Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 43-60, February 2024.
The COVID-19 pandemic and concomitant measures to mitigate it have exacerbated pre-existing social inequalities and have proven to be major disruptive phenomena at both individual and community levels. People with disabilities and chronic illnesses have been some of the most drastically impacted social groups during the pandemic whose isolation and vulnerabilities have often been compounded in the wake of the massive social upheaval. Through an autoethnographic account of a woman with a physical disability in India who has also survived polio, heart disease, cancer and COVID-19, this article captures some of the complex and conflicting emotions and experiences of a life lived at the intersections of various embodied precarities and demonstrates how a social disaster can itself constitute a biographical disruption.
Category Archives: Indian Journal of Gender Studies
Book review: Amrita Basu and Tanika Sarkar (Eds.), Women, Gender and Religious Nationalism
Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 137-142, February 2024.
Amrita Basu and Tanika Sarkar (Eds.), Women, Gender and Religious Nationalism. Cambridge University Press, 2022, 360 pages (Hardbound). ISBN 978-1009123143.
Amrita Basu and Tanika Sarkar (Eds.), Women, Gender and Religious Nationalism. Cambridge University Press, 2022, 360 pages (Hardbound). ISBN 978-1009123143.
Book review: Fearless Freedom
Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 133-137, February 2024.
Kavita Krishnan, Fearless Freedom. Penguin, 2020, 264 pages (e-book).ISBN 978-0143444688.
Kavita Krishnan, Fearless Freedom. Penguin, 2020, 264 pages (e-book).ISBN 978-0143444688.
The Impact of COVID on Kerala Fish-vending Women
Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 61-84, February 2024.
This article discusses women’s role in Kerala’s small-scale marine fishing industry and changes that took place during COVID-19. Pandemic conditions enabled and accelerated the restructuring of Kerala’s fishing industry practices, leaving marginal groups even more marginal. Small-scale producers and sellers were edged out by larger players in a new wholesale market. Meanwhile, female vendors who utilised public transport and face-to-face sales methods found themselves locked out from new retail methods introduced during the pandemic, which made use of smartphone apps, online platforms, and private light vehicles. Underemployed workers with access to digital technology and mobility moved in to fill the lockdown retail gap. The Gulf states’ continuing squeeze on jobs and resultant migration slow-down contributed to these trends. Female fish-vending activity has also been affected by Kerala’s acceleration of bourgeois respectability norms. The state government’s modernisation and centralisation policies also led to the shrinking of women’s spaces in fish auction markets. Recent inequalities in digital and mobility access sit on top of longstanding entrenched class and status inequities and conservative gender norms, while the enduring chronic ‘wicked problem’ of Kerala’s unemployment levels demands urgent attention.
This article discusses women’s role in Kerala’s small-scale marine fishing industry and changes that took place during COVID-19. Pandemic conditions enabled and accelerated the restructuring of Kerala’s fishing industry practices, leaving marginal groups even more marginal. Small-scale producers and sellers were edged out by larger players in a new wholesale market. Meanwhile, female vendors who utilised public transport and face-to-face sales methods found themselves locked out from new retail methods introduced during the pandemic, which made use of smartphone apps, online platforms, and private light vehicles. Underemployed workers with access to digital technology and mobility moved in to fill the lockdown retail gap. The Gulf states’ continuing squeeze on jobs and resultant migration slow-down contributed to these trends. Female fish-vending activity has also been affected by Kerala’s acceleration of bourgeois respectability norms. The state government’s modernisation and centralisation policies also led to the shrinking of women’s spaces in fish auction markets. Recent inequalities in digital and mobility access sit on top of longstanding entrenched class and status inequities and conservative gender norms, while the enduring chronic ‘wicked problem’ of Kerala’s unemployment levels demands urgent attention.
Book review: Pamela Philipose, A Boundless Fear Gripped Me: How the Other Half Lived in the Pandemic’s Shadow
Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 126-129, February 2024.
Pamela Philipose, A Boundless Fear Gripped Me: How the Other Half Lived in the Pandemic’s Shadow. Yoda Press, 2023, 109 pages, ₹258 (Paperback). ISBN 978-9-38-257988-5.
Pamela Philipose, A Boundless Fear Gripped Me: How the Other Half Lived in the Pandemic’s Shadow. Yoda Press, 2023, 109 pages, ₹258 (Paperback). ISBN 978-9-38-257988-5.
Book review: Nazia Akhtar, Bibi’s Room: Hyderabadi Women and Twentieth-Century Urdu Prose
Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 142-145, February 2024.
Nazia Akhtar, Bibi’s Room: Hyderabadi Women and Twentieth-Century Urdu Prose. Orient Blackswan & The New India Foundation, 2022, 432 pages, ₹995. ISBN: 978-9354420641.
Nazia Akhtar, Bibi’s Room: Hyderabadi Women and Twentieth-Century Urdu Prose. Orient Blackswan & The New India Foundation, 2022, 432 pages, ₹995. ISBN: 978-9354420641.
