1st Edition
Women in Bengal In Reality and Through Representations
This book analyses the status of women in Bengal, India, by examining the versatile everyday living conditions of women, and how they are represented as individuals and a category in the media.
Contributors to the book depart from the discussion that women in India have a varied experience of living, of thinking and acting specific to the regional cultural context. Caste ideology specified privileges and sanctions according to innate attributes, which differ by sex as well as ethnicity, class, caste, minority status and marginal position are present intersecting lives and rendering unique life experiences. With a focus on women and their lived experiences, performances by them and performances imitating women’s roles, the book offers a complex and rich analysis of the reality of women’s lives based on research and reflections by 25 women scholars. Organized into two sections the book presents women in reality, their living conditions, struggles and women as represented in films, stories, framed in plots sometimes by women and sometimes by men. The chapters provide insights on how institutionalised gender distinctions create subordination and marginality of women and their struggles to survive in a society dominated by hetropatriarchal ideology and its practice.
This book improves our understanding of various dimensions of gender and transgender relations in India. It will be of interest to researchers in Gender Studies, South Asian Culture and Society and Studies on India.
Introduction Part I: Women in Bengal: In Reality Chapter 1. The Partition, Changing Mindscapes and Evolving Contours of Intimacy, Aparna Bandopadhayay; Chapter 2. Peeping in a Girls’ Madrasa in Malda: Getting an Insider’s view, Srabonti Choudhuri; Chapter 3. Debating the Livelihood Narratives of Home-based Zari Working Women of Panchla Area, West Bengal, Malinee Mukherjee; Chapter 4. Care Crises Facing the Urban Middle-Class Elderly Women in India, Sinjini Roy; Chapter 5. Exploring Liminal Identities in Indigenous Jatra Performances, Amrita Middey; Chapter 6. Contradictions at the Feminine Space of a Kali Temple, Soma Dutta; Chapter 7. Plight of Tiger widows of Sundarbans: Their Struggle, Cyclone and Pandemic, Sudeshna Saha; Chapter 8. Acid Attacks in West Bengal, Tumpa Mukherjee; Chapter 9. Motherhood: A Sacred desire or predicament? Keya Bagchi; Chapter 10. Unfolding Voices: Addressing the issues of Inconsistencies in studying The Indian Jewish Women, Shrabani Majumdar; Chapter 11. Conflicting well-being of earth and future generation: Gendered fertility crisis in West Bengal, Nibedita Bayen; Chapter 12. Political Perception and Engagement of selected women professional of Kolkata: A Qualitative Focus Group Study, Siuli Mukherjee and A. K. Mukherjee; Chapter 13. Looking forward at Livelihood Question Through the Lens of Gender and Sexuality as perceived by Transfeminine Individuals, Srabasti Majumdar; Chapter 14. Relocating the subaltern voice in the ‘hijra’ subjectivity(s): a Sociological Analysis of a lifestory, Anwesha Bhattacharyya; Chapter 15. The ‘Invisible Half’: Women’s Work in India in the Twenty-First Century, Nandini Mukherjee, Sanjukta De, and Jhilam Roy; Chapter 16. Women, Linguistic Violence and Marginalization in India: An Exploration, Chandrabali Dutta; Chapter 17. Exploring Institutional Birth and Organizational Culture: A Case Study of Matritva-Griha, Rukmani Sharma Part II: Women in Bengal: Through Representations Chapter 18. Anglo-Indian Women in Indian Cinema: Characters and Performances, Sudarshana Sen; Chapter 19. Hyper Visible or Visibly Undervalued? Women in Post Pandemic Bengali Print Advertisement, Amrita Basu Roychowdhury; Chapter 20. Denying Manhood and Becoming Women: Case Studies from India’s Past and Present, Rajarshi Chakraborty; Chapter 21. Sociological Study on the Journey of Devi Manasa towards the acknowledgement of her Divinity, Suparna Sarkar; Chapter 22. Donna Hoke's Digital Essay on Intimate (Male) Rape, Epistemic Apertures, and Fourth- Wave Feminism in India: An Argument, Kusumika Dasgupta; Chapter 23. Social Media Advertisements and Women’s Empowerment: Imprints of Change? Tanusree Paul; Chapter 24. Women in Rituparno Ghosh’s Cinema: A Selective Study, Mimi Bhattacharyya; Chapter 25. Centering the Margin: Rabindranath Tagore, Nation-building and Mother-Child Intimacy, Nabamita Das; Appendix; Index
Biography
Sudarshana Sen is Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Gour Banga, India. She is the author of Anglo-Indian Women in Transition (2017).
