About Us

AIPWA: An Introduction

AIPWA is a women’s organisation that mobilises women to fight for their equality, freedom and rights.

AIPWA is a Left-oriented women’s organisation with a Marxist perspective on the women’s movement.

AIPWA held its founding conference in 1994. It was then that many women’s groups sharing a similar perspective and ideology, that had been working for several decades in various states came together to form an all India organisation.

AIPWA believes that women’s emancipation and a thorough going structural transformation are integrally linked to each other.

AIPWA struggles for a democratic society, free from oppression, discrimination or violence based on gender, caste, class, or communalism.

AIPWA consistently resists State repression and holds the State accountable for its complicity in discrimination and violence against women.

AIPWA resists regressive and patriarchal culture and upholds progressive and democratic culture and values.

AIPWA does not accept funding from either Government or from any funding agency. All our activities are funded entirely by contributions from our members and sympathisers.

AIPWA has members from amongst women from every section of Indian society. AIPWA champions and emphasizes the leading role of poor peasant women and women workers in the Indian women’s movement.

AIPWA’s Perspective on Gender Discrimination and Oppression

AIPWA embraces a Marxist perspective on gender discrimination and oppression. In our struggle for a revolutionary transformation of Indian society, AIPWA also draws on the progressive ideas and writings of Jyotiba and Savitribai Phule, Dr Ambedkar and Periyar.

Discrimination and oppression faced by women have a material basis. Economic oppression and socio-cultural oppression are interlinked and cannot be seen as ‘separate spheres.’ Therefore, we need to fight to transform the entire oppressive socio-economic structure, even as we fight against the many specific manifestations of gender discrimination, oppression and violence.

Women from all sections of Indian society face discrimination and violence. Women from working classes, oppressed castes, religious minorities, oppressed nationalities as well as women with disabilities face additional burdens of discrimination and violence.

An oppressive system that needs to ensure that private property is passed on to male heirs and that rigid caste divisions are maintained, needs to control women’s sexuality, domestic drudgery and reproduction. Capitalism, while seeking to draw women into wage labour, also seeks to minimise wages and social spending by putting the burden for care-work on women inside families. Global capitalism, in search of pliant, cheap labour, deploys pre-existing structures and ideologies of women’s subjugation in India in its bid to discipline and repress women workers. The Indian State, representing the interests of imperialism, global capitalists as well as Indian capitalists and big landlords, also reinforces patriarchal structures and ideologies and has a vested interest in maintaining women’s subjugation in households, in society and at workplaces.

Therefore, various regressive ideologies, practices, and institutions (such as dowry extraction, son preference and sex-selective abortion, ‘honour’ killings, ‘khap panchayats’, violence against women of Dalit and backward castes and so on) cannot be understood only as feudal remnants or backward traditions that belong to the past. Rather, the Indian State, modern economic forces as well as contemporary political organisations are giving a new lease of life to such ideologies and institutions.

Women’s assertion of their unqualified right to freedom – freedom to select partners of their own choice, to marry or not to marry, to bear or not to bear children, to organise for their rights at the workplace and in society, to reject domestic drudgery, to enjoy rest and leisure, to move freely in public spaces – is just as necessary and central to class struggle and to the movement to annihilate caste, as it is to the women’s movement. Equally, the women’s movement in India needs to resist capitalism, feudal remnants and Brahminism with all its might.

The women’s movement does not stop at demanding and achieving a measure of equality, dignity and democratic freedoms. Only a socialist society can provide the most conducive atmosphere to take the struggle forward towards women’s complete emancipation. Socialism marks a transition towards a communist society where class divisions and private property would no longer exist, and where women could truly be fully emancipated. This is why AIPWA adopts Communism as its guiding ideology and works closely with revolutionary political forces in the struggle to liberate society as a whole. AIPWA believes that no revolution can be complete without women’s liberation – and the struggle for women’s liberation cannot be complete without revolution.

In India, communal fascist politics of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its affiliated organisations present a major threat to women’s rights in particular as well as to the country’s democracy. Hindutva ideology and communal fascist outfits uphold Manusmriti which is essentially anti women and try to turn India into a Hindu nation, and in the process they attack the rights and dignity of women, religious minorities and oppressed castes.

