WUNRN
Women's Feature Service
INDIA PHOTO EXHIBITION
ENGENDERING THE NEW WOMEN AS AGENTS
OF CHANGE
Women's
Feature Service, in association with Care India, showcased 40 images of women
in an unusual photo-exhibition entitled, 'Engendering the New: Women As Agents
Of Change'.
Together
they told a compelling story of the grit and tenacity of ordinary women who
have transformed themselves, their families and their communities, while
battling great odds.
Photo: Bankura, West Bengal: Far
from being ordinary housewives going about their daily chores on bicycles,
these women are members of the all-woman 15-member village council, elected in
2003 for a five-year term. The women, most of whom are uneducated but equipped
with extensive community experience, ensured that their model Karisunda Gram
Panchayat successfully addressed the concerns of the 22 villages under it. From
having 'pucca' buildings built for all 15 primary schools, to ensuring 100 per
cent sanitation in Karisunda, these women have shown that "political
strength is not physical, it's moral".
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These were the hitherto faceless, unsung women from the
hinterland who had been featured in reports that WFS's network of development
journalists had filed all through the summer. Each story that came in was a
profile in courage and spoke of the endless capacity of women to adapt, change
and survive against all odds.
The women featured were either battling prejudices against AIDS in Manipur or
fighting for better working conditions in the salt pans of Kutch; eking out a
livelihood vending fish in Srinagar or broadcasting nutrition tips to slum
women in Chennai. Some were cultivating crops and hope in Maharashtra's
suicide-prone heartland by reviving ancient farming practices and forgotten
crops, others were operating computers in Andhra's tribal belt. Some were
fighting to put the ignominy of scavenging behind them, others were fighting to
get children out of match-making factories into schools.
In a remote eastern UP village where all public talk of sex was traditionally
tabooed, there were women promoting female condoms, even as the 'sarpanches' of
an all-woman panchayat in West Bengal's Bankura district fanned out on their
bicycles, spreading awareness and helping to build toilets for villagers. There
was a 10-year-old girl, swimming in a murky Begusarai village pond and dreaming
of becoming national swimming champs, while high up in a Himachal village, a
village midwife adapts to new health practices at the ripe old age of 80.
As one of the correspondents put it, "Although exploring places like rural
Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal is not something new for me yet this time I got
to see the new face of women's empowerment. I also got to realise that, in many
ways, India's rural women are far ahead of their urban/elite
counterparts."
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