ABSTRACT
Women's issues received considerable attention in the Indian media and in political rhetoric in 1988. India is one of the few countries in the world where men outnumber women. The deprivations of poverty bear harder on women than on men. In agriculture, most women work on their family farms, yet have no independent rights over land or agricultural income. In most parts of India, women are allowed very restricted mobility and exposure to the world outside their immediate environs. The reality of Indian women's lives is, however, far more complex than the media's focus on atrocities would indicate. Women tend to enter politics at the behest of powerful male members of the family. Since the mid-1970s, activism on women's issues usually has focused on violent atrocities on women. Urban women's organized protest, national legislation, and media attention have focused on rapes, wife-battering and murder, sexual harassment, and the abortion of female fetuses.
