Category: Gender Sociology

  • An Interview with Misty Heggeness, Author of Swiftynomics

    About: Misty L. Heggeness is co-director of the Kansas Population Center, Associate Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at the University of Kansas, and former Principal Economist and Senior Advisor at the US Census Bureau. She is also creator of The Care Board, a dashboard of economic statistics built by and for caregivers that brings…

  • Care Work and Emotional Labour in Urban India

    Historically, the beginning of nannies, governesses, and wet nurses as an occupation is largely traced to Western Europe, where women from marginalised communities, such as African Americans, used to work as nannies for upper-middle-class white families. Post-liberalisation, India also saw a boom in the economy, whose impacts were multidimensional, ranging from expanding income to dual-income…

  • NEGOTIATIONS WITH PATRIARCHY IN CHANGING SPACES

    I was born in Sidhpura, Kasganj, a small town in Uttar Pradesh. Every community lives in harmony in this town, but most of the population is inhabited by the Baniya community. According to the Varna System, Hindu society is divided into four varnas that are, Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaisya, Shudra, and those who do not come…

  • Stirring the Pot of Women’s Subordination: Women, food and patriarchy 

    ‘Maa ke haath ka khana’ (food cooked by mother) is a statement of utmost sentimental value in Indian culture and a source of exhibiting love and affection. This emotional connection between mother and food can be argued to have a patriarchal aspect. Similarly, one can analyze the same about the tradition of ‘Pehli rasoi’ (first…

  • An Introduction to Mahasweta Devi’s ‘Draupadi’ and the Emergence of the Subaltern as her own Rescuer

    In the Mahabaratha epic Yudhishthira, the Pandava prince, and a plural husband of the princess Draupadi, loses everything in the episode which narrates the story of the Game of Dice; a familiar and recounted episode from the great epic and one which plays a determinant role in the war between the cousins. In a pivotal…

  • CAPITALISING THE NEW FACE OF MASCULINITY

    Introduction: “This primordial investment in the social games (illusio) which make a man a real man – the sense of honour, virility, ‘manliness’, or, as the Kabyles say, ‘Kabylness’ (thakbaylith) – is the undisputed principle of all the duties towards oneself, the motor or motive of all that a man ‘owes to himself’, in other…

  • IS GENDER A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT? EXPLAINED

    Synopsis: There has been a long-standing debate about whether a person’s gender is biologically-defined or ascribed to them based on social constructions. Feminist theory divides sex and gender into two distinct aspects of individuals’ identity, thereby separating the biological and the social. This article explains the difference between sex, or the biological, and gender, or…