A Letter to Pranshu
Dear Pranshu, I didn’t know you before your suicide on November 21, 2023. I saw your Diwali reel in which you wore a saree – you looked beautiful. I don’t…
Patriarchy
Intersectional Feminism: An Insight
Intersectionality Theory was first developed in 1970-80 by a group of African-American feminist activists who accused the women’s movement of abandoning Black women. Discriminatory evils like racism and sexism aren’t…
Marriage Equality Judgment not on constitutional morality: “Disappointing, But the fight will go on ….” – PUCL
The PUCL expresses its deep disappointment with respect to the verdict of the Supreme Court in `Supriyo v Union of India’ denying the right to marry to the LGBTQI community.…
Same-sex marriage judgement by Supreme Court – A Damp Squib
While rejecting the prayer for same-sex marriage the Supreme Court of India through its judgements made the following points: This Supreme Court judgement on same-sex marriage does not change the…
Feminism, Patriarchy & Equal Marriage Rights for LGBTQ – A Personal Dilemma
The Supreme Court of India is likely to pronounce judgement on the same-sex marriage petitions this week on or before 20th October 2023 as one of the judges on the…
International Day of Girl Child and 101 other measures that do not support Women
"Girls have outperformed boys, once again!" flashes on social media and news channels, all across Jammu and Kashmir after the result of 10th and 12th grade examinations was announced in…
Combating Everyday Gender Stereotypes in the Courtrooms
The Supreme Court of India recently published a Handbook on Combating Gender Stereotypes[2], which highlights how gender-unjust terms are used in pleadings, orders, and judgements to reiterate common stereotypes about…
The Escalating Prevalence of Child Marriage and its Significance for Jharkhand: An Urgent Call for Action
Abstract Child marriage is a grave violation of human rights that continues to persist, despite laws and regulations against it. Shockingly, one out of every five girls worldwide is either…
Feminism and Historical Struggle for Gender Equality
Preface It is important to have a short look at the history of this battle for more women's rights. That is why I will shortly explain the ideology and social…
When She is Not Enough: Why Internet Laws needs a Feminist Review
The Data Protection Bill, which is to be tabled in the current monsoon session of Parliament, has received applause for using the term ‘she or her’ to refer to all…
Gender and Politics
Preface The text has aim to investigate the situation of female representation in politics in the industrialized contemporary Western democracies. Though women are more and more visible in politics, we…
The Empowered Tribal Girl Who Fought Against Sexual Harassment
From being a school dropout in 8th standard due to molestation to working as a fellow for Udaan fellowship to spread awareness on molestation and sexual violence, here is the…
#Shout is scathing indictment on patriarchy and misogyny
“I don’t think rape is about sex. It is about violence and the need for power… “We talk of sexual violence. We don’t talk enough about patriarchy. We don’t talk…
Self-employment opportunities offer lives of dignity for transgenders
Transgender rights are a heated topic across forums in the country and make for long panel discussions and boardroom conversations. Rules under the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019…
Demand for Same-sex Marriage Raised by ABVA in 1991: Its Campaign Continues Even as Court Verdict is Awaited
Courtesy: Pravartak Isssue No. 1 (2.12 - 15.12.91) (This is Part II of the long essay titled “Reminiscing ABVA’s Struggle for Gay Rights in the Twentieth Century – A Brief…
Eradicate Dowry, Eliminate Dowry Violence
On 22 May 2023, a woman who married six months ago was burned alive in Sawai Madhopur Rajasthan for dowry. Her father stated that she was severely tortured for a…
Gender Discrimination: A Serious Concern
Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world. It is the belief that all individuals should have equal…
Sexuality, Marriage and State
Modern nation-states were established to secure citizenship rights and ensure egalitarian and democratic governance based on constitutional rules and regulations shaped by the values of secularism and science. These principles…
Men, masculinities, and gender equality
Both men and women are still imprisoned by patriarchy in the vast majority of our globe. Together, we inhabit a world of social logic where prejudice, injustice, and exploitation taint…
Silent mountains of Uttarakhand
Living in the mountains is not easy as opposed to the hype that is shown to us these days through social media platforms. It is a hard life particularly for…
Woman is born with Identity? Or Woman creates her own Identity?