New Resources
Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 146-149, February 2024.
Gender During the Pandemic: Issues at Stake
Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 28-42, February 2024.
The COVID pandemic exacerbated existing inequalities as well as those between researchers and the researched. This experiential note discusses the ethical dilemmas and practical difficulties that I as a feminist researcher and activist have encountered between 2020 and 2022. This was while in the process of my research as well as engagement with COVID-19-related advocacy work. I argue that, even as one was displaced from one’s status as a researcher, these skills were required in advocacy with various branches of the government. Formal research investigations involving fieldwork required that I attend to the needs of the ‘researched’ through humanitarian outreach and advocacy. Such a displacement of the identity of the researcher, I argue, points to the issues at stake in doing feminist research, even during ordinary times.
The COVID pandemic exacerbated existing inequalities as well as those between researchers and the researched. This experiential note discusses the ethical dilemmas and practical difficulties that I as a feminist researcher and activist have encountered between 2020 and 2022. This was while in the process of my research as well as engagement with COVID-19-related advocacy work. I argue that, even as one was displaced from one’s status as a researcher, these skills were required in advocacy with various branches of the government. Formal research investigations involving fieldwork required that I attend to the needs of the ‘researched’ through humanitarian outreach and advocacy. Such a displacement of the identity of the researcher, I argue, points to the issues at stake in doing feminist research, even during ordinary times.
Counting the Numbers: Nationalism and the Question of Surplus Women
Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 85-101, February 2024.
The ‘evils’ of sati and widowhood constituted two of the major elements of social reformation and women’s progress in India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These ‘evils’ were rooted in casteist and sexist ideologies and practices, aspects that remained largely unrecognised by the dominant reformist agendas. The narrative of social progress of women focused only on the upper-class and upper-caste women whose lives were prescribed by brahmanical and patriarchal ideals of chastity, purity, and devotion to husbands. Consequently, ‘patriarchy’ was interpreted as a traditional system oppressing the upper-class upper-caste women. The social reformations such as companionate marriage, widowhood, sati, were practices predominant only in upper-caste communities. It is also significant to note that social reformation was intended to revive the ‘great’ Hindu tradition and rid it of its bad elements exhibited through the practice of sati. This article, through a comparative reading of the discourses on sati and widowhood by Raja Rammohan Roy and the idea of endogamy by B. R. Ambedkar, examines the roots of brahmanical patriarchy to delineate the gendering of caste in imposing a false homogeneity of nationalism.
The ‘evils’ of sati and widowhood constituted two of the major elements of social reformation and women’s progress in India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These ‘evils’ were rooted in casteist and sexist ideologies and practices, aspects that remained largely unrecognised by the dominant reformist agendas. The narrative of social progress of women focused only on the upper-class and upper-caste women whose lives were prescribed by brahmanical and patriarchal ideals of chastity, purity, and devotion to husbands. Consequently, ‘patriarchy’ was interpreted as a traditional system oppressing the upper-class upper-caste women. The social reformations such as companionate marriage, widowhood, sati, were practices predominant only in upper-caste communities. It is also significant to note that social reformation was intended to revive the ‘great’ Hindu tradition and rid it of its bad elements exhibited through the practice of sati. This article, through a comparative reading of the discourses on sati and widowhood by Raja Rammohan Roy and the idea of endogamy by B. R. Ambedkar, examines the roots of brahmanical patriarchy to delineate the gendering of caste in imposing a false homogeneity of nationalism.
Dr Hunter’s Plague: Gender, Race and Photography in British India
Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 7-27, February 2024.
From politicians to physicians, the opening years of India’s plague epidemic (1896–1900) have conventionally been treated as a male-dominated sphere of activity. This article argues for the centrality of female actors—as doctors, nurses and ‘ward ayahs’—and across the social spectrum from dalits to Europeans. Photography demonstrates the prominence and diversity of women’s plague roles; it helps to complicate a text-based narrative of plague at the intersection of gender, race, class and colonialism. Images augment and not merely document. The value of combining visual and textual sources is underscored by focusing on a single institution, the General Plague Hospital in Poona (Pune) and on a woman doctor, Marion Hunter, whose photographic presence and whose views in and after India highlight the tensions and contradictions of a gendered as well as racialised imperial presence.
From politicians to physicians, the opening years of India’s plague epidemic (1896–1900) have conventionally been treated as a male-dominated sphere of activity. This article argues for the centrality of female actors—as doctors, nurses and ‘ward ayahs’—and across the social spectrum from dalits to Europeans. Photography demonstrates the prominence and diversity of women’s plague roles; it helps to complicate a text-based narrative of plague at the intersection of gender, race, class and colonialism. Images augment and not merely document. The value of combining visual and textual sources is underscored by focusing on a single institution, the General Plague Hospital in Poona (Pune) and on a woman doctor, Marion Hunter, whose photographic presence and whose views in and after India highlight the tensions and contradictions of a gendered as well as racialised imperial presence.