At the heart of this controversy lies not so much the right of a woman to choose her religion and spouse, but society’s attitude to women. We should be grateful for small mercies. On International Women’s Day, a day when hashtags were declaring ‘Time’s Up’ and ‘My Body is Mine’, our highest court reaffirmed a […]
The lamentable humiliations of Hadiya Read More »
We are simply not prepared to grant daughters the right to choose their spouses, particularly in inter-faith marriages. In New Delhi, Ankit Saxena made the fatal error of falling in love with a 20-year-old Muslim woman. In Kerala, Akhila Ashokan converted to Islam and, as Hadiya, married a man in accordance with her new faith.
Love and longing in modern India Read More »
All over the world, the responsibility of bringing up children lies disproportionately with women. A 2015 report by McKinsey Global Institute found that 75% of unpaid care-work – cooking, cleaning, washing, caring for children and the elderly – is done by women. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern tweeted this past week that she and
Childcare should not only be a woman’s job Read More »
Padmavat has been cleared for release; its attempted censorship and ban comes from non-state actors and Vasundhara Raje’s decision to block its release in Rajasthan out of respect to the ‘sentiments of the people’ is meek acquiescence to these non-state actors I’m not a fan of advocating mass suicide by women as a method of
Padmavat is not a political film and yet, seeing it can become a political act Read More »
A new generation of anti-status-quoists is unapologetic about its beliefs, unafraid about whom it is taking on and unfettered by the hackneyed script. No careers were brought down. No global hashtags were created. No roars reverberated throughout the world. And yet, women in India continued chipping away at that edifice called patriarchy. In a year
A year of assertion when notice has been served on patriarchy Read More »
Every woman has a story, the man who ‘accidentally’ touches her in the metro, the schoolboys who chase her in the park for sport, the masturbating pervert late at night on the bus. We learn to ignore it – rule #1 of the street: never, ever make eye contact – but sometimes it spills over
December 16 gangrape: Five years on, why the streets don’t belong equally to women Read More »
Just picking up a musical instrument is an act of courage for Zohra, Afghanistan’s first all-woman orchestra. When the call came, she was home at Kunar for her holidays. Negin Khapalwak had just got admission into the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, the only music school in her country. But there was a problem. The
Afghan ensemble Zohra is a reflection of the transformative power of music Read More »
Behind an outsourced list of sexual predators is the story of a law that often doesn’t work in favour of the women it is supposed to protect. I don’t like anonymous lists, that is lists that purport to name sexual predators compiled by one person on the say-so of other unnamed persons. I don’t like
Understanding why an anonymous list of sexual predators exists Read More »
In reinterpreting the meaning of consent in two recent cases, judges are creating a dangerous precedent: Future rapists can plead that their victims either didn’t say no, or didn’t say it strongly enough. Perhaps the judges forgot that good girls never say no and that we bring up our daughters to ‘adjust’ and never complain.
Treat women as independent adult agents, not as children Read More »
Hillary Clinton concedes that her new book titled ‘What Happened’ isn’t a comprehensive account of the elections, admitting that, “I couldn’t get the job done, and I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life.” I was on a flight out of Delhi when the results started coming in. But I wasn’t
What Happened: Hillary Rodham Clinton comes to the sisterhood party a little too late Read More »
Among the dozen women extraordinary women awarded for transforming India is an amputee mountaineer, an acid attack survivor, an educator and India’s first blade runner. Before she left her village to catch a flight to Delhi, Sunita Kamble’s grandmother had some advice for her: Don’t talk to strangers, follow instructions and, above all, don’t wave
Women achievers open paths to achieve what was perceived as impossible Read More »
The fact that the battle was fought and won by determined Muslim women themselves should help alter the narrative of the singular stereotype – the shadowy figure behind the burqa, illiterate, dis-empowered and left to fend for herself. The Supreme Court judgment on triple talaq has achieved many things, but the one that has received
Triple talaq verdict: What empowerment of Muslim women really means Read More »