Women and Democratic Movements in India: Changing Dynamics, Altered Perspectives
Dr. Ilina Sen, professor at the Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies, Tata Institue for Social Studies, Mumbai, will discuss the articulation of women’s voices within resistance movements and explain the issues, debates, and interrelationships between these voices and other social formations and movement streams.
Light refreshments will be provided before the lecture.
Photo credit: McKay Savage/Flickr.
As the women’s movement struggles with issues of theory and organization, it becomes important to understand the use of women’s bodies as a space where contestations of power are played out, as well as the possibilities and limitations of the state as an agency in the achievement of women’s equity. The increasing militarized response of the state is often accompanied by widespread and systematic sexual violence against women. The women’s movement has historically been part of the overall social movements for democracy in many parts of the world, as it has been in India. In the pre-independence period, this relationship has been, by and large, acknowledged.
Dr. Ilina Sen is an internationally known feminist scholar, human rights activist, a pacifist, an agronomist, a builder and manager of institutions committed to equitable and participatory development, and an author. Dr. Sen is a professor at the Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies, TISS, MUMBAI and a professor of Gender Studies at Mahatma Gandhi Hindi University in Wardha. She manages an innovative NGO, Rupantar, in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh. Rupantar, set up by Ilina and her husband Dr. Binayak Sen, houses programs including a village clinic in a falciparum malaria endemic area, an agricultural program focused on organic farming and preservation of indigenous biodiversity (e.g., of rice), a program on food security and distribution systems, and several women’s empowerment initiatives including providing resources for victims of domestic violence.
She has authored several books including but not limited to, "A Space within the Struggle: Women's Participation in People's Struggles," "The Migrant Women of Chhattisgarh," and "The Women's Movement in India." Together, both Ilina and Binayak have worked for more than three decades among some of India’s most impoverished and socially stigmatized populations (miners, peasants, and India’s indigenous groups) on issues of health, livelihood, and civil liberties.
This event is co-sponsored by Association for India's Development-IOWA; Iowa United Nations Association; and the University of Iowa's Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies; Crossing Borders Graduate Program, Global Health Studies Program and South Asian Studies Program in International Programs; Pentacrest Museums; and the Forkenbrock Series on Public Policy at the Public Policy Center.