On the 9th of June I was invited by the Director
of International Office of Durham University to team up with her to deliver a
talk in a workshop titled ‘Inspiring Women’. Sharne Proctor, the Director of
the International Office was the inspirational woman for this session. However,
she decided to ask a few international students to share their own and their
PhD stories in the workshop because she thought this might be a different and
possibly inspirational experience for the women present. Ultimately then, we
were a team of 4 (including Sharne). Sharne started with here fantastic and highly
inspirational story. This was followed by Elham Amini who shared her research
about women’s sexuality in Iran. Elham herself comes from Iran. Another
presentation was by Manizha Hadi on Women’s health in Afghanistan. Manizha is a
doctor from Afghanistan. So, there were three women with truly inspiring
professional and personal stories. Sandwiched between these was your’s truly –
not a woman, no inspirational story. So, what was I doing there? Well, I was
supposed to share stories of inspirational women that I had come across during
my PhD research and I assure you there are many of those. Here’s a narrative of
my talk from the workshop.
I had a field trip today and was meant to visit a nuclear
power plant in Torness. But I decided to ditch that and come here instead. This
was more exciting for me, even more than nuclear fission. Also, I figured I
would probably never in my life have as many women intently listing to what I
have to say.
I would start the presentation with a confession that the
woman on the title slide is not a research participant. She is my mother doing
prayers during the festival of Diwali. She is also the woman who inspires me the
most. But I won’t be talking about her anymore today. I’ll talk about the women
that I came across during my fieldwork and how they have become sources of
inspiration for me.
So, let me first tell you a bit about myself (Slide 2). My
research is on energy access in rural India and I specifically look at the
politics of energy access. Meaning I try to understand who gets or doesn’t get
access to what kind of energy and due to which reasons. I look at this politics
at various levels (local, national) but focus on trying to understand how this
plays out in people’s everyday life and within the households. For example
(Slide 3), we can see in this photograph that this household has access to
electric light which children can use for studying. But who is benefiting? The
male child in the front is studying whereas the female child is cooking dinner
on a wood fired hearth. What does electricity mean for her then?
But even with this kind of explicit discrimination and bias,
I came across several women who had found or were working hard to find
opportunities to make a place in their society. Certainly, they neither had the
educational qualifications nor the opportunities that women in this room (all
working at Durham University) have had. In fact many of these women did not
even expect to get the same opportunities that most women here get. So, I’ll talk
about four out of the several women I came across to give to an idea of the different
arenas that women are fighting and trying to make a space for themselves in
these villages.
So, the first woman to inspire me is the girl who wanted to
study (Slide 4). We all know Malala and her dedication towards education. She
is certainly inspiring but it’s not her that I refer to. I want to talk about
Bindu (Slide 5). Bindu is from a very socio-economically weak family. Her house
has no electricity. However, her brother Mahesh and other male children from
the society every evening go to a solar street light in their colony and study.
Bindu being a female can’t go out after dark and can’t share the space under
the solar street light as it is dominated by boys. But all she wants to do is
study. So, while her brother studies under the modern solar light, Bindu every
evening fills kerosene in her oil lamp and studies under it. This has very low light
and generates black smoke - harmful for both eyes and lungs. But all Bindu wants
to do is study. So, she carries on. (Slide 6) When I visited her home, every
one gathered around to talk and listen to me and get their photographs clicked.
Bindu didn’t care. All she wanted to do was study. She went by her daily
routine of filling oil and getting down to studying. She didn’t care who came
and who went. I don’t think I would have studied in the conditions that Bindu
was studying in but she inspired me by her persistence and focus. After all,
all she wanted to do was study.
(Slide 7) I found a woman who was known as power. Not Maggy.
We all know that she was the iron lady and was inspirational for many (if not
all). But I want to talk about Seema (Slide 8). Seema was known as power in her
village. They called her ‘Seema Power’. She lived in her little house with her
children. Her husband was a migrant labourer and lived in Bangalore, a city thousands
of kilometers from the village, for the most part of the year. In these
villages matters outside the household are generally dealt with by men. But
Seema’s situation, like many other women in her village put her in charge of
everything from inside the household to the outside. She recruited help of
other people from the village to carry out jobs that she couldn’t do, managed
the household finances and looked after children’s education. The family was
building a new brick house next to its current mud house and Seema was managing
the construction activities. In my visits to the village I saw her standing
firm in front of other men. Probably that is why she was known as power. Men
generally don’t take kindly to women who stand firm. Power was a name given to
make fun of her but for me this name actually epitomised the power that she
had. She had spent her childhood in a city and had experienced electricity. Her
village had no electricity but she aspired to have electricity for her children,
like she had during her childhood. She asked her husband to get a solar panel
for the household so they could have electricity. Her face had immense
confidence. Truly inspiring, the woman who was rightly called Power.
A woman that I interacted with over several days of my
fieldwork was the one who shared power. (Slide 9) No, no, not Hillary Clinton.
She did share power with President Obama but she was not in the village that I
went to. It was Rani (Slide 10). Rani’s husband ran a business of renting solar
lanterns in the village. This needed substantial work of collecting the
lanterns, charging them through the day and distributing them to the registered
people in the evening. Over the two weeks period that I visited Rani’s house I found
that often her husband was busy with the fields or cattle and Rani managed the
business. One of the most critical parts of this business was collating rentals
from people using the lanterns. Rani’s husband accepted that he was not good at
this and had lost money several times. But Rani was firm. Although she couldn’t
go to other people’s homes to collect rentals (being a daughter-in-law of the
village), she pulled them up when they came to collect their solar lanterns.
Her husband gave her a lot of credit for the smooth running of the business. In
my view the fact that Rani shared power with her husband and her husband prominently
and publicly acknowledged it was a step in the right direction, one that
inspired me a lot.
The last woman that I want to talk about is the woman who
has power (Slide 11). The German chancellor Angela Markel does hold the power
and has been holding it for a while now. She is truly inspiring but again I did
not get an opportunity to meet her during my fieldwork. I met Sudha (Slide 12).
About 7 years ago the government of Bihar, the Indian state that I was carrying
out my research in passed a ruling which reserved 50% seats for women in the
village council elections. This means that now at least half of the villages in
Bihar would have a female village heads. Sudha took this opportunity and jumped
onto the election bandwagon. Sudha and many women like her won the elections
and became village heads, a position that had been socially, culturally and
traditionally dominated by men. Sudha’s face reminds me to Seema - the women
known as power. They have the same confidence and self-belief. With the help of
her husband Sudha was now managing the development activities of the village
and interacting with the higher level state officials. She was participating in
the council meeting at the district level and arguing for her village’s
development. She was now the woman who had the power in this village.
The stories of four women that I have shared with you today
are just a drop in the ocean. Several women like them are struggling and
succeeding every day. I hope you have found the stories of Bindu, Seema, Rani
and Sudha interesting, if not inspiring.
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