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Full-Text Articles in Women's Studies

Burdin, Johannah, Samantha Rouillard Nov 2023

Burdin, Johannah, Samantha Rouillard

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Johannah Burdin shares her story as a lesbian/queer woman experiencing southern Maine in the 1990s. Her story touches on topics involving coming out, relationships, a traumatic incident that left her disabled, activism, and much more. She was active in her youth in spreading awareness on the AIDS/HIV crisis, education on safe sex, and spent her evenings at popular Portland gay bars, like Sister’s Bar and Limelight/The Underground. Although she is not much into drinking, she recognized these were some of the few spots queer people could go to make community and relationships. Johannah also shares her story of becoming a …


We Deliver: The Condition Of The Woman Academic In India Today, Ananya Dutta Gupta Oct 2023

We Deliver: The Condition Of The Woman Academic In India Today, Ananya Dutta Gupta

Journal of International Women's Studies

This auto-ethnographic essay draws upon Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge to discuss the condition of Indian women in the Humanities in academia today. While acknowledging the encouragingly gender-inclusive projections in India’s National Education Policy vision statement from 2020, I argue for more probing engagement with the concrete reality of being a woman teacher and researcher in the increasingly competitive and corporatized milieu of higher education. My methodology has been a close reading of the NEP’s vision statement to analyze recurrences of terms and concepts as pointers to its discursive field. I argue that this policy statement implicitly envisions an empowered new-age …


Travails Of New Mothers Returning To Work In Corporate India: A Phenomenological Study, Anil Jose Thomas, N. T. Sudhesh Oct 2023

Travails Of New Mothers Returning To Work In Corporate India: A Phenomenological Study, Anil Jose Thomas, N. T. Sudhesh

Journal of International Women's Studies

A woman’s life is a myriad of experiences and none, perhaps, leaves a more lasting impression on her than motherhood. The child-birth event along with all its highs and lows not only has a deep psychological impact on her as a person but also impacts her career in many ways. Using interpretive phenomenological analysis, we have studied the lived experience of women who returned to work in corporate settings after maternity leave. Our study found that not only do they go through an emotional upheaval during this phase, but they also see a marked shift in the way they approach …


Are We Safe? An Investigation Of Eve-Teasing (Public Sexual Harassment) In India, Usha Rana Oct 2023

Are We Safe? An Investigation Of Eve-Teasing (Public Sexual Harassment) In India, Usha Rana

Journal of International Women's Studies

In recent years, many countries have tightened the rules against harassment in the workplace and violence in the home. On the other hand, incidences of sexual harassment against women in public places have not been paid sufficient attention. Developing countries like India have recorded an increase in sexual harassment cases in public places due to the increase in participation of women in activities outside the home such as education and employment. In India, the term “Eve-teasing” is a euphemism for sexual harassment in public places. Eve-teasing is identified as a significant problem in the patriarchal society of India that carries …


Poverty And Commercial Surrogacy In India: An Intersectional Analytical Approach, Sheela Suryanarayanan Sep 2023

Poverty And Commercial Surrogacy In India: An Intersectional Analytical Approach, Sheela Suryanarayanan

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

The destination and source countries for commercial surrogacy match world patterns of inequality. India, Nepal, Thailand, Mexico, and Cambodia banned commercial surrogacy, moving the market to other less-developed countries in South Africa and South America. India had a commercial surrogacy boom until exploitative factors led to the passage of the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill in 2019, which banned the practice. This paper examines surrogacy's monetary, health, and emotional effects on 45 surrogate mothers in Gujarat State, India. The study revealed that a majority (63%) of the very poor women remained very poor post-surgery. Surrogate mothers in poor households had to do …


Custodianship And Care: Women And Reading In Anita Desai’S Clear Light Of Day, Aruni Mahapatra Jul 2023

Custodianship And Care: Women And Reading In Anita Desai’S Clear Light Of Day, Aruni Mahapatra

Journal of International Women's Studies

Several scholars have noted how the Indian state has been able to care for women only by placing them in custody of the family or the community, often overseen by male relatives. How do novels by Indian women writers intervene in this difficult social and legal problem? This paper answers this question by integrating feminist scholarship on the place of Indian women in postcolonial India with another scholarly tradition: the ethics of care. Conventionally, these two bodies of writing have not been in direct dialogue. This paper facilitates a conversation by close-reading Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day, a novel …


Perspectives Of Women Police Officers In The Union Territory Of Puducherry, India, Chemmalar S. Jun 2023

Perspectives Of Women Police Officers In The Union Territory Of Puducherry, India, Chemmalar S.

