Written by Prerna Aswani, Project Lead at inHive in collaboration with Kavya Mohta, Project Associate at Nirantar Trust
This blog reflects on the growing efforts towards challenging traditional gender norms in India, zooming into the example of Nirantar Trust, a feminist organisation that develops cross-sectoral collaborations & networks to challenge the status quo on women’s role in the economy.
THE STATUS QUO FOR WOMEN IN INDIA
In some ways, the position of women in India has markedly improved; in 2018-19, women represented over 50% of undergraduates, reflecting a narrowing of the gender education gap. Yet whilst the education gap might be closing, this has not translated equivalently to more women in the workplace. Despite economic growth, labour force participation for women has been declining, with women accounting for less than 20% of the total labour force of the country. Though part of this falling participation can be attributed to women spending longer in higher education, cultural norms around women in the workplace, as well as safety of women in the workplace continue to be significant challenges limiting women’s participation in formal employment. This holds particularly true in the vast and burgeoning middle class of India, where the dominant narratives around the roles of women in India remain conservative. Women entering economic spaces traditionally reserved for men is often seen in opposition to traditional conceptions of respectable femininity, which see the rightful place of middle-class women to be restricted to domestic labour.
Whilst these women are increasingly receiving higher levels of education, notions of women needing to be protected and kept safe within the home continue to restrict their entry to the workforce. In turn, being denied the opportunity to access financial freedom, women in these positions remain dependent, answerable and subordinated by the male heads of the household. And so, it becomes all the more important to celebrate the individual and collective efforts to challenge these gender norms. In this short blog I attempt to do exactly that; to recognise the efforts of institutions and networks that provide women the spaces and opportunities to come together, collaborate and create counter-narratives that display them in positions of power and strength.
THE NIRANTAR TRUST NETWORK: WOMEN SUPPORTING WOMEN
One such institution has been the Nirantar Trust, a Delhi based organisation with over two decades of history in forming networks, educational content and collaborations across sectors, from media to tourism to create new narratives of the empowered Indian woman. With its intention of bringing feminist narratives to the fore and facilitating empowerment of marginalised women and girls through education, the organisation has set up PACEcentres (Parvaaz Adolescent Centres for Education) in urban resettlement areas of Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. The learners are out of school adolescent girls who come from marginalised classes, castes, religions and migrant communities. Many of them are married off at early ages and even are young mothers. Most of them carry the responsibility of earning a livelihood for their families. The PACE centres provide a space for them to gain a complete and comprehensive education that incorporates a gender and sexuality lens to embed their learning within the context of their daily lives. The power of the PACE program shines through not only in the way it roots learning in the lived realities of women from marginalised communities; but also potently visible in the way alumni of the program engage with each other and the outside world following the program. The young women of PACE have found solidarity amongst one another, self-organising as an alumni community to support each other in their everyday lives, share times of happiness, sorrow and challenge. As a collective, they are able to present themselves as a strong, unified voice, allowing them to negotiate with their families and communities against early marriage, dowry, domestic violence and other forms of oppression they experience in their day-to-day personal lives.
CREATING LINKAGES ACROSS SECTORS
Nirantar’s work extends beyond supporting individual adolescent girls to make empowered life choices, to also developing cross-sectoral linkages to transform the dominant narratives around women’s roles in the economy at large.
One such example has been in connecting PACE alumni with internships and exposure visits to Khabar Lahariya, India’s only digital rural news network run entirely by women, with the view of widening their exposure to non-traditional livelihoods. Through these engagements, the young women at PACE have been able to see women-led media channels not only as a platform to gain a voice for themselves, but also to propagate feminist counter-narratives of the role of women in society and the economy. Today a number of PACE alumni have had internships at Khabar Lahariya, with one even continuing to work at the organisation as a producer. In doing so, these women are powerfully challenging the status quo on their ‘appropriate position’ being outside the public eye.
CHANGING THE NARRATIVE
Similarly, PACE alumni are pushing the boundaries of what is seen as appropriate spaces for women in public spaces: In partnership with the sustainable tourism agency, Open Eyes, select PACE alumni have been trained to serve as tour guides around historical sights of Delhi for international tourists. The image of young women leading large groups of tourists in the streets of Delhi is in itself a powerful and unconventional one; for a space and sector largely dominated by men, and a city considered unsafe for women, it is incredibly empowering to see young women owning their space in the streets with confidence.
The PACE girls also challenge the dominant narratives of Indian women as victims without their own agency who need protection and financial support from the men in their families and communities. As Kavya describes, at a time when the entire country shut down due to COVID and was forced to stay indoors, with millions of daily wagers losing their livelihood and access to food, they stepped out and conducted relief work in their communities. From mapping the high priority families in need of relief to distributing rations and connecting people to their rights and entitlements, the girls worked day and night to help the most marginalised. They built upon their existing skills and displayed their potential and strength and independence.
The women that form part of the Nirantar network are just a few of the countless young professionals across India who are challenging the dominant narratives around gender norms. It is these women we need to shine greater limelight on, and bring together into networks. By nurturing the conditions for women from restricted home environments to come together, connect and engage outside of their domestic environments, we can support these women to exercise their own agency, and define their own narrative and place in the world.
If you know of or are working with networks of powerful women driving social change, we’d love to hear your experiences and feature your stories. Please reach out at prerna@inhiveglobal.org to share.