Women Interrupted - The Politics of Patriarchy

A trip down memory lane and examining India's commitment to gender equality beyond political grandstanding.

In this episode we look at some advances in gender equality over the last few months and mark the 25th year of the Beijing Declaration and Platform For Action.

In this episode we try to find answers to questions such as how women experience cities and if smart cities can make cities safer for women. Feat. Ayona Datta

A quick introduction to the podcast and what listeners can look forward to hearing every week.

The period debate is back in India after food delivery company Zomato announced it will offer period leave to menstruating employees. While the initiative was welcomed by many women, it was also criticized by others as being anti-feminist.

India has one of the best recycling rates in the world - we recycle 70% of all water bottles and soft drink bottles as compared to 31% in the USA. All thanks to informal recycling chains in our cities.
This chain starts with the waste pickers.

There are an estimated 1.5 million to 4 million waste pickers in India, who pick up, clean, sort and segregate recyclable waste and sell it further up the value chain.

80 per cent of them are women.

These waste pickers either sort and segregate waste from waste containers, or transfer stations and landfills.
These women come from some of the most marginalized communities, they are barely educated and are often from the lower castes which makes it easy to erase or invisibilize their contributions to our billion dollar cleanliness programs or generally life in the cities.They are the ones who are cleaning up behind us, after us. A recent study of women waste pickers during lockdown in Delhi, had showed they faced difficulties in going out to collect waste because the police were patrolling the streets.
They couldn't go out to work also because they lacked protective equipment.
68 per cent of those interviewed, reported that the shutting down of godowns and junk shops have made sorting and selling recyclables nearly impossible.
The study found them facing a shortage of food and unable to access essential medicines and healthcare services.
Now waste pickers are stepping out for work, irrespective of not having protective suits.
Waste pickers are also on the frontline of defense against the spread of COVID-19 because they are managing the city’s waste while exposing themselves to disease and infection.
The government needs to designate them as essential workers, provide them with a stipend, protective equipment and health insurance.

This show from the archives (1996!) has new relevance now the pandemic renders many courtships virtual. Caitlin Sullivan and Kate Bornstein co-wrote the book Nearly Roadkill: An Infobahn Erotic Adventure, based on their pioneering experiments with sex, sexuality, and identity over the then-nascent World Wide Web. Although out of print, the book is enjoying a revival in the second decade of the 21st century; it’s studied and written about as a classic of genderqueer speculative fiction, and for its honest arguments about clashing beliefs and biases. The interviewer was the now-late Sue Supriano. Update by Series Producer Frieda Werden.

Host(s): Sue Supriano; update by Frieda Werden
Featured Speakers/Guests: Theatre and radio practitioner Caitlin Sullivan, self-described as a cis female, and author, playwright, performance artist, actress, gender theorist, and nonbinary post-op transsexual Kate Bornstein developed a long friendship on the internet that was part sex, part playacting, and part working through their identities and their prejudices. They were interviewed when their book came out in 1996 by Sue Supriano.

Credits: Original production by Sue Supriano for her community radio program “Steppin’ Out of Babylon” that aired on KPFA-FM, Berkeley, California. Edited and later updated for WINGS by Frieda Werden.

Comments: Originally released as WINGS #31-96 Sexing the Net. Re-edited and updated to 2020.

As India gradually opens towards a new normal Menstrual Hygiene has remained a huge concern. A sizeable population of girls and women continue to grapple with challenges to access safe and hygienic menstrual hygiene products, information, and sanitation facilities required to manage periods hygienically and with dignity.
The COVID 19 pandemic has created a gap in production and distribution of menstrual hygiene products.
Periods don't stop in a pandemic - but in patriarchal societies where menstruation continues to be a taboo - they can be well ignored.

Around 3.5 million barefoot women health workers are fronting India's fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. These women are known as Anganwadi and ASHA workers - community health workers who work with women and children in their villages.

Anganwadis are rural health centers established by the Indian government in 1975 to address malnutrition among women and children. There are around 2 million Anganwadi workers in our country.

When the COVID crisis broke, they were enlisted for door-to-door distribution of dry ration, awareness campaigns and screening. Along with them, the government had also pulled in the services of around a million Accredited Social Health Activists, known as ASHAs, to track returning migrants, contact tracing, reporting or accompanying suspected COVID cases to nearby medical centers. They connect some of India’s most vulnerable communities to the public health care system, which is why they are an invaluable network for the Indian government for conducting awareness campaigns and door-to-door screening especially important now as migrant workers return to their local communities from cities.

This army of semi-literate women are burdened with an inordinate amount of health care interventions and are now an important part of India’s strategy to flatten the curve of the coronavirus. But they are poorly paid, overworked and inadequately trained and protected.
Imagine a male workforce of over 3 million people working under such conditions silently? Would they have been treated this abysmally?

A conversation with author Kiran Manral on life in a COVID world.

My guest this evening is Ina Puri. She is a writer, biographer, art curator and collector and author of several books on Indian art and contemporary artists. She has been associated with the visual and performing arts, and has been curating art exhibitions in India and abroad for over three decades. In this episode she tells us how much she is missing traveling to artist studios, the smell of paint, her grand daughter Samaira who will turn one soon and the forgotten treasures jumping out at her from forgotten shelves and drawers.

Suchitra Vijayan is a New York-based lawyer, foreign policy analyst, writer, and photographer, and mum to a three year old. In this episode, she raises some pertinent questions about privilege and poverty and COVID-19, while also talking about how hard it has become for women to balance work and life against the backdrop of the pandemic lockdowns and the kind of world she wants for her daughter.

I have a very special guest this evening - mah boi Che, who turns 15 today. We are under a strict lockdown in India and hence we have had to re-imagine the way we would mark the day. The dude was stuck with his parents for one - instead of in a coffee shop with his friends. But we made the best of it - some experimental cooking, lots of conversations and (bad) jokes. How are you planning to celebrate your child's birthday in lockdown?