Dance bar ahead: Keep out : Part 1: Fundamentalisms and sexuality
The state government has embarked on a campaign to rid Mumbai of obscenity. The dance bars which employ 75,000 women, are amongst the targets. But is this just about dance bars or about the increasingly strident notions of purity and pollution, and about fundamentalism using the bodies of women as their locus of control?
Dance bar ahead: Keep out: Part 2: The right to sexuality
The ban on dance bars in Mumbai is ostensibly to protect youth from the sexualised environment of the bars. Instead of keeping the shadows and silences around sexuality intact, we need a rights-based approach to young people's sexuality, giving them the right to information that has a direct bearing on their health and well-being
What constitutes a woman's identity?
The recent ruling by the Supreme Court that even an illegitimate child must take the caste of its father has led women's activists to protest the continuing inequalities in property, custody and guardianship law in India, all of which continue to be determined through male descent
"Poverty and patriarchy -- not religion -- determine the status of women"
To get away from the Muslim stereotype, and the common belief that the status of Muslim women is determined by their religion and personal law, Ritu Menon and Zoya Hasan embarked on a path-breaking survey of 10,000 women. Their study, Unequal Citizens: A Study of Muslim Women in India, looks at Muslim women within the framework of poverty, gender and social disability
Baina beach demolitions: What about the sex worker's right to shelter?
Acting on orders by the Goa bench of the Bombay High Court, around 250 huts belonging to sex workers, on Goa's Baina beach, were bulldozed in an effort to 'clean up' Goa. 'Operation Monsoon Demolition' appears to have been based on the assumption that sex workers have no right to shelter
'Whatever violates the integrity of a woman's body should be considered rape'
Women's activist Brinda Karat discusses the importance of expanding the definition of rape to include violation of the body by unconventional means, especially in a country where two-thirds of rape cases involve children. A recent Supreme Court judgment refused to accept this stand
Flaw in the law: Custodial rape, inadequate evidence and acquittal
The lack of convictions in cases of custodial rape raises serious questions about the workings of the law
Sati glorification: Crime, society and the wheels of injustice
Despite protests both within Rajasthan and across the country, no appeal has been filed against the recent acquittal of those accused of glorifying sati, following the death of Roop Kanwar on her husband's funeral pyre back in 1987
Undoing sexism: Involving men in the battle against domestic violence
In India, the response to domestic violence until now has been to reassert women's responsibility for policing men's violence. Few efforts have taken up the challenge of primary prevention: interventions intended to stop men and boys from using aggression
Films and femininity
The conventional view that Indian cinema does nothing but reproduce patriarchal ideology is in itself a stereotype, says filmmaker and film researcher Venkatesh Chakravarty. In fact, our films are replete with female characters who bring the mightiest powers to their knees