School of Human Studies, Gender Studies.

The last two decades have seen the emergence of not just new markets but new market spaces that provide a visual experience of products and persons that closely approximates the field set up by the global media. Malls represent the concrete representations of unabashed celebration and acknowledgment of desire. Malls are one of the spaces that shape everyday lives suggesting the rightfulness of fulfilling sexual, cultural, social and gastronomic desires. One ‘category’ of persons presumably shaped by these spaces are those who work in them. Our concern is particularly with the negotiation of body and subjectivity as women travel daily, crossing borders of class and caste and neighbourhood -from the lower class world that forms their residences to the space of erotic bodies and hyper real images. The mall is a temple dedicated to the gratification of the body and all its senses. The young nubile woman working in the mall is an ideal conduit for the creation, communication and the cons...

The relationship between feminism and motherhood has not been without its complexities. These acquire additional layers when disability is introduced as a third aspect of this relationship. While feminists, from Adrienne Rich onwards, have critiqued the social construction of motherhood in a world that valorizes mothers without granting them any subjectivity, women with disabilities are rarely imagined as capable of care. This is an exploratory article on the disabled woman’s right to be a mother. It is based on secondary literature to suggest that rather than be seen as abject and incapable of mothering, women with disabilities may be thought of as potentially feminist in their maternal practice. As such, mothering with a disability interrogates the normative discourse of motherhood and care.

In my assignment, I will discuss various arguments on eugenics and birth control in context gender, class and caste. I will discuss how social stratification has become severe barrier in accessibility and availability of medical facilities. Firstly, I will introduce both the terms Eugenics and Birth control in general and which will accompany a brief summary of the birth control measures that available both in first world and third world . Secondly, I will problematise the idea of birth control which is largely focused on "women" as a category alienating the other gender that is the men saying that birth control measures may bring permanent infertility to women. Thirdly, I will look upon how a certain category of people are alienated from the accessibility of birth control measures (with reference to Caste and Class).

The aim of this paper is to look how the medical science has become a commercialized site which ignore the primary health issues and how the woman's body and her health is being exploited in its frame work through the field of surrogacy. I will also look at the debates around surrogacy through the works of Amrita Pande, Sama Resource Group for Women and Health, Kelly Oliver, Imrana Qadeer and Alison Bailey. I will start with the Introduction to surrogacy in general and even in Indian context and then discuss the debates around surrogacy. Then I will discuss the social determination of health in context of surrogacy and finally I will end the paper showing the crisis that medical science possesses in terms of women's health care in the periphery of surrogacy with the works of Michael Foucault and Imrana Qadeer.

The partition and the urge to have an independent India and Pakistan in 1947 came with a heavy price for women. A good percentage of population is exchanged due to the communal riots between Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims. This paper basically focuses upon the violence against women that took place during and post independence. These women were abducted, raped, forced to commit suicide and murdered in the name of religion. Women are believed to be the "honour" of the family and the nation state and hence their body became the site of violence and a legitimate one to attack a certain religion. This paper will consist of four sections. The first section will be the introduction which will describe the two categories of women in the post independence through the work of Ritu Menon. The second section will discuss the Abducted Persons (Recovery and Restoration) Act of 1949 in brief and how the law is just restricted to children and women and how the law promotes masculinity, the main driving agent of this subjugation. In the third section, the paper will focus at the "abducted" women who 2 | P a g e were raped and married by their abductors after killing their husband and father, how "the code of honour" was imposed upon them by the state and how the psychological trauma that these women gone through during and after partition is alienated from the frame of State policies through the work of Veena Das. The final section that is the conclusion will critically look at the three sections that would be discussed before. But my paper should not be taken as critic of the cited work.

Pratiksha Baxi is a well known scholar working on sexual violence, sociology of law, feminism, and legal ethnography. Her work "Justice is a Secret: "Compromise" in Rape Trial is basically a case study of a trial of rape, abduction and kidnapping in the court of Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

In this assignment my aim is to look at the violence that militarization is operating on Northeast India. My arguments will revolve around what kind of effect it is having upon the native people specially women and how it is reshaping the region. Rape, abduction, brutal killings have become a core part of the region now. I will try to look the main arguments regarding the Meira Paibi, how women came out of their domestic space to fight against the military injustice, challenged the age old patriarchal ideologies and how it became a great movement of rebellion against the State and defense agencies.

