34 SOCIAL SCIENTIST view would only 'help to reconstitute the patriarchal system that privileges the notion of sexual difference* (1992: 17). Feminists in India have indeed abstained from explicitly addressing issues relating to the female body and sexuality except as activists in issues relating to rape and, more recently, to sexual violence in the home.6 Some women's organisations have also addressed the question of the woman's body in terms of health issues, especially reproductive health. It may also be the case that Indian feminists do not view discourse on the body as problematic or deserving their particular attention in the face of more striking issues such as poverty, women's rights, violence against women, and so on. Underlying these issues however is a notion of the woman's body which is central to understanding the oppression of women because it is essentially on the 'biological difference between the male and the female bodies that the edifice of gender inequality is built and legitimated' (Mcnay 1994: 99). It is not however surprising that what is lacking in feminist discourse is a coherent theory of the body. That is the conceptual dimension of the relations between women's bodies and the state (Gatens 1988: 59), for example, or oppressive situations and contexts, remain largely unexplored. This paper in some senses attempts therefore to examine the underpinnings of a theory of the woman's body in everyday life in urban settings which would help us to understand the underlying basis of prevailing definitions of womanhood in contemporary society. The Body in Everyday Life The female body has been a matter of contention in academic discourse where debates on the female body have taken place essentially on three different registers. These concern the debates on the female body as being located in Nature as opposed to Culture; on the body as text exemplified in the position of the French school of 1 'ecriture feminine; and on the female body as being defined by psychological factors or/and social and cultural factors. It is not within the scope of this paper to examine each debate in any depth but only to the extent that such discussion will help in defining and understanding the main focus of this paper.7 Early feminists in the United States, such as Adrienne Rich (1972) and Shulamith Firestone (1976), viewed the identification of women with their bodies as being the root cause of their oppression in a patriarchal culture and society. Such a perspective should be seen within the Nature/Culture debate wherein a woman is identified with Nature primarily because of her bodily functions, mainly reproduction and its 'natural' corollary, child-rearing. Her body is therefore essentially a vehicle for reproduction and her entire life, her roles, her