Work as a social, political, and intellectual idea, and exploring its history and evolution through a feminist lens
November 2020
Our work is inherited, through our caste or gender. Our hands may be soft and necks stiff, because of our class. Our backs may be strong, and stomachs empty, because of our history. Our bodies continue to do what they must to feed the hydra-headed gods of culture, tradition and GDP. What is the measure of work, when it’s not done by an upper-caste, upper-class male?
In Between Us/ Humare Beech Mein is a conversation between two women about making a film on caste. How do we film caste? What do we show? What do we hide? Who has access? Who refrains?
Where Anita brings us stories from the field, stories that became part of Nirantar’s Pitara as pieces of fiction that had an uncanny resemblance to lived realities. Each story is shared with women’s collectives in the rural and semi-urban areas, to spark off unlikely, sometimes unnerving conversations.
Feminist economists had long focused on time as a measure of work, or more specifically, as a measure of enumerating women’s work, even before we zoomed in on the endless time and labour women continued to expend on doing, doing, doing as the world ‘stayed at home’ during the pandemic.
The Third Eye's new series, Back Story, breaks down research, praxis, and lesser-know insights for a wider, non-academic audience, to help us all make sense of the world with a little more wonder, a little more depth. In Episode 1, we meet Panchali Ray, author of Politics of Precarity...
