Meet Srilatha Batliwala
While browsing Action Aid’s website ahead of a job interview, I came across Srilatha Batliwala’s name. Out of curiosity, I googled it and found that we’re both Bangaloreans interested in many of the same things.
Srilatha Batliwala is a feminist activist, researcher, scholar and trainer whose four and a half decades of work has spanned grassroots movement building with marginalized urban and rural women, research and scholarly work, policy advocacy, grant-making, and capacity building of young women activists around the world. Above all, she is well known for building theory from practice, including on women’s empowerment, women’s movements, and feminist approaches to movement building, monitoring and evaluation, and feminist leadership. She is currently Senior Advisor, Knowledge Building, CREA, an international organization that works at the intersection of gender, sexuality and human rights.
She agreed to speak with me about the best back story that set her on this path. The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Tell me how you found this career? Was it an accident?
It wasn’t an accident. I was put on this path from an early age. My grandmother sowed the seeds of feminism in me. She raised me until I was six years old while my parents were away in England as my father completed a doctorate. She was in a pretty oppressive marriage. My grandfather indulged us children, the grandaughters in particular. But he was quite authoritarian with his wife.
My grandmother always encouraged me to ask questions, to speak my mind. She instilled in me ideas that a woman must become a professional, must earn her own money, must have her own bank account and control her own money. My aunt, who entered politics, was also a strong role model. When she contested and won a seat as a Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha) from Kolar (a district in Karnataka), I accompanied her on the campaign trail.
What role did your education play?
I attended Bishop Cotton Girls’ School in Bangalore followed by a degree in English literature at Central College in the city. During the second year of the programme, a professor introduced a handful of students to feminist literature outside of the syllabus because of whom I read works by Kate Millet and Simone de Beauvoir. The access I had to these theoretical and analytical frameworks explained many of the injustices I had witnessed since childhood.
For example, I had a friend whose family would send her to stay in a dark and dusty garage outside the family home every month when she was menstruating. She wouldn’t be allowed to eat meals with everyone else or even enter the property because she was considered to be “polluting” during the time. A neighbour who I grew up with was expected to get married as soon as she finished school. These incidents made my bile rise. And I saw these were problems that boys didn’t have to deal with.
By the end of my undergraduate studies, I knew I wanted to work with women. So I enrolled at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai for a master’s degree in social work, family and child welfare. There were no courses in gender studies (in India) back then (in the 1970s). Here, my interest in working with women from poor backgrounds in rural communities deepened.
A few years later, I founded a nonprofit with a group of colleagues based on the philosophy of Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, according to whom the role of the activist was to not give dole but to hold space for people to talk about the injustices they faced that they would not otherwise have the opportunity to. The focus was to help women build their own agenda of change and to reimagine an alternative.
How do you define feminism?
Feminism to me consists of three facets — it is a set of beliefs of how societies need to be restructured and transformed so that gender is not a principle around which it is organised, it is a set of analytical frameworks to examine society, power and equality and it is a social change strategy.
Why is feminism important?
Many ideologies preceded feminism but all of them stopped at the door of the household. Feminism is unique because it was the first to open that door and interrogate, expose the violence, inequality and discrimination in some of our most private, intimate spaces.
Feminism is not anti-male. It is anti-patriarchy, against a system of male privilege.
Feminism is not anti-child. It is the ability for a woman to choose motherhood or not, to decide how many children she has.
Feminism recognised our bodies as a site of power.
And so many years ago, my grandmother understood this, which she lived through me. I was the site of her resistance.
How can we practice feminism?
Start with self-love. Celebrate and appreciate yourself.
Then be self-critical to identify ways of how you’re upholding inequality — against yourself or others.
Ask what concrete changes you can make to dismantle these structures.
Support people and efforts that are trying to dismantle this discrimination.
In Women Wins this Week
Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York resigned around allegations that he’s harassed nearly a dozen women.
Kathy Hochul will take his place to become the first woman to serve in this position. I haven’t spent much time in New York but on a summer day in Manhattan, it is easy to forget a world exists beyond what you can see because it is so multicultural and vibrant. This makes me think how it took a #MeToo moment for one of the most liberal places on Earth to get a female governor.
And Virginia Giuffre who accused the millionaire, Jeffrey Epstein, of trafficking her to Prince Andrew, has filed a lawsuit against the royal in New York. It’s not the greatest but watch the documentary, Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, on Netflix, for more details about the case.
In a welcome move I wish other industries adopt, the Tour de France is retiring sexist traditions like “podium girls” and finally introducing a women’s event.
The Olympics have just finished but please read this excellent piece about motherhood and the world’s greatest sporting event.
Read this lovely poem, which reminds me of this Guardian story I think of often.
There is so much exciting news in journalism. Sarah Khan is now editor-in-chief of Conde Nast Traveller Middle East — you can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Rawdah Mohamed is a model and the first hijab-wearing fashion editor at Vogue. Originally from Somalia, Rawdah grew up at a refugee camp in Kenya with ten siblings while fleeing the Somali civil war and sought asylum with her family in Norway when she was eight years old. She will lead change at Vogue Scandinavia.
I had no idea that Versha Sharma is the editor-in-chief at Teen Vogue and she’s just wrapped up her first cover with this current cutie.
I’ve also only just heard of Jane Fraser, who, earlier this year became CEO of Citigroup and the first woman to lead a Wall Street bank. I know the world of finance is notoriously male-heavy but that it has taken until now for a woman to occupy this position is plain ridiculous.
As someone with an unconventional career trajectory, I’m digging this piece.
I have very mixed feelings about this. I love seeing women make great investments and business moves that then makes their wealth multiply. In this case, Reese Witherspoon started a production company aimed at advancing women’s narratives. The media house, Hello Sunshine, has now been sold for a cool $900 million, making Witherspoon’s net worth soar. Except Blackstone, the private equity firm buying Hello Sunshine, is led by two men… Reese Witherspoon and Hello Sunshine CEO, Sarah Harden, will join the board of the new company. But will that be enough to keep the mission of women’s stories alive?
Sometimes, it helps to know (and gain some perspective) that the pressure for women to get married is not just a weird South Asian thing.
Not a win but read about the death of Sarah Hussein.
And follow this account on Twitter which is only a hint at the scale of this problem. I would argue every country needs an equivalent social media presence.
I’m thinking a lot about what Srilatha said: we can all find ways to stand up to wrong. Where will you begin?
xx
AA