Shannon Philip
(University of Cambridge)
Garima Jaju
(University of Cambridge)
Manali Desai
(University of Cambridge)
Chair:
Manali Desai
(University of Cambridge)
Discussant:
Manali Desai
(University of Cambridge)
Format:
Panel
Streams:
Gender & generation
Technology & innovation
Sessions:
Friday 8 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Gendered Violence and Urban Transformations in the Global South IV.
Panel P16d at conference DSA2022: Just sustainable futures in an urbanising and mobile world.
In this panel, we invite ethnographically or qualitatively informed papers that look at women’s everyday negotiations of interpersonal violence, in the larger context of the changing urban landscapes of the Global South.
Long Abstract:
Gender based violence – its actual occurrence, its looming possibility or its structuring force – acts upon already existing gendered social worlds and women’s positioning within them. It is important to move away from focusing on singular ‘acts’ of violence, and instead look at the whole of gendered social worlds that women occupy in which violence is managed within negotiated social relations, aspirations and social performances. It is these social worlds that create the conditions for violence, that absorb the shock of violence and get reinterpreted and renegotiated in the wake of violence. Focusing on social worlds, we look at conjugal relations, kin relations, friendships as well as the relational creation of personhood. These relations are significantly shaped by the urban context, which provides a distinctly urban moral, ethical as well as cultural and socio-economic framework within which they operate. Questioning the roles of gender and its inequalities and violences marks important possibilities for sustainable and just futures for urban contexts around the world.
In this panel, we invite ethnographically or qualitatively informed papers that look at women’s everyday negotiations of interpersonal violence, in the larger context of the changing urban landscapes of the Global South. We are keen to explore the relationships between masculinities and femininities and their many changing cultures and embodiments in various social contexts. We are particularly keen to engage with scholars working on urban contexts in South Asia and Southern Africa that speak to the themes of the panel. This panel will also bring together insights from The GendV Project led by Prof Manali Desai at the University of Cambridge which looks at gendered violence and urban transformations in India and South Africa.
Methodology - This is a paper based panel. Papers can be supported with PowerPoint presentations that use photo, audio or video material. All panellists will work with the panel conveners to think creatively about engaging audience participation for an inclusive and interactive session.
This paper analyzes how incidents of gender violence become highly publicized in Indian news media, incite exclusive narratives of public mobilization and outrage, and the relationship between news media, caste, and class inequality in the continuation of gender violence with impunity.
Paper long abstract:
Gender violence has consistently pockmarked the Indian mediascape since the 1970s. The mass-mediation of gender violence, particularly through news reporting, is connected to the political economy of Indian media, the politicization of gender violence by Indian women's rights movements, and the construction of moral panics and sensationalism. This study uses both computer-assisted content and ethnographically informed textual analyses of the headlines of The Times of India (TOI), India's oldest English newspaper, between 1970 and 2020 to ascertain how news media reporting of gender violence has changed alongside sociopolitical contexts and in relation to social inequality, namely class and caste. I argue that TOI's reporting is catered to an urban, upper-class reader-subject through case labeling practices around geography, use (or not) of victim and perpetrator names, as well as consistent use of sensational reportage which obscures the intersectional reality of gender violence in India as consistently presenting the violence as exceptional. These changes and consistencies across the time frame reveal not only TOI's prioritization of elite readers but construct an upper-class and upper-class reader-subject and ideology which constructs an elite urban sensibility of gender violence that is removed from its actuality at the crux of gender, class, and caste inequality. These reportage practices sustain class and caste inequalities and are barriers to mitigating the continual victimization of minority women in India with impunity.
Discuss the causal link between gender-based violence and HIV risk of migrant women in India and Africa in urban areas. GBV increases HIV risk directly by forced sex and indirectly by limiting agency to maintain safe sexual behaviour through impact of fear and trauma by a repeated act of violence.
Paper long abstract:
Gender-based violence (GBV) affects 30-60% of women worldwide, with significant mental, physical, and sexual health consequences. Predominant among these health outcomes are sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. Being a migrant in unfamiliar urban spaces accentuates women's risks to various forms of GBV and consequent HIV risk. Women experience GBV at all stages of migration and are committed by different actors, including smugglers, traffickers, authorities, intimate partners, and other migrants. Refugee women, asylum seekers, and undocumented and trafficked migrants are at high risk of sexual violence during the migration process and post-migration. Discussing studies from India and Africa, the paper draws multiple intersecting pathways demonstrating link between GBV and HIV risk of migrant women a) forced or coerced sex for trafficked women increases HIV risk due to damage to the genital area b) violence, or the threat of violence or threat of deportation in case of undocumented migrants, limits their agency to negotiate safer sexual behaviours c) experiences of violence in childhood or adolescence increases the likelihood of high-risk behaviour in later life, which accentuates in unfamiliar urban spaces, thus increasing risk of HIV d) without appropriate livelihood opportunities, migrant women in large cities engage in survival sex work and lack adequate choice to negotiate safer sexual behaviours e) migrant women without appropriate means of survival engage in low skilled labour in urban areas and lack agency to resist coercive and transactional sex f) violence as a protraction of stigma and discrimination experienced by HIV+women, hindering access to treatment and care.
