Ultra Violet is a place for Indian feminists. It’s a place for sharing stories and views and questions. It’s a place for exploration, opinion and information. It’s a place where we can come together to understand what other feminists around the country–or around the world–are saying. If you want to write for UV, please read this. More about UV here.

We’re Talking About…

May 30, 2010

Good Girls Don’t Talk to Boys

GOOD GIRLS Don’t Talk to Boys. And vice versa, although an exception may be made for good boys who are simply lured by bad girls.
Recently, I came across this new item that talked about a young girl in a Chennai engineering college who killed herself because she was ticked off for talking to a boy. It [...]

May 25, 2010

A Sporty Conversation on Gender in the Academy

HERE’S A PART IMAGINARY, part real email thread of conversations among faculty members at an elite law university in India. Two developments are being discussed simultaneously – one is a weekly cricket match, and the second is the establishment of a women-only Women’s Law Society. The names of participants in the conversation have been changed [...]

June 15, 2009

No sex education for us. We’re Indian.

By Amodini Sharma
INDIA IS A populous country, and I’m pretty sure the citizens of India have something to do with it. I don’t think the storks are delivering all those babies, or that they are gifts of the Gods a la Kunti. Thus the move to squash teaching of basic sex education in schools [...]

March 20, 2009

How Early is Too Early?

AT THE PRESCHOOL that I run (where I also teach), there’s a certain action song we sing that goes like this:
Cook like mummy,
Yum, yum, yum, (repeat thrice)
Let’s have fun together!
Drive like daddy,
Knit like grandma,
Cough like grandpa….
…and by the time we come to “Be like teacher, Shh, shh, shh!” I’m ready to [...]

February 04, 2008

Education and The Single Woman

MY MOTHER IS a cost accountant. Only the third woman in all of India to get a certificate of practice when she received one, and the first in the Western India zone. She gave her last costing exam while working full time at the age of 28 and then finally deigned to marry my father, [...]