From the prehistoric period, women and children were the worst suffers of the armed conflicts both directly or indirectly. Their sufferings are attached to their counterparts who are taking account of everything in silence across the world. Moreover, the myth regarding the power of choice and having a liberating culture is the most reliable area of romanticism for an outsider about the women of Northeast India. The women of Northeast have a brilliant approach towards peace making in the region on account of which they have spearheaded a number of women's movements. A decade of activism, ranging from the massive protest by women in Manipur during British colonial rule and among the more recent protest is the Meira Paibis in Manipur against the Indian state. The Naga Mother's Association in Nagaland and most recent was the Mahila Shanti Sena in Assam. All these protest are actively working for resolving the disputes and the conflicts and negotiating for peace in different states of the region. 1 My aim in this chapter is look at how women through their participation in peace negotiation convey their feelings and representing the violent event as a source that can reveal how the state policy and government are acting as active agents in promoting these violence and the indigenous people has to go through a traumatic experience because of such state interventions.

This paper examines the links between labour systems and organisations and women's oppression in the below given articles. This analysis was carried out keeping in mind the framework of Marxist, Materialist, Socialist and Radical feminism and their work on sexual division of labour, domestic labour debates, social reproduction approach and unpaid labour. In article(s) where these paradigms do not apply as evidently, an attempt has been made to trace any other frame of theorization that the author may seem to be suggesting. The articles examined are:

This paper is a review of articles and books namely
Tanika Sarkar (2003) and Lata Mani (1998), Veena Das (2006), Uma Chakravarti’s book, Gendering Caste (1998) and Soibam Haripriya’s article (2012) in the North-Eastern Quarterly. The review seeks to trace the concept of sexuality in all these texts, all done through keeping in mind Foucault's work, especially History of Sexuality, Vol. 1

This article discusses the findings of a research report titled 'Capturing diversity: a comprehensive report on women in science and engineering in India'. By mapping the life trajectories of 130 women scientists of India, the article highlights their successes and struggles at different levels of their lives in order to have a career in science.

There are several women"s movements that generally, raise questions of gender and its consequences. Different ideologies, modes of action, complexity and disputes are raising some issues. The argument raise is about the representation of women participation in politics, their contribution and concern in term of gender inequality. There is no doubt women"s status in Vedic period was very high but after coming of invaders, especially Muslims? Women"s safety comes under a threat. This may show the patriarchal features of Hindu society. According to some female critiques, Indian code is seen as a culture that dominates women and denise , the freedom and empowerment. If we talk about the social reform movement of the nineteenth century the state of women condition was effected by the constituted bourgeoisie. The movements raised the issue of Widows oppression, purdha, sati, female infanticide, growing gender gap in education as some outcomes of fears for women"s safety. For instance it has been argued by some historians that the struggle over the abolition of sati partha was largely carried out by colonial rule. The nineteenth century initiated this process of transformation in the social, religious, political and in cultural sphere. Some revolutionary movements were dominated conventionally by bourgeois. Feminist joined these moments for women"s emancipation and defended women"s right. This shows the tremendous growth of protest against patriarchal social structure. If we talk about the women"s significance and their role in nationalist movement. They have received insufficient attention. It is important to note that, the large majority of women, seeking for response to change the historical forces because they are the one who have been unexplored and thus marginalized in history. The most common thing between the women"s movement that they all were fighting for change There are so many questions that we need some satisfactory answers and some answers for that we need relevant questions? 1) How does women"s participation affect their position in their family?

Silence revealed what women experienced during the partition of India. In late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, within the context of Hindu and Muslims, religion the question of sexuality and purity is consider which is to be behind the domestic sphere. But during the partition the female sexuality circulated in the public domain. The sexuality of women were possessed, an attempt of forceful violence towards purity of females. The abducted female their body encompasses the sexual economy of desire that is denied in the thologization of the purity of one's own ethic religious and national gendered subject. These women are citizens as sexed as well as rapes leaves woman with the choice of committing suicide as that she can be accommodated within the narrative of the nation as a legitimate and pure albeit-dead-citizen. These women faced violence on three levels: first, communal members of the "other" comm. Abducted raped and mutilated them. Secondly, familial because they were encouraged to commit suicide to protect the family "honors' and third, National as the new countries particularly India, forcibly recovered them stripped them women of their citizen rights and mandated they abandon their wrong children. Within the patriarchal structure women are often considered as the embodiment of honor of the whole community. As rape has always been a potent weapon of war in humiliating and emasculating the enemy.