We talk of equality of the sexes, gender stereotyping breakthrough but these terms get restricted only to discussion on right to work, right to body, freedom of movement, choices of…
Woman creates life …. But still without RIGHTS??
Once again, that time of the year. On Women's Day, every company worth their salt offers deals and discounts. Business companies are preparing for the day with shopping, complimentary makeovers,…
Bicycle and Women’s Liberation
Bicycling and Feminism One hundred years ago, Alice Hawkins, a suffragette, cycled around Leicester (UK) promoting the women's rights movement, causing outrage by being one of the first ladies to…
Women must Arise Now and #EmbraceEquity
On 13 February, a mother and her daughter were burnt alive during an encroachment clearing drive in Dehat village of Kanpur; the incident that killed a 44-year-old mother and her…
Digital Femininity and Indian Patriarchy
In India, the hegemonic discourse on girls’ engagement with social media has been fixed on the way they are using digital tools to express their sexuality and construct visual intimacies.…
Demand for Same-sex Marriage Pending Since 1991 – Indian Parliament Continues to Stonewall the Debate
“Amend the Special Marriages Act to allow for marriages between people of the same sex (or between people who may be inter-sexed, or have undergone sex-change surgery, and any others).…
Men and menstruation: A young anti-caste thinker fights menstrual stigma
A 2014 report by the NGO Dasra titled Spot On! found that nearly 23 million girls drop out of school every year as they have to face lack of proper…
Violence Against Women in Live-In Relationships and the Legal Safeguards
Recently several cases are sensationalized by the media where in women in live-in relationships have been subjected to gruesome violence and are brutally murdered. The mainstream media and politics pushed…
International Day for Elimination of Violence against Women and Girls—25 November
Efforts to prevent violence against women and girls should be based on careful identification of causes When the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in his message for the…
Seeking Accountability In Romantic Relationships
When bell hooks speaks about the radical potential of sisterhood, she is informed by her experience as a Black woman in a white-dominated feminist space. When Virginia Woolf asks…
Hijab controversy: No wonder women are always on the receiving end
Of late, opinions regarding the practice of Islamic women wearing hijab have run riot. However, the peak of controversies has been the non-western countries of India and Iran. It has…
Periods or Pills?
Three years ago, a tent had adorned my courtyard where a crowd had gathered. Someone was fighting off sleep, struggling to pay attention. Someone was wondering about the next cup…
Feminist Foreign Policy in India: A Trifecta Approach to Hope, Imagination and Possibilities
In the present world order, when the countries worldwide are facing climate crisis as well as other forms of vulnerabilities including rising misogyny, increased emphasis on nationalism, populism and hate,…
Right to Bodily Autonomy v/s Right to Life: Is there a just half-way?
The US Supreme Court’s overturning of the Roe vs. Wade judgment which provided a constitutional right to abortion on June 24, 2022, triggered a spark of debates all over the…
Women in the balancing act
The other day, my newly appointed domestic help (Premdevi) was morose and after a lot of persuasion, I got to know the reason. She narrated that her husband who is…
From a Pati-Parmeshawar or a Lord to a Partner
How the conservative patriarchal Family Ideology operates and is challenged in the courts …
Palestinian armed struggle: The resistance that dare not speak its name
Members of Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad movement at a gathering for Islamic Jihad commander Khaled Mansour, who was killed on the first day of “Operation…
Kansas Trusted Women
The “Vote Yes” side screamed at us that we wanted to kill babies. Their skillfully branded mother-and-child logo and cynical three-word slogan “Value Them Both” were everywhere here in Salina,…
The Patriarchal Regulation of Female Sexuality in India
Since the beginning of 2022, more than 650 serious crimes have been reported against women in India. This statistic encapsulates various egregious crimes that include rape, assault on women, kidnapping…
Living room as a space of feminist solidarity
Didi kabhi shadi mat karna (Didi, never get married). Durga’s voice reverberated in the house during our morning ritual of chatting over a cup of piping hot tea. Durga, one…
Marital Rape Exception: Have women control of their own bodies? What Hindu scriptures say!
