As an organisation advancing Women’s Rights and dignity everyday, 365 days a year, earmarking one day to women seems slightly ludicrous to us, honestly.
We run the risk of appearing too nonchalant if we don’t celebrate it and too ignorant of lived realities if we do. But what is a celebration of this day and month really doing? Because we know only too well that it isn’t affecting the people it needs to.
So we will observe Women’s month with a clarion call for women’s agency. If we can’t make decisions for ourselves, are we actually free?
And we do this by sharing a recent video from our travels to Jharkhand.
To put this video in context:
The girl speaking is Sita (name changed) in a rural village in Jharkhand, where the community is dependent on ‘collecting dhibra’ (mining mica) from nearby mines of East Jharkhand, to run their livelihoods.
In the video Sita tells us that she willingly goes to collect dhibra -despite knowing the dangers and precarity of it- in order to get some pocket money to buy herself trinkets and other accessories.
Those who watch the video, tend to think that illegally mining mica is wrong -whether of your own volition or not- because of the many dangers it presents. There is a reason why the Indian government once deemed it illegal.
But have we considered Sita’s lived reality: her family’s hand to mouth existence, her Adivasi caste status, compounded with the fact that she is, after all, only a woman – in subordinated to her hierarchical superiors?
But Sita is also just another teenage girl. And just like all teenage girls the world over, wants to show off shiny new clothes and accessories to her friends?
Given this situation, does her decision to not burden her father but earn money herself, with the only means available, seem wrong?
How do we -those enjoying the Rights and liberties of a free world- decide what is right or wrong for someone who lives in a matrix of poverty, illiteracy, unemployment and hunger?
In a world that continuously and historically chooses to exclude, undermine, and overlook women, to have agency and choice is a fundamental Right.
The culture of patriarchy depends on women’s silence and lack of choice.
It is time to dismantle the master’s house, with whatever tools are available to the slaves.