Journal of International Women's Studies

Women face unprecedented challenges of gender inequality despite representing half of the world’s population, yet increasingly, they are entering physically demanding professions such as policing. Underlying police culture is a normative power structure defined by hegemonic masculinity. Discrimination, sexual harassment, and inadequate maternity and parental leave are some of the issues that women police officers face. Despite these limitations, there is a growing demand for women police officers. This study contributes to a better understanding of the issues that women police officers face in their work. It also sheds light on the psychology of women police officers and their approach …


Women Parliamentarians In India Since 1991: Challenges And Opportunities, Vatsala Bhusry May 2023

Women Parliamentarians In India Since 1991: Challenges And Opportunities, Vatsala Bhusry

Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs

India gained a new economic orientation in 1991 following the policy of economic liberalization. It offered the opportunities to close the gender gap in various fields including the political field as visualized in the original goal of the Indian constitution. However, there is an acute underrepresentation of women at the national political level and there is a lack of evidence-based research studies to analyze this gap. This study maps the political trajectories of 13 elected women leaders holding offices at the national level since 2019. To better understand the challenges and opportunities at both macro and micro levels they came …


The Politics Of Representating Dalit Women: A Study Of The Newspaper Khabar Lahariya And The Documentary Writing With Fire, Harishma Hari K, Khamarunnisa P. A Nov 2022

The Politics Of Representating Dalit Women: A Study Of The Newspaper Khabar Lahariya And The Documentary Writing With Fire, Harishma Hari K, Khamarunnisa P. A

Journal of International Women's Studies

Redefining power is the only means to redress the gender bias that women have had to endure in a male-dominated society. As Héléne Cixous declared in “The Laugh of the Medusa” (1975), “écriture feminine” (or women’s writing) is the only way to emphasize women’s perspectives and end stereotyping of women and their opinions in literature. Such ideas helped to transform the representation of women in literature. This transformation is required not only in the literary world, but there is also an urgent need for the realistic representation of women in every section of society. Media being a powerful tool has …


Women's Agency And Pastoral Livelihoods In India: A Review, Aayushi Malhotra, Sailaja Nandigama, Kumar Sankar Bhattacharya Nov 2022

Women's Agency And Pastoral Livelihoods In India: A Review, Aayushi Malhotra, Sailaja Nandigama, Kumar Sankar Bhattacharya

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

The role of women in promoting and sustaining pastoral livelihoods remains an under-researched area across the world. Often, studies discuss pastoralism as a male-oriented enterprise, thus overshadowing or ignoring the part played by women in such livelihood practices. In India, where pastoralism itself is essentially a neglected area of research, such discussions remain even sparse. Pastoral communities depending on migratory livestock rearing practices for their livelihoods exhibit gender-based differences in their everyday life in terms of division of labour, mobility patterns, and rights over resources. Women play different roles and responsibilities at the household and community levels that remain intertwined …


Reflections On Queer Literary Representations In Contemporary Indian Writing In English, Aakanksha Singh Nov 2022

Reflections On Queer Literary Representations In Contemporary Indian Writing In English, Aakanksha Singh

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This reflection piece explores the importance of thinking beyond labels and categories for queer desires and queer expressions of love. Knowability and visibility of these desires through labels and categories has the potential and indeed does create awareness. This visibility, however, can inadvertently also create borders and perpetuate rigidity about queer desires, confining them to certain norms and limitations. The piece then reflects on mass media's role in creating these borders, particularly through the coverage of Pride Parades in India. Then by examining contemporary texts such as Amruta Patil's Kari (2008), Himanjali Sankar's Talking of Muskaan (2015) and Parvati Sharma's …


South Asian Feminisms And Youth Activism: Focus On India And Pakistan, Nilanjana Paul, Namita Goswami, Sailaja Nandigama, Gowri Parameswaran, Fawzia Afzal-Khan Nov 2022

South Asian Feminisms And Youth Activism: Focus On India And Pakistan, Nilanjana Paul, Namita Goswami, Sailaja Nandigama, Gowri Parameswaran, Fawzia Afzal-Khan

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

No abstract provided.


