Gender Portrayals and Perceptions in the New Age Society of India

Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 102-121, February 2024.
There has recently been a shift in the portrayal of women in Indian media, from a domestic background and docile image to a more professional and empowered representation. This study explores whether such changed portrayals in the media are also positively perceived and if there is an impact on the status of women in the social reality of India. The study examined gender perceptions through focus group discussions with participants from Gen X and Gen Z cohorts. Gen Z, conditioned in an age of technology and liberalisation, was expected to have different gender perceptions than Gen X, conditioned in a pre-liberalised traditional India. The discussions revealed the participants’ complexities, dilemmas and compromises regarding gender stereotypes and the modern versus traditional portrayal of women in Indian media. While Gen X participants were bound to old gender structures and equations, the iconoclastic Gen Z participants appeared to be onsetting a change in gender perceptions of India.

Women and Waste: The Question of Shit-work

Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 30, Issue 3, Page 271-287, October 2023.
One of the fastest-growing sectors of the Indian economy is waste. Its labour illustrates Deliege’s paradox of material essentiality combined with social stigma and marginalisation. Between 2015 and 2019 the production and disposal of waste in a small South Indian town was traced through its circuits of industrial production (agro-processing), distribution (of people and of food), consumption, the production of labour (human wastes) and the reproduction of society (health care activity). The material substances of waste, their physical organisation and gendered labour processes are mapped onto each circuit. This enables a discussion of three questions: (a) regulative institutions in the formal and informal waste economy; (b) the gendering of property and work in the capitalist waste economy and (c) the gendered significance of collective action. The privatisation of waste work has caused a deterioration in work conditions throughout the waste economy. Literally and metaphorically, waste work is shit-work in which women experience the worst conditions in both physical and economic terms.

Book review: Jeemol Unni, Vanita Yadav, Ravikiran Naik and Swati Dutta, Women Entrepreneurship in the Indian Middle Class: Interdisciplinary Perspective

Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 30, Issue 3, Page 380-383, October 2023.
Jeemol Unni, Vanita Yadav, Ravikiran Naik and Swati Dutta, Women Entrepreneurship in the Indian Middle Class: Interdisciplinary Perspective. Orient BlackSwan, 2021, 271 pages, ₹1,075 (Paperback), ISBN: 978-93- 5442-145-7.

Women and Their Interests in Rural India

Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 30, Issue 3, Page 288-308, October 2023.
There is a substantial and growing recognition of the hazards of treating the interests of women as being homogenous. A variety of sources focus on diversity in the interests of a woman, ranging from bargaining with patriarchy where she is forced to carry out diverse tasks within the household, to the extension of these negotiations elsewhere in her socio-economic reality. These challenges are accentuated at times of wider social transformation. Responses of women to these challenges are also influenced by their position within the household. This article seeks to gain insights into the complex negotiations between women, households and society in times of socio-economic transformation by exploring the relationship between women’s interests, strategic gender interests and practical gender interests within households that are headed by women. It does so through an empirical examination of the linkages between these interests of women across four different patterns of transformation in 21st-century rural India.

Between the Devil and the Deep Sea: Tribal Women’s Inheritance Rights in India

Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 30, Issue 3, Page 309-329, October 2023.
In recognition of their distinct culture and identity, tribal communities in India enjoy constitutionally guaranteed autonomy and self-governance, which extend to customary laws for marriage, matrimonial rights and inheritance. In contexts where the tribal customary law has denied women inheritance rights, some women have approached the courts of law. The Hindu law on inheritance specifically excludes tribal communities from its application; yet, courts have found a way to apply it by reasoning that the parties to the case were ‘sufficiently Hinduised’. This article examines Indian judicial responses to this issue, and the ramifications for the inheritance rights of tribal women. The article critiques law’s lack of imagination and inability to capture the complex dynamics of social relationships in tribal communities, in a context of their massive dispossession from tribal lands. While highlighting the distinct relationship of property, community and family in tribal communities, it examines how law could ensure that tribal women retain their tribal identity and yet secure equal inheritance rights, rather than force a trade-off between tribal identity and securing inheritance rights on grounds of ‘sufficient Hinduisation’.