Marital Rape Exception: In pronouncing the end of the marital rape exception, the Karnataka High Court has delivered a nuanced judgment Over the last several months, arguments challenging the constitutionality…
Asexuality- An Emerging Identity
Understanding what has commonly been viewed as dysfunctional or repressed sexuality is now coming to light, at least among youth. As per the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), an…
Mainstream feminism and the paradox of women’s emancipation
Feminism today occupies a substantially larger place in the popular imagination than it did in the past. While those who identified the "F word" were commonly viewed with apprehension, this…
Gender roles and their Blurred Envision
by Madhubrota Chatterjee and Kaibalyapati Mishra The themes for International Women’s Day have always been evident to link gender equality with every sphere of societal…
Breaking Patriarchy in the Media: A Reality Check
by Sabin Iqbal and K.M. Seethi A few years back, an analysis that appeared in the Harvard Business Review showed that women were grossly underrepresented in the media across the…
Some Years after #MeToo
We are aware of how the #MeToo movement began in 2017, in the United States of America, and spread to other parts of the world. I will not go into…
The Embarrassing Discourse on Marital Rape
It is embarrassing to any right-thinking person to read that since January 7, a two-judge bench of the Delhi High Court has been conducting daily hearings of a clutch of…
Patriarchal capitalism and marriage in 21st century
In the Sonnet 116, William Shakespeare defines relationships as marriage of true minds, where sovereign individuals love each other to overcome all impediments in life with the tempest of unchanging…
Disempowering Beauty Pageants
The 70th Miss Universe pageant was held recently in Eilat, Israel and there is a lot of celebratory chatter going on. After 21 years another Indian, Harnaaz Sandhu has won…
Misogyny at its best in CBSE English paper
Passage blames ‘feminist revolt’ for teenage indiscipline. Content of a reading comprehension passage in a CBSE’s Class 10 English examination, held on Friday: “What people were slow to observe was…
‘Honour killings’ in the land of ‘self-respect movement’ (Part-1)
300 Dalits were murdered in Tamil Nadu between 2016 and 2020 This is a sad story on ‘Honour killings’ in Tamilnadu, the land of ‘self-respect movement,’ being published on December…
Gender Equality in Islam and Muslim Women in India: An Agenda for Reforms
Islam is one of the great religions of the world, whose followers are found in every country and continent. As an egalitarian belief system, it introduced the concepts of universal…
Pornography: Doing the Worst to Women, Bringing out the Worst in Men
[This is an expanded version of testimony delivered to the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Commercial Sexual Exploitation, November 2, 2021.] My thesis: The pornography industry does the worst to…
The Ecological Crisis is the Climax of Patriarchy and Religious Patriarchy – What’s Next?
Ecological wisdom emanates from a deep awareness that, while humans are unique among all animals, they remain utterly dependent on their biophysical environment to sustain human life, and therefore must strive to live…
Patriarchy: The Struggle Continues
In a day when America is ruling over a global Empire maintained with violent enforcement to insure universal subordination to its will; and in a day when a military-style…
“A Certain Terror”: A White Male Perspective on Being an Ally
Although the rather inelegant term “allyship” had not yet become part of the social-justice lexicon, I first bumped into the complexity of being an ally in 1988 when I belatedly…
Women on the verge defending life against the global patriarchy
What if, compañera and sister, we learn not only to scream out of pain, but to find the way, place, and time to scream a new world into being? Just think, sister…
Dark Shadows – Domestic Violence and the Middle Class
A young woman comes to office wearing dark goggles. As her colleagues direct enquiring glances towards her, she says that of late she hasn’t had much sleep and has developed…
Rajasthan Rising: Movement of young girls challenging patriarchy
by Neha Saigal & Saumya Shrivastava Earlier this year, on a pleasant afternoon we made our way from the walled and very beautiful city of Jaipur to the narrow and…
The Unabated Oppression of Women under Capitalism
According to International Labour Organization’s (ILO) July 2021 policy brief, “Building Forward Fairer: Women’s rights to work and at work at the core of the COVID-19 recovery”: “Globally, between 2019…
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