The Indian Mission Of The Institute Of Blessed Virgin Mary (Ibvm) Nuns: Convents, Curriculum, And Indian Women, Nilanjana Paul Nov 2022

The Indian Mission Of The Institute Of Blessed Virgin Mary (Ibvm) Nuns: Convents, Curriculum, And Indian Women, Nilanjana Paul

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This study focuses on the Indian mission of IBVM nuns, and the role played by them in the spread of female education in India. While acknowledging that missionaries were part of the imperial process, this study analyzes the work of Catholic nuns in India, their convents, and curriculum to show how their work advanced women's educational opportunities in India. In the process the study examines how Catholic nuns resisted the dominating attitude of the Catholic Church in India. The last section of the article examines how Christian influence under missionaries not only prepared good mothers and wives but also trained …


Dissenting Bodies, Disruptive Pandemic: Farmers' Protest And Women's Participation In Mass Mobilisation In India, Paromita Chakrabarti Nov 2022

Dissenting Bodies, Disruptive Pandemic: Farmers' Protest And Women's Participation In Mass Mobilisation In India, Paromita Chakrabarti

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

While authoritarian states promoting neoliberal forms of governance have taken advantage of COVID-19 to weaken the foundations of civil society, there has also been a significant rise in contemporary struggles for a more democratic society during and around the pandemic. From December 2019 to November 2021, India has seen a significant number of protests. The timeline of collective resistance against the state and its divisive, violent and neoliberal agenda represents a critical juncture in Indian politics. This paper focuses on the farmers' protests that started from last November and recently ended in a stunning, hard-earned victory. In a sector that …


Unbearable Weight: Women And The Shaping Of Political Subjects Through The Politics Of Corporeality, Meenakshi Malhotra, Krishna Menon Oct 2022

Unbearable Weight: Women And The Shaping Of Political Subjects Through The Politics Of Corporeality, Meenakshi Malhotra, Krishna Menon

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article explores three moments in recent history where Indian women’s bodies—seen and unseen—highlight the centrality of the female body in the changing political discourse of India. The first moment, the Shaheen Bagh moment, is characterized by the body marked as “Muslim woman” and her occupation of public squares and streets (the protests in 2019-20 against the Citizenship Amendment Act). The second moment is the female body that engaged in unprecedented care work while being subjected to heightened levels of violence in the times of the pandemic, and the third moment is the resilient female body in struggle against neo-liberal …


The Structures Of Intra-National Class Divisions In Neoliberalism: The Women Of “Light” And “Dark” In The White Tiger, Sneha Madimi Oct 2022

The Structures Of Intra-National Class Divisions In Neoliberalism: The Women Of “Light” And “Dark” In The White Tiger, Sneha Madimi

Theses and Dissertations

Aravind Adiga’s novel, The White Tiger, represents gender hierarchies and the class struggle of India’s neoliberal present. Adiga uses elements of satire and allegory to teach us something about how women are differently positioned in the neoliberal system. David Harvey in A Brief History of Neoliberalism defines neoliberalism as “a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade” (2). I will consider the novel, alongside Chandra Mohanty’s “Under Western Eyes” …


Women’S Agency And Pastoral Livelihoods In India: A Review, Aayushi Malhotra, Sailaja Nandigama, Kumar Sankar Bhattacharya Jul 2022

Women’S Agency And Pastoral Livelihoods In India: A Review, Aayushi Malhotra, Sailaja Nandigama, Kumar Sankar Bhattacharya

Journal of International Women's Studies

The role of women in promoting and sustaining pastoral livelihoods remains an under-researched area across the world. Often, studies discuss pastoralism as a male-oriented enterprise, thus overshadowing or ignoring the part played by women in such livelihood practices. In India, where pastoralism itself is essentially a neglected area of research, such discussions remain even sparse. Pastoral communities depending on migratory livestock rearing practices for their livelihoods exhibit gender-based differences in their everyday life in terms of division of labour, mobility patterns, and rights over resources. Women play different roles and responsibilities at the household and community levels that remain intertwined …


Dissenting Bodies, Disruptive Pandemic: Farmers’ Protest And Women’S Participation In Mass Mobilisation In India, Paromita Chakrabarti Jul 2022

Dissenting Bodies, Disruptive Pandemic: Farmers’ Protest And Women’S Participation In Mass Mobilisation In India, Paromita Chakrabarti

Journal of International Women's Studies

While authoritarian states promoting neoliberal forms of governance have taken advantage of COVID-19 to weaken the foundations of civil society, there has also been a significant rise in contemporary struggles for a more democratic society during and around the pandemic. From December 2019 to November 2021, India has seen a significant number of protests. The timeline of collective resistance against the state and its divisive, violent and neoliberal agenda represents a critical juncture in Indian politics. This paper focuses on the farmers’ protests that started from last November and recently ended in a stunning, hard-earned victory. In a sector that …


Reflections On Queer Literary Representations In Contemporary Indian Writing In English, Aakanksha Singh Jul 2022

Reflections On Queer Literary Representations In Contemporary Indian Writing In English, Aakanksha Singh

