Gandhi dismisses women’s lib.

Press, 28 March 1980, Page 6

Gandhi dismisses women’s lib.

NZPA New Delhi The Indian Prime Minister (Mrs Indira Gandhi), one of the world’s most powerful women has criticised the women’s liberation movement in Western countries as “merely an exchange of one kind of bondage to another.” This is because “in the West, women’s emanicipation, or so-called freedom, is often equated with imitation of men,” Mrs Gandhi said at the inauguration of the new All-India Women’s Centre. ‘To be liberated, woman must feel free to be herself, not in rivalry to man but in the context of her own capacity,” Mrs Gandhi said. While criticizing the West? em approach to liberation for women, Mrs Gandhi spoke out strongly for sexual equality declaring, “I have often

said thatl am not a femin? ist, yet in my concern for the underprivileged, how can' I ignore women who, since the beginning of history, have been dominated over and discriminated against in social customs and laws. “How insidious and all-per-vasive is this attitude of male superiority is revealed in the vocabulary of languages the world over. And this is unquestioningly accepted and acquiesced in by all but a minuscule minority of men and also women,” she said.

Mrs Gandhi spoke in the presence of the Aga Khan and his wife, the Begum Aga Khan, who contributed $125,000 to the construction of the new eight-storey con? ference center, gymnasium, and hostel for working women.