgent need to educate male comrades on all aspects of this question. He spoke of the party’s consistent efforts to correct the gender imbalance in membership and leadership and called upon women activists to boldly lead this crucial struggle against patriarchal attitudes – within society and also within the party – in their own right as party leaders.

All three papers generated very animated discussions and debates and comrades went back to their respective states with an urge to organise similar camps there.