Journal of International Women's Studies

This reflective piece explores the importance of thinking beyond labels and categories for queer desires and queer expressions of love. Knowability and visibility of these desires through labels and categories has the potential to create much-needed awareness. This visibility, however, can inadvertently also create borders and perpetuate rigidity about queer desires, confining them to certain norms and limitations. The piece then reflects on mass media’s role in creating these borders, particularly through the coverage of Pride Parades in India. Then by examining contemporary texts such as Amruta Patil’s Kari (2008), Himanjali Sankar’s Talking of Muskaan (2015), and Parvati Sharma’s short …


The Indian Mission Of The Institute Of Blessed Virgin Mary (Ibvm) Nuns: Convents, Curriculum, And Indian Women, Nilanjana Paul Jul 2022

The Indian Mission Of The Institute Of Blessed Virgin Mary (Ibvm) Nuns: Convents, Curriculum, And Indian Women, Nilanjana Paul

Journal of International Women's Studies

This study focuses on the Indian mission of IBVM nuns, and the role played by them in the spread of female education in India. While acknowledging that missionaries were part of the imperial process, this study analyzes the work of Catholic nuns in India, their convents, and curriculum to show how their work advanced women’s educational opportunities in India. In the process the study examines how Catholic nuns resisted the dominating attitude of the Catholic Church in India. The last section of the article examines how Christian influence under missionaries not only prepared good mothers and wives but also trained …


Dalit Women: Narratives Of Vulnerability, Violence, And A Culture Of Impunity, Bhushan Sharma May 2022

Dalit Women: Narratives Of Vulnerability, Violence, And A Culture Of Impunity, Bhushan Sharma

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.


Hall Family Collection - Index To Appendix 1, "Letters From The Attic" And Appendix 2, Postcards, Kyle Ainsworth May 2022

Hall Family Collection - Index To Appendix 1, "Letters From The Attic" And Appendix 2, Postcards, Kyle Ainsworth

Librarian and Staff Presentations

The Hall Family Collection can generally be described in two parts. The first part is Letters from the Attic, which are more than 5,000 documents that Andrena Hall Brunotte transcribed into 16 volumes. Brunotte’s transcription project established an “original order” to this part of the collection that the processing archivist does their best to adhere to. All of these materials were found in one large steamer trunk and organized by Brunotte in chronological order. Boxes 1 to 4 of the collection house the paper transcriptions (3,330 pages). Boxes 5 to 13 contain the documents, which are in chronological order. The …


Social Inclusion, Equality, Leadership, And Diversity To Attain Sustainable Development Goal 5 In The Indian Banking Industry, Surjit Singha, Sivarethinamohan R. Apr 2022

Social Inclusion, Equality, Leadership, And Diversity To Attain Sustainable Development Goal 5 In The Indian Banking Industry, Surjit Singha, Sivarethinamohan R.

Journal of International Women's Studies

The UN SDG 5 aspires to end all kinds of bigotry and abuse of women, although gender bias still exists in India. Most bank employees are men; few women hold senior positions in India's banking industry because of the country's early history of limiting chances for women to enter the profession. The solution to this is to hire women in leadership positions from international locations if the banking sector opens. The development of the banking industry in India relies on the best talent. The banking sector must open its position for multinational expatriates to maintain diversity and bring forth the …


Are Unpaid Women Willing To Work In The Labour Market? Evidence From India, Krishna M. Apr 2022

Are Unpaid Women Willing To Work In The Labour Market? Evidence From India, Krishna M.

Journal of International Women's Studies

India has set an ambitious target of achieving a US$5 trillion economy by 2025. However, a steady increase, perhaps even more rapid in recent years, in women’s participation in unpaid domestic work poses a grave threat to India’s economic development. Significantly, the extent of women’s participation in unpaid domestic work ballooned in India, recording a quantum leap from 200 million in 2004–05 to 287 million in 2017–18. The main aim of this paper is to examine the role of socio-economic factors in explaining the willingness of unpaid women to undertake work in the labour market, using data from unit-level records …


Feminism, Sexuality, Gender, Labour: Invisible Stigma Of Sex Work And Menstrual Labour In India, Soma Mandal Apr 2022

Feminism, Sexuality, Gender, Labour: Invisible Stigma Of Sex Work And Menstrual Labour In India, Soma Mandal

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article attempts a feminist analysis of understanding sex workers' limitation to command holistic living practices at all points in their life, based on degenerative quality of sexual labour and degree of violence involved. Combined with the practical limitation of bodies' usage and experiential ways of negotiating routine sexual tasks, the intersecting issue of menstruation in sex workers' lives stands as one of the fundamentally neglected aspects of women's health care service in red light areas. Based on assumptions of the degenerative notion of labour, the stigma associated with sex work and menstrual-related pollution it will explore how gendered, informal …


