Local Gender Issues and perspectives

“There were many emotional topics related to girls, such as sexual harassment and patriarchy. These cannot be seen like other issues, that you write an application to the government office and the problem is solved. It is not like that." Samata, Participant, Akshara (01,11)

The videos made at Akshara focused on problems such as women and toilets, open spaces for women’s sports, sexual harassment and masculinity. These, and many such issues, feature in the NGO’s local context. Some of these were also problems faced by the women participants themselves, as part of the slum communities they lived and worked in. In their videos, they presented stories and perspectives of women living in the slums on these issues.

The issues that the participants in Mahita dealt with in their lives were quite different. I had noted in my daily diary (02, D2) that while attending a panel discussion organised by a television channel, where the participants from Mahita were invited along with other girls from ‘reputed colleges and schools’, the questions brought up by them, such as child marriage and education for girls, were not discussed by anyone else there. Others brought up matters such as marrying a partner of your choice and the ability to choose your own career. The issues that existed in Mahita’s local context revolved more around basic human rights, since the.girls and young women there were not able to access those basic rights such as right to education, to health, to work, or to live in

security. Table 7 shows the different gender issues that the videos captured, in Akshara and Mahita.

Table 7: Featured gender issues in Akshara and Mahita’s videos

Akshara Mahita Female Foeticide Child Marriage Masculinity and gender sensitisation Female Foeticide

Street Sexual Harassment Girl child’s access to food and nutrition

Women change-makers Girl Child Education

Women and open spaces for sports Higher education for young women Women and sanitation issues Proper sanitation in Girls’ Schools Women and their aspirations Women and opportunity to work

Women and Vocational Training

Matters of concern for the Akshara and Mahita participants were not completely different though. Participants in both the places talked about*facing sexual harassment in public, for instance. Still, where the participants from Akshara were trying to present the complexity of how gender plays a role in society, those at Mahita were trying to fight for their basic human rights as women. They lived in an environment that had much more serious restrictions on women and more severe inequality. Nussbaum (1993, p.1) writes, “Depressingly, many traditions have portrayed women as less important than men, less deserving of basic life support, or of fundamental rights that are strongly correlated with quality of life, such as the right to work and the right to political participation”.

Further, I found that the participants had their own perceptions of gender issues, sometimes seeming to accept what others see as oppression. During the data collection, many participants from Mahita mentioned that watching television is seen as a sin for Muslims, and initially, were hesitant to appear in front of the camera (02, D2; 02, G8). However, they were ready to do ‘behind-the-camera’ work, such as scripting and editing. The video trainer at Mahita mentioned that initially the girls would insist on wearing the burqa in front of the camera, but after some time, they started coming in front of the camera without it and had fewer apprehensions (02, 112). The participants themselves talked about this change, saying that they understood that this work was being done on social issues and there was nothing ‘wrong’ with it. Now, they wanted to pursue the opportunity to learn video-making and sought to be on camera:

“Now, these girls are moving ahead by themselves. They want to be in front of the camera, and they fight amongst themselves to be there. ” Masiya, Community Organiser, Mahita (02,16)

As in the case of Mahita, the perspective of the participants from Akshara too changed after they joined the project. Akshara attempted to promote a gender perspective which included both men and women. They wanted to follow a framework, where gender was not just about women, as is the case in several development processes (see Menon 2009). “A gender perspective does not simply focus on differences between women and men, but considers how this differentiation acts as the basis for the unequal distribution of power” (Gillard et al., 2008, p.256). So, the challenge laid in placing forth a gender perspective on issues and not talking about only women’s problems, as the Co-Director explained in her interview:

“Then we were talking about even toilets...toilet as an issue, but what about women’s access to toilets? So, we constantly want to bring the aspect of how do we look at men and women differently in whatever film we do.” Nandita Shah, Co-Director, Akshara (01,15)

To understand the concept of gender, it might be necessary to look at women not as individual entities, but in relation with men, and how that affects certain issues (Anand, 2009). The participants in Akshara treated the matters they dealt with from this perspective, with the aim of building an equitable society:

“I am not saying that we are thinking only about us (women), but you (men) too. That’s why a gender perspective is needed. It is important to improve these things in this generation and the next. Then we will be able to make a right structure for a world for all.” Yashodhara, Participant, Akshara (01,13)

The participants at both the research sites told me that their perspective differed now, as a result of the orientation and training they received from the organisation. They, said that they saw gender issues in a new light, even those they had overlooked previously. It meant understanding about the restrictions on their own mobility, their relations with the opposite sex, ways of dealing with the concept of gender in spaces around them and questioning the prevalent gender norms in their personal lives - for example, questioning why they should not be allowed to travel alone (01,12; 02,111).

In the following section, I discuss the norms that restricted the participation of young women in both cases, and I analyse how these participants were able to question those norms.