ABSTRACT
The ability of the women's movement to bridge women's distinct identities of class, ethnicity, and urban-rural locations has so far been analyzed in terms of the class background of activists and whether the feminist discourse was secular or not. Class-though significant-is not enough, however, to explain the current women's movement's inability to cut across other identities. The reasons may have less to do with the language of feminist discourse than with the public political nature of the women's movement: the marked tendency to focus on national-level legal rights almost excludes women's personal lives, where definitions of gender and attendant control mechanisms are experienced on a daily basis. Further, developments taking place simultaneously at
different levels do not necessarily take the same direction and their contradictory impact needs to be borne in mind.
