Behind the Scenes of "I wouldn't take no for an answer: How a solidarity-based sisterhood movement spread across rural India"
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.”
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!
Blending traditions and experimenting with new combinations, a catering service that began at a refugee reception center is winning over Italian palates.
Finding a foothold in Europe can be an immense logistical, economic, social and emotional challenge, but some immigrants are finding a sense of home in communities bound by belief.
With almost a third of young Portuguese living abroad, the country’s visa options and growing recognition of foreign qualifications help keep the economy on its feet. But despite so many immigrant workers coming from Portuguese-speaking countries, their degrees still don’t have the same clout as qualifications earned in Portugal.
“It’s just like a prison, but worse,” says Omar. “You don’t know when you’ll be out. You can’t do anything all day. You don’t even have your personal room. You feel crushed.”
Before industrialized farming conquered the continent, the crops that fed Europe were adaptable varieties that evolved as peasants freely exchanged seeds, from harvest to sowing, generation after generation. Reviving these seed systems could protect our food supply from future climate shocks – if EU regulations don’t strangle them out completely.
Do you share our mission? Sign up for our newsletter so we can keep in touch!
