Test Web Push Notifications Post
Ezekiel Khan Fashion Visagist 💄 Showcase Insights Consultation Collaboration
A woman who breaks all stereotypes
Behind the Scenes of "I wouldn't take no for an answer: How a solidarity-based sisterhood movement spread across rural India"
- Written by Ankita Anand
- Illustration by Vikas Thakur
There are all kind of assumptions about rural women. People imagine such women do not have much formal education and so they are ignorant. They are supposed to be weak, and dependent on their spouses and families. Women in villages are not expected to know about their rights or have the courage to stand up for them.
In the west Indian state of Maharashtra, there is a woman who flies in the face of all these prejudices: Akkatai Teli. We at Unbias the News chose her story, told by Sanket Jain, because it dismantles stereotypes, points towards solutions, and reaffirms our own activist “bias” as a feminist publication.
Akkatai is elderly, unlettered, widowed, and lives in a village. Her personal phone number, written on the wall outside her house, is a hotline for women who find themselves in violent situations. For men who misuse that number to issue death threats to her, she keeps a sickle beside her bed.
Domestic violence is not a spatial issue but a gendered one. It happens in villages, towns and cities. While a higher number of perpetrators of violence against women live in low-and lower-middle-income parts of the world, each day 137 women are killed by family members globally. During Covid-19, men across the world became even more violent in their homes, so much so that the UN termed it the “shadow pandemic”.
Akkatai and the women in her informal support and solidarity network are remarkable because they no longer wish to be counted in the data above. They are overthrowing their socially imposed identity of “married women” to reclaim their self-respect and dignity as human beings. They have stopped decrying their “fates”, and trembling under the tyranny of “what will people say”. Instead they are outraged by the idea of men’s superiority, like Akkatai is when she says: “What shocks me every time is how a man thinks he can decide everything.”
When poet Warsan Shire held an atlas, ran her fingers across the world,
“and whispered
where does it hurt?
it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere”
We see these dots across the atlas as women, and our aim in bringing their stories together is that one day they would join to form a rock-solid chain. If you have a similar story to share, do write to us, and we would be honored to hold space for it.
Please consider a donation to support the work of our all-women newsroom. We create a space for journalists facing structural barriers, working towards a more equitable, inclusive world of journalism. Join our mission today!
Related Posts
Mailpoet last post template test
Share this article Table of Contents It’s a sunny Thursday in Chacaito. With company buildings, restaurants, shopping centres, hot dog vendors and bank branches, it’s
Mailpoet Blog Post Newsletter Test
Authoritarianism Is Spreading. So Is the Fight Against It. Dear friends, Gaby Ramirez here. Somehow, we’ve already made it halfway through 2025. And at Unbias
Community in La Cañada Real: The women defending Spain’s biggest informal settlement
For decades, Moroccan immigrants have called La Cañada Real home. Now, real estate speculators are closing in on the informal settlement. Authorities are starving the community of basic infrastructure and demolishing homes. But women are pushing back against eviction and uniting against oppression from outside their community and within.
Consent violated: how creators pay the price for stolen OnlyFans content
Up against a platform and police who seem to view abuse as inevitable, OnlyFans creators are fighting back against online harassers who gamify stealing and distributing their copyrighted material.