Ladybug's field notes

When you talk of "feminism" and "women empowerment" the reaction of the larger public both off line and online is fear at best and vocal misogyny at the worst. As I work in an organisation that works on making discrimination and violence against women and girls unacceptable, we face this repeatedly in the villages that we work in. I for one, have always truly believed that a gender-just world is better for both men and women (even if I live within the gender binary) along with all the other genders. However, I often face a hostile reaction to the word feminism even from the educated. I have a doubt that it is majorly because of the word "fem" being associated with it and according to the norms of masculinity anything associated with females/femininity is often associated with inadequacy, lowering one's status, as well as becoming inferior. The so called woke men who engage in the issues of gender-justice and feminism also often come from a position o...

I spent close to two decades in the development sector and about a decade and a half of which was spent as a donor's worker. It feels like a good time to reflect on the learning :) One of the things that has really intrigued me is the "want" for swift results as a donor. I probably came into the sector at a time when the discourse was shifting from "issues of poverty and disenfranchisement take a long time to address" to "we need to see the change in our period in the organisation that we are working for" or in other words "we are impatient optimists". I also got the dominant thought of that time as follows: "What can make me Mohammad Yunus of health or education or livelihood?" Probably a lot of business leaders were asking this.  Dr. Yunus broke new grounds by showing the banks (a profit making business) that poorer segments of the society can be their customers too and he introduced the non-profit sector to the idea that ...

The other day I posted a news about Sitar Maestro Ravi Shankar and Annapurna Devi on my Facebook page.  A newspaper reported Ravi Shankar was uncomfortable with his wife's superior talent and that lead to the wife not playing publicly anymore. This was confirmed by the wife. I  used that example to highlight a deep seated problem of masculinity which is to remain superior in a marital relationship. I thought I was being cautious while putting up the post as I lamented saying, "Why men, in general" instead of "Why all men...". It seemed later, I was not cautious  enough. I t caused some hurt around. Not so much with the male readers, at least not to the extent that they felt the need to defend their creed. In one response/reaction I was told, I was generalizing. I, on the other hand thought, I was pretty conscious, most of the time to avoid unnecessary generalization,  based on isolated facts. I n this case, I defended generalization. I  soon however, remembe...