Listen to this article
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!
The underprivileged are often more exposed to pollution either from the lack of policies that protect them from it or from actions by government authorities which increase their vulnerability to it.
“I not only understand the circumstances that lead people to move abroad, but I also share their experiences, know the problems and processes they went through to come here, and because immigrants tend to build networks to provide help for each other,” Landivar notes.
“we have to constantly demonstrate our value and are questioned for pointing out the attacks and misogynistic coverage that has been carried out for decades without any of these renowned men of power mentioning it.”
“I tried to bargain with the policemen, but they demanded N500,000 ($770) or nothing. Next, they drove me to my bank branch beside Sheraton Hotel and told me to go and withdraw the money for them.”
My oxygen is dipping. I have blacked out. When I wake up, the nurse is telling me I should lose weight. Am I going to survive? I must be. No one tells a dying person to lose weight, do they?
Do you share our mission? Sign up for our newsletter so we can keep in touch!
We’re researching your journalism experience at Unbias the News, and we would appreciate you sharing your thoughts, experiences and ideas.
We want to get to know you, our reader, and the knowledge and understanding of what you want will influence our approach to telling better stories with which you, our audience, can connect.