India’S Missing Working Women: Tracing The Journey Of Women’S Economic Contribution Over The Last Seven Decades, And During Covid-19, Mitali Nikore, Poorva Prabhu, Manvika Gupta, Vidhi Narang, Khyati Bhatnagar, Ashruth Talwar, Chandni Ganesh, Ujjwala Singh, Samarpita Banerjee Apr 2022

India’S Missing Working Women: Tracing The Journey Of Women’S Economic Contribution Over The Last Seven Decades, And During Covid-19, Mitali Nikore, Poorva Prabhu, Manvika Gupta, Vidhi Narang, Khyati Bhatnagar, Ashruth Talwar, Chandni Ganesh, Ujjwala Singh, Samarpita Banerjee

Journal of International Women's Studies

India today is an economic powerhouse on the global stage. However, it faces a queer conundrum. Despite considerable gains in female education, decreases in fertility rates and increasing economic growth, only a fourth of its women are in the labor force, amongst the lowest in the world. Based on analysis of time series data over the last seven decades (1950-2018), this paper finds that women’s labor force and workforce participation rates have secularly declined to their lowest levels since Independence. Women’s wages have consistently been below men, with weighted average wage gaps increasing from 59% in 1993, to 72% in …


Women’S Studies, Gender Studies, And Lgbt/Queer Studies: Defining And Debating The Subject Of Academic Knowledge In India, Virginie Dutoya Feb 2022

Women’S Studies, Gender Studies, And Lgbt/Queer Studies: Defining And Debating The Subject Of Academic Knowledge In India, Virginie Dutoya

Journal of International Women's Studies

Women’s Studies is first introduced in Indian academia in the 1970s. There are now more than 150 centres conducting research on women and gender as well as numerous teaching programmes on these topics in India. Research on sexualities and non-heterosexual identities and practices, while less developed, also emerged in the 1990s. As in any academic field, research on Women’s Studies, gender, and sexuality has been marked by epistemic debates, in particular “terminology debates” (i.e., debates about the proper concepts for discussing gender and sexuality in India). Using a corpus of academic texts, course syllabi, and other academic documents as well …


“Why Don’T You Hear Us?”: Interview Narratives Of Disabled Working Women In Private Small Business Firms In India, Deepanjana Varshney Feb 2022

“Why Don’T You Hear Us?”: Interview Narratives Of Disabled Working Women In Private Small Business Firms In India, Deepanjana Varshney

Journal of International Women's Studies

This research explores the perception of disabled working women in small organizations in India's private sector. A meticulous study of past research revealed a paucity of research for working women with disabilities (WWD), especially in small enterprises in the Indian context. There are misconceptions and barriers associated with women with disabilities across the world. Past research demonstrates negative attitudes and related stereotyping notions regarding disabled working women. In sum, they are considered weak, incapable, and dependent on others. There has been insufficient research on employee disability, but there is limited research on the feelings and experiences of disabled working women, …


Scarred For Life: Thoughts On Legal Perspectives Of Acid Attacks In Selected Countries With A Focus On India, Shaheema Hameed, Bhupal Bhattacharya Feb 2022

Scarred For Life: Thoughts On Legal Perspectives Of Acid Attacks In Selected Countries With A Focus On India, Shaheema Hameed, Bhupal Bhattacharya

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article discusses acid attack victims in India—who are primarily women—while examining the related laws dealing with such issues. While these attacks can be associated with societal and other factors that relegate women to an inferior position in a society of male-dominated patriarchal culture, cases of acid assaults are on the rise in India. This research examines the related laws that deal with such issues in India and recommends suggestions for future scope for its remedies. Acid attack victims and survivors are at the receiving end of social stigmas that prevent them from achieving fulfilling lives. They are ostracized and …


Women Of The Dalit Unrest: Rewriting Bodies, Reinforcing Resistance, Suddhadeep Mukherjee Jan 2022

Women Of The Dalit Unrest: Rewriting Bodies, Reinforcing Resistance, Suddhadeep Mukherjee

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

The paper aims to take the scholarship on corporeal feminism and Dalit Studies forward by focusing on the Dalit woman’s body. The body is not treated as an inert surface in this paper but is considered as a transformative medium that can alter its embedded codifications and significations through transgressive performances in the face of systemic and systematized caste violence. In doing so the gendered body not only challenges to rewrite the Dalit epistemology from the vantage of resistance but also initiates a rethinking of Indian feminism. The paper begins with a discursive discussion on the importance of the gender …