Heroine Of Her Own Epic

SWARNA RAJAGOPALAN is a political scientist and independent scholar. She is also the founder of The Prajnya Trust in Chennai, which works towards gender equality.

- Swarna Rajagopalan

“BUT WHERE ARE THE WOMEN? If we knew of experienced women with leadership skills, we would surely nominate them.” This is the most infuriating defence offered for the exclusion of women from leadership roles and political nominations.

Most infuriating because it demonstrates clearly that no effort has been made to identify, contact and include the countless women who make schools, colleges, residents’ welfare associations, mohalla committees, consumer action groups and other collective or social activities run smoothly. Their work underpins a host of social goals from education to public health to alleviating the consequences of social inequality but, leave alone acknowledged, it is not seen.

To this end, feminists set about making women’s work visible in many ways. We write histories that uncover their work in areas as varied as science and diplomacy, for instance. We gather their writings and publish them. We recognize their contribution through special awards. We challenge their absence from important contexts like cabinets, boardrooms and judicial benches.

The NGO I run has an archives project, which crowd sources images from women’s personal collections to document the invisible work women do in the public sphere. We are particularly interested in the women who form the crowd (for instance, those who march in protests) or work in the back rooms, providing support (those who paint the banners). For us, it is evident these constitute both experience and leadership. In 2015 and 2016, we ran two calls for photos, both of which called on women to identify each other or better, self-identify as leaders. The response was pitiful.