Some weeks back, I had published a post here saying that I needed help with running Ultra Violet. The response has been fantastic and we now have a brand new team in place. Please go here for more details.
Contributed posts are welcome as always and still need to be sent to ultraviolet.editor@gmail.com.
For all those who wrote in offering to help, a big, big thank you!
Interesting event in Bangalore with some great speakers. Check it out if you’re in the city. Via Ammu Joseph and Padmalatha Ravi on Facebook. [Read More]
From the Facebook event page here.
You are invited to the Eighth Professor L. B. Kenny Endowment Lecture to be given by Shilpa Phadke at 6 pm on the 28th of March 2012. Tea is at 5.30 pm at the Durbar Hall, Asiatic Society of Mumbai, Horniman Circle, Mumbai. [Read More]
A week back, I was interviewed for this article in The Times of India, Crest edition. The article has misquoted me and I want to make a point of it here. It ascribes this quote to me:
The Pink Chaddi campaign talked of an issue that affected women in cities. Who has the time to march on the street?
I did NOT say “who has the time to march on the street?”. [Read More]
As you may have noticed, this site has been on unofficial hiatus for the last few months. A host of life changes including pregnancy, a move from Bangalore to Mumbai and huge amounts of work have left me short on time and more importantly, on mind space. My sincere apologies to those who have had submissions in queue and I will be publishing these in the next few weeks.
But the challenges of running this single-handedly (and for free) have not abated. I’m afraid I will have to shut it down soon. I don’t want to and so here is an open call for help –
If you or anyone you know would like to help me run this, please get in touch at my email ID (anu.sengupta@gmail.com). This basically means editorial help including soliciting articles and editing the ones received. All you need is sparkling editing skills and some comfort with blogging. Needless to say, this is a voluntary, from-the-heart kinda initiative and does not pay. But there will be endless joy, fufilment and other peachy things. Please pass the word around.
If I don’t find anyone to help, I will probably close it down once the submissions in queue are up. The site itself will remain so that people can look through archival posts.
Image: Portrait by Nathan Altman of Anna Akhmatova
AMID ALL THE free drinks, ladies ‘nites’, jewelery discounts and super celebrations, there’s also this on International Women’s Day: the Karnataka government has decided that people in factories, 90% of whom are women, will be working longer hours (10 instead of 8). Ten hours of work is not just too much in the monday-blues kinda way; it’s inhuman. Add the commute. That’s 12-14 hours of the woman’s day gone. And these are women who most likely have to do all the housework and parenting when they get home. [Read More]
POPULATION FIRST and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) have invited entries for the third UNFPA – Laadli Media awards for Gender Sensitivity(ULMAGS) for the Southern Region for 2010-2011.
The award has been instituted to acknowledge, highlight and celebrate the commendable efforts undertaken by various media to support gender-just perspectives from the field of advertising, print media, electronic media, including television, radio, documentary,web and blog, that challenge dominant social stereotypes, analyse social, economic and political development from a gender perspective.
Missing Half the Story
Journalism as if Gender Matters
(edited by Kalpana Sharma)
INR 395
ISBN 9788189884833
Published by Zubaan Books and available from their website.
Toilets, trees and gender? Can there be a connection? Is there a gender angle to a business story? Is gender in politics only about how many women get elected to parliament? Is osteoporosis a women’s disease? Why do more women die in natural disasters? These are not the questions journalists usually ask when they set out to do their jobs as reporters, sub-editors, photographers of editors. Yet, by not asking, are they missing out on something, perhaps half the story? This is the question this book, edited and written by journalists, for journalists and the lay public interested in media, raises. Through examples from the media, and from their own experience, the contributors explain the concept of gender-sensitive journalism and look at a series of subjects that journalists have to cover – sexual assault, environment, development, business, politics, health, disasters, conflict – and set out a simple way of integrating a gendered lens into day-to-day journalism. Written in a non-academic, accessible style, this book is possibly the first of its kind in India – one that attempts to inject a gender perspective into journalism.
Kalpana Sharma is an independent journalist, columnist and media consultant based in Mumbai. She writes regularly for several newspapers and websites on a range of issues including urban development, gender, contemporary politics and the media. She was, until 2007, Deputy Editor and Chief of Bureau, The Hindu in Mumbai. She has also written and edited several books and is a founder-member of the Network of Women and Media, India.
Laxmi Murthy, Rajashri Dasgupta, Sameera Khan and Ammu Joseph also collaborated on the book.
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Have you written a book that would be of interest to feminists? Send me details to see it here.
Used right, ECP is an empowering tool allowing women more control over their reproductive lives, says Dr Kar. Therefore, they need to be made available over the counter, doctors say. Yet, awareness of the dangers of excessive and indiscriminate use of ECPs must be stepped up significantly, says Velankar, the health activist. And this necessarily extends to consumers, particularly youth, and even drug store owners.
For once, I think older feminists who criticize our generation and make it seem like we don’t care should take a good look at the activists that they see on television, blogs, and running the rallies. They are twenty-somethings who believe in this movement and the change that can happen when we band together for women’s rights; we are here, they just need to pay attention.
IN OPEN SPACE, Nandini Rao on The Neurosis of Being Perfect:
Over the years, worldwide, there has been an attempt at “homogenising” notions of beauty. A global standard of age, height, weight and colour seems to have been drawn up, not connected in any way to race or natural laws of body type differences. For a while, it was mainly those who were a part of the beauty industry who were the “victims” of the malaise to conform to these “global” standards. We’d see actors (women and men) and models who had had, say, a chin tucked in, or hair “grown back”. And we’d chuckle about their vanity and forget about it. But today is different, much more serious somehow. We don’t laugh at the breast enhancements, the liposuctions to reduce body fat, the Botox pout and the “new” aquiline noses in the market. We’d instead rather try and
trace the cosmetic surgeons who did such good jobs and find out if they’d “repair” our flaws too!
AWID or the The Association for Women’s Rights in Development has just launched Young Feminist Wire, their new portal that brings together young feminists from all over the world. From their mailer:
The Wire is a hub of information by, about, and for young feminists: tools and resources, opportunities and calls for participation, news and updates, in addition to collaborative activities. It also features blog posts, interviews, directories, and a registration form that allows you to plug in to a network of young activists and older allies.
Kalpana Sharma on Sunanda Pushkar (in India Together):
There is another dimension to this story. Sunanda Pushkar is not the first professional woman who has had to face innuendo and sexist remarks. This is something many professional women worldwide would have faced to a lesser or greater degree at some stage in their lives. Of course, there is a tendency amongst women who are successful to forget such experiences, or brush them off as occupational hazards of being a professional woman. But scratch the surface, talk to women who are still struggling to get ahead, and you will hear many similar stories. “How did she land this job?” “Who is her godfather?” “Whose favourite is she?” “Did she use her ‘womanly wiles’ to get ahead?” Etc, etc, etc.