Based on ethnographic research with women working in a red light area, my paper rethinks decriminalisation of sex work as anti-violence. This challenges the abolitionist framing of 'decrim' efforts as oppositional to ending violence against women in India.
Paper long abstract:
The pandemic witnessed negotiations between Indian grass roots sex workers' collectives and the state, where 'sex work is work' was used as a rallying cry to ensure sex workers' access to to state relief. However, these attempts were criticised by abolitionists who equate sex work with violence against women (VAW). Embedded in a radical feminist approach and couched in concerns about human trafficking, this approach decries decriminalisation efforts as oppositional to ending VAW. I draw on four months of ethnographic research with sex workers in an Indian red light area to challenge this, arguing, in turn, for a rethinking of decriminalisation as anti-violence in the lives of marginalised women in India. I highlight how the origin of criminalisation of sex work in and as colonial control of Indian women's sexuality continues to shape everyday violence against marginalised Indian women (including outside sex work) through control of her sexuality, autonomy, and participation in the informal labour market.
A detailed analysis of two ethnographic vignettes illuminates this through (i) a close examination of the impact of a brothel raid on the social relations of a brothel household within the red-light area, and (ii) an exploration of how everyday violence in sex workers' lives is affected by gendered violence outside the red-light area. Decriminalisation, in this context, allows us to imagine different possibilities , where state and familial power in the lives of the women is removed. Moving beyond 'sex work as work', 'decrim', therefore, is configured as an integral part of the toolkit to end VAW in India.
Through this paper I seek to discuss the ways in which unmarried women in India negotiate everyday instances of patriarchy, to navigate patriarchal taboos surrounding out of marriage sex, pregnancy and abortion in India.
Paper long abstract:
Despite abortion being legal in India since 1971, there continues to be discrepancies in the women's access to abortion. Societal norms that consider out of marriage sex and pregnancy taboo stigmatises those who engage in out of marriage sex. However, this scenario is rapidly changing and there is growing research evidence which shows that young people are engaging in out of marriage romantic and sexual relationships. Despite this, young women's access to safe and confidential abortion care continues to be dominated by societal norms that stigmatised them for having sex and becoming pregnancy.
Based on 45 in-depth interviews (as part of my PhD study) conducted with women who had abortions in India as unmarried women; this paper looks at the ways in which young unmarried women engage in everyday negotiations to subvert the stigma surrounding out of marriage sex and pregnancies during their abortion journeys. These negotiations unfold at the individual as well as structural level, with young women selectively hiding their sex lives, pregnancies and abortion experiences from spaces where they may experience backlash; which casts a shadow of potential violence on their abortion journeys.
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Garima Jaju (University of Cambridge)
Manali Desai (University of Cambridge)
Short Abstract:
In this panel, we invite ethnographically or qualitatively informed papers that look at women’s everyday negotiations of interpersonal violence, in the larger context of the changing urban landscapes of the Global South.
Long Abstract:
Gender based violence – its actual occurrence, its looming possibility or its structuring force – acts upon already existing gendered social worlds and women’s positioning within them. It is important to move away from focusing on singular ‘acts’ of violence, and instead look at the whole of gendered social worlds that women occupy in which violence is managed within negotiated social relations, aspirations and social performances. It is these social worlds that create the conditions for violence, that absorb the shock of violence and get reinterpreted and renegotiated in the wake of violence. Focusing on social worlds, we look at conjugal relations, kin relations, friendships as well as the relational creation of personhood. These relations are significantly shaped by the urban context, which provides a distinctly urban moral, ethical as well as cultural and socio-economic framework within which they operate. Questioning the roles of gender and its inequalities and violences marks important possibilities for sustainable and just futures for urban contexts around the world.
In this panel, we invite ethnographically or qualitatively informed papers that look at women’s everyday negotiations of interpersonal violence, in the larger context of the changing urban landscapes of the Global South. We are keen to explore the relationships between masculinities and femininities and their many changing cultures and embodiments in various social contexts. We are particularly keen to engage with scholars working on urban contexts in South Asia and Southern Africa that speak to the themes of the panel. This panel will also bring together insights from The GendV Project led by Prof Manali Desai at the University of Cambridge which looks at gendered violence and urban transformations in India and South Africa.
Methodology - This is a paper based panel. Papers can be supported with PowerPoint presentations that use photo, audio or video material. All panellists will work with the panel conveners to think creatively about engaging audience participation for an inclusive and interactive session.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 8 July, 2022, -