Women Interrupted - The Politics of Patriarchy

A trip down memory lane and examining India's commitment to gender equality beyond political grandstanding.

In this episode we look at some advances in gender equality over the last few months and mark the 25th year of the Beijing Declaration and Platform For Action.

In this episode we try to find answers to questions such as how women experience cities and if smart cities can make cities safer for women. Feat. Ayona Datta

In 2005, the Jagori Women’s Resource Centre in Delhi began to develop a multi-stakeholder research and organizing project for women to evaluate their cities for safety, map the results, and use the data to call publicly for change. As of 2020, the project, now based in Haryana, India, and known as Safetipin, has spread to Latin America, Africa, and much of the Asia-Pacific region. Their reports can be found at safetipin.com. Kalpana Viswanath, described the project in her 2015 address to the International Association of Women in Radio and Television.

A quick introduction to the podcast and what listeners can look forward to hearing every week.

The period debate is back in India after food delivery company Zomato announced it will offer period leave to menstruating employees. While the initiative was welcomed by many women, it was also criticized by others as being anti-feminist.

India has one of the best recycling rates in the world - we recycle 70% of all water bottles and soft drink bottles as compared to 31% in the USA. All thanks to informal recycling chains in our cities.

This chain starts with the waste pickers.

There are an estimated 1.5 million to 4 million waste pickers in India, who pick up, clean, sort and segregate recyclable waste and sell it further up the value chain.

80 per cent of them are women.

These waste pickers either sort and segregate waste from waste containers, or transfer stations and landfills.

These women come from some of the most marginalized communities, they are barely educated and are often from the lower castes which makes it easy to erase or invisibilize their contributions to our billion dollar cleanliness programs or generally life in the cities.They are the ones who are cleaning up behind us, after us. A recent study of women waste pickers during lockdown in Delhi, had showed they faced difficulties in going out to collect waste because the police were patrolling the streets.

They couldn't go out to work also because they lacked protective equipment.

68 per cent of those interviewed, reported that the shutting down of godowns and junk shops have made sorting and selling recyclables nearly impossible.

The study found them facing a shortage of food and unable to access essential medicines and healthcare services.

Now waste pickers are stepping out for work, irrespective of not having protective suits.

Waste pickers are also on the frontline of defense against the spread of COVID-19 because they are managing the city’s waste while exposing themselves to disease and infection.

The government needs to designate them as essential workers, provide them with a stipend, protective equipment and health insurance.

Hello my dear listeners. Welcome to Episode 11 of the Women Interrupted podcast where every week we deconstruct the very many ways in which women’s lives are interrupted all over the world but also specifically in India. I am your host Nilanjana. I am a journalist based in New Delhi India. Thank you for tuning in tonight.

In today’s show – we will discuss how intimate partner violence has continued unabated in India – often normalized in families.

Next, there will be a program from the Women’s International News Gathering Service called Wife Beaters – Tough to Beat.

Somewhere in between there will be your weekly dose of feminism 101

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India is obligated under international law to eliminate violence against women in all its forms, including wife-beating. But in reality attitudes towards wife-beating – the most pervasive form of domestic violence – has remained almost unchanged in the country.

The National Family Health Survey-4 found that 52 per cent of women and 42 percent men in India believe it is reasonable for a husband to beat his wife.

This acceptance is embedded in patriarchal norms of gender roles that are often perpetuated by older women in families.

The Indian government has never really been serious about addressing gender inequality. Victims of domestic violence run from pillar to post seeking justice. And things are unlikely to change anytime soon.

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This week - from the WINGS archive, two leaders in the movement to stop domestic violence, share their experience and ideas on topics like why batterers often get custody of children, whether and how batterers can change, and how misogyny is like racism, encouraged by society and requiring self-awareness to work on.

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And here’s your weekly dose of feminism 101:

This excerpt is taken from Kamla Bhasin’s keynote address at an international seminar interpreting feminism vis a vis activism

“Feminism and Activism are the same. There can be no Feminism without Activism; that for me is clear.”

“Feminism is perhaps world’s most badnaam or defamed ism. There are all kinds of totally unfounded, unsubstantiated allegations against Feminism. So many people are afraid of Feminism. This is why even strong, independent, actually feminist women do not wish to call themselves a Feminist.”

That’s all from the Women Interrupted podcast this week. If you liked the show tell a friend and do not forget to subscribe to our program on Google or iTunes or Spotify. You can also listen to the Women Interrupted podcast on soundcloud.com.

Good bye till next week.

This show from the archives (1996!) has new relevance now the pandemic renders many courtships virtual. Caitlin Sullivan and Kate Bornstein co-wrote the book Nearly Roadkill: An Infobahn Erotic Adventure, based on their pioneering experiments with sex, sexuality, and identity over the then-nascent World Wide Web. Although out of print, the book is enjoying a revival in the second decade of the 21st century; it’s studied and written about as a classic of genderqueer speculative fiction, and for its honest arguments about clashing beliefs and biases. The interviewer was the now-late Sue Supriano. Update by Series Producer Frieda Werden.

Host(s): Sue Supriano; update by Frieda Werden

Featured Speakers/Guests: Theatre and radio practitioner Caitlin Sullivan, self-described as a cis female, and author, playwright, performance artist, actress, gender theorist, and nonbinary post-op transsexual Kate Bornstein developed a long friendship on the internet that was part sex, part playacting, and part working through their identities and their prejudices. They were interviewed when their book came out in 1996 by Sue Supriano.

Credits: Original production by Sue Supriano for her community radio program “Steppin’ Out of Babylon” that aired on KPFA-FM, Berkeley, California. Edited and later updated for WINGS by Frieda Werden.

Comments: Originally released as WINGS #31-96 Sexing the Net. Re-edited and updated to 2020.