Category Archives: Gender

Fighting the good fight: My journey as a feminist researcher

“The heart of justice is truth telling, seeing ourselves and the world the way it is rather than the way we want it to be. More than ever before we, as a society, need to renew a commitment to truth telling.” bell hooks This month of March is quite significant for many of us in CBPS.  We are gearing up… Read more »

Indian women work much harder than men – is anyone listening?

All women work. Even those who are not considered ‘working,’ work, and work hard. That is because they are the ones who are usually responsible for all care work in the family. This is true for the entire world but truer for India and other South Asian countries. According to a global report published by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and… Read more »

इस मौखिक गोलबंदी के बाद!

इस मौखिक गोलबंदी के बाद! इसके बाद एक उजाला है, अंधेरे की परछाई के उस पार जो बन्द होते दरवाजों की कंगूरों से झांकती हैं स्थिर होकर, देखती हैं चटाई को बनते हुए जिसे एक स्त्री बनाती है, अपने खर्राये हुए तलवों को छुपाते हुए जांघों पर रख कर सहेजती हुई इस गोलबंदी का असर है उसके ऊपर भी हो… Read more »

The Question of Difference (Part three of three): Poverty of Imagination

Feminist or a Womanist? . . . Those in the middle get caught in the cross – fire away at the other side. If you are not for us, then you must be against us. If you are not for us, then you must be against us. People get scared enough, they pick a team. Be it for Buddha or… Read more »

The question of difference (Part two of three):  Meaning of difference

Sleeping, turning in turn like planets Sleeping, turning in turn like planets rotating in their midnight meadow: a touch is enough to let us know we’re not alone in the universe, even in sleep: the dream-ghosts of two worlds walking their ghost-towns, almost address each other. I’ve wakened to your muttered words spoken light- or dark-years away as if my… Read more »

The question of difference (Part one of three): Two stories

Postcard from God – I Yes, I do feel like a visitor, a tourist in this world that I once made. I rarely talk, except to ask the way, distrusting my interpreters, tired out by the babble of what they do not say. I walk around through battered streets, distinctly lost, looking for landmarks from another, promised past. Here, in… Read more »

The identity of woman

. . . I have been standing all my life in the    direct path of a battery of signals the most accurately transmitted most untranslatable language in the universe I am a galactic cloud so deep      so invo- luted that a light wave could take 15 years to travel through me       And has taken      I am an instrument in the shape of… Read more »

International Women’s Day 2019

On the occasion of International Women’s Day this year, we would like to raise the issue of Girls’ Education.  With nearly 40% of adolescent girls not being in any educational institution, we cannot even dream of soon becoming a developed and evolved nation where we can pride ourselves with values of equality and freedom that we have enshrined in our constitution…. Read more »

Doing gender

Doing gender[1] Recently, I chanced upon old photographs of my fieldwork for my dissertation. They were innocuously marked in a folder called ‘Fieldwork’, and turned up when I searched for my field notes. As I was looking through these pictures, I realised that I feel privileged to do the work that I do. I am a feminist sociologist by training,… Read more »