Ariane Loening's Inquiry is detailed in her book published by the Bruges Group. It is available on Amazon
In this article Ariane describes the background to her work.
I started to investigate the issue of rural Bengali women's disadvantage after living in West Bengal for several years, having learnt Bengali and qualified and practised in rural areas as a homeopath. I had originally travelled to India to learn about the reasons for poverty, and malnutrition, in particular. When I was a teenager, charities and the UN were focussed much more on poverty and economic growth than they are nowadays with the 21st century's main issue being the enforced reduction of fossil fuel use. Who knows, perhaps the focus now has changed from trying to discover the truth to obeying what (often unelected authorities tell us to do) and from understanding the causes of poverty to depriving ordinary people of their livelihood.
Any sociological investigation worth its salt, must be done at the grassroots-level accompanying this with the study of papers and books, of course. As I knew several small organisations in rural areas whose staff could introduce me to families, I was able to spend time observing, asking questions, having discussions with family members and taking notes. In the late 1980s, I lacked the Internet, a computer and had no equipment to record or film anything.
I was aware of efforts by wealthy, middle, urban and rural working class women's organisations to improve the literacy, health and incomes of women but also knew that very few of the really poor were able to benefit from such Central and State Government projects, and the question was Why could women not take advantage of opportunities that were deliberately being created for them?
The answer, for me anyway, boiled down to poor women's lack of time. What were they doing which meant they could not take advantage of educational and income-generating programmes provided freely by the authorities? My inquiry confirmed this answer and I was also able to observe the cultural attitudes which perpetuated the circumstances.
Traditional attitudes and customs affected other aspects of women's lives, like their health, marriage, reproductive practices (during pregnancy and childbirth), family status as they aged, literacy, property and opportunities for self-fulfilment. Apart from the knowledge gained from living and working with rural Bengalis, I also profited from reading papers by academics and 'Manushi', the popular women's magazine with articles by women about their lives in India, still being published in Delhi. Yet, I could not see my own perspective and ideas for solutions anywhere in these valuable writings even though housework and child-care time-use studies had been done and the UN was aware of the extreme undervaluation of women's work. So, feeling somewhat subversive, I ploughed on with my discussions with family members and introduced my ideas into my small book (originally published in Bengali).
Apart from the time girls and women spent on valuable yet unrecognised work, these young and older people were subjected to demeaning, often cruel and misogynistic behaviour by others in their family and community, simply because they were female. This needed interrogating and, with the help of an Irish author, Mary O'Brien who introduced me to the term 'reproductive consciousness' I considered what were important aspects of the reproductive lives of men and women, in order to understand how biology could affect psychology, with reference to relevant cultures where I did the study.
Controversial though they may be for many readers, I hope that these ideas will, at the very least, shine a sliver of light on the reasons for the unnecessary disadvantages suffered by girls and women and also, if we are lucky, aid the recovery of all of us, not just in rural West Bengal but all over planet Earth.
BUY THE BOOK