AIPWA Struggles

Against all kinds of discrimination against and violence on women
For changes in sexual violence laws – to recognise and punish rape within marriage, to end the legal impunity enjoyed by police and military/paramilitary forces who perpetrate rape, to achieve surety rather than severity of punishments for perpetrators
To support survivors of violence and help them achieve justice
Against sex-selective abortions, for implementation of the PCPNDT Act, against coercive family planning methods (including forced sterilisation or injectible contraceptives) that undermine women’s reproductive rights and endanger women’s health
Against ‘honour’ crimes and killings, against diktats by khap panchayats and moral policing in the name of religion or culture, to uphold women’s unqualified right to take independent decisions about their own lives, including relationships, marriage, education, work, clothes or lifestyle
Against communal violence against Muslim and Christian women and casteist violence against Dalit women and women of other oppressed and backward castes
Against sexual harassment at the workplace, demanding committees to enquire into complaints against sexual harassment at all workplaces – be they government or private sector, unorganised sector or universities
For gender sensitisation, against discriminatory attitudes towards women inside progressive organisations and movements
Against the patriarchal habit of blaming women’s clothes or behaviour for sexual violence
For women’s equal right to property, wages, and freedoms
Against gender discrimination and gendered social roles both at home and in the workplace
For reform to ensure gender justice and equality for women in all personal laws, resisting religious fundamentalisms of all hues, while rejecting the bid to introduce a Uniform Civil Code in line with the Hindutva agenda that undermines religious and cultural diversity
Against patriarchal and sexist culture that demeans women – including both orthodox and oppressive traditions as well as commercialisation and commodification of women’s bodies and sexuality
Against obscurantist ideas and culture, and to spread a scientific and rationalist temper in society
For women’s rights to education, health, nutrition – against the Government’s withdrawal of subsidies to these areas and against privatisation. For the universal entitlement to essential food and fuel at a subsidised rate through the rationing system
To make dignified employment a fundamental right, to ensure equal pay for equal work, to end all inequality and discrimination in employment, for universal maternity benefits for all women, crèches for all women, including at all workplaces, for workplace safety
For abolition of bonded labour, manual scavenging and other forms of oppressive and demeaning casteist work
Against corporate plunder of land, forests, water and other natural resources, to protect the environment
Against neoliberal policies that have resulted in greater exploitation and insecurity of women workers
Against the social stigma and violence faced by sex workers; for an end to trafficking; for protection of sex workers from exploitation and violence; social services for sex workers and their dependants; as well as provision of secure, dignified and remunerative employment for women, so that women are not forced to opt for sex work due to poverty and deprivation
For 33% reservation for women in Parliament and Assemblies, 50% reservation for women in all autonomous councils
To resist patriarchal political culture in all its manifestations: including low representation of women in elections and elected bodies; the ‘panchayat pati’ syndrome; and sexist abuse of women in politics; and against patriarchal pronouncements by political leaders
For democratisation of the women’s commissions in States and the Centre, to ensure that they are functional, and headed and constituted by women’s movement activists rather than political appointees.
Against criminalisation of homosexuality under Section 377; for rights, dignity, and protection for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons.
For the rights and dignity of women with disabilities.
In support of women’s movements against corporate land grab, nuclear power projects, against slum eviction, for civic amenities, and other people’s movements and for women’s greater participation and leadership in trade unions, peasants’ and agricultural labour organisations
To demand an end to the brutal repression unleashed on struggling Kashmiri people and for a solution to the Kashmir question in keeping with the democratic wishes of Kashmiri people
For an abolition of Armed Forces Special Powers Act, Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, the sedition law and various other draconian laws
Against war-mongering and nuclear arms race in the sub-continent, for peaceful dialogue to resolve pending issues with neighbouring countries
In solidarity with movements against imperialist policies, wars and occupations all over the world
In solidarity with women’s struggles for equality and justice against patriarchy and violence all over the world
In solidarity with the struggles of LGBTIQA+ community for their right to equality and justice.

How To Support AIPWA

If you are a woman above the age of 16, become a member of AIPWA
Buy AIPWA literature and enroll subscribers for it
Attend protests and public meetings organized by AIPWA
Volunteer for AIPWA’s ongoing campaigns
Help us raise funds for AIPWA