Becoming women

Making A Difference
Edited by Ritu Menon
Women Unlimited
Rs 350  n pp 38

Never mind which city of the world it is, streets come alive when a SlutWalk is held. Quite often, the audacious garments (not so much on display in Delhi’s version) steal the show from the bold message being conveyed (a protest against the culture of blaming the victim in cases of sexual violence in public areas). And then, once the linguistic subversion of the word ‘slut’ has been amply debated, the question veers to the inevitable: has the fashionable (but so facile) feminism that is busy championing the short skirt gained primacy over old-style feminism that fought long and hard to change laws and make living slightly easier for women? To remain relevant and acceptable to market-led living, will feminism have to be less grrr, and more prrr, to borrow an expression frequently bandied about?

Making a Difference: Memoirs from the Women’s Movement in India does not answer those questions. As the title suggests, it is a compilation of personal accounts from some of the leading feminists and women’s rights activists of the country. The editor Ritu Menon had asked these women to talk about their forays into feminism (when, and how, exactly do you realise that you are a feminist), the struggles they waged and causes they promoted, and how they managed to sustain themselves through the difficult years. In this book, those direct, conversational narratives start speaking to you, devoid of academic jargon, their different voices amalgamating the major strands of the women’s movement through the fervent 1970s and 80s.

Full review here Hindustan Times

Two's company

Urvashi Butalia and Ritu Menon ran India’s first feminist publishing house for nearly two decades. Pioneers of any kind tell a distinctive story, as Arpita Das finds out.

In early 1984, when Ritu Menon and Urvashi Butalia were on the verge of starting Kali for Women, their friend and fellow publisher, the late Tejeshwar Singh told them, ‘Well, rather you than me to have taken such a risk.’ However, these two determined young women went on to start a press which rapidly became a phenomenon not only in Indian publishing but in the largely untapped field of feminist writing in South Asia. It is surprising, therefore, to hear them both say that they came to publishing ‘by accident’. Says Butalia, “My first job in publishing was as a paster-upper in Oxford University Press (OUP).” Menon too went looking for a job in New York after completing her MA in Literature, and found one with Doubleday as part of their newly formed market research team.
 
While at OUP, Butalia became involved in the burgeoning women’s movement in Delhi. It was evident that a mainstream press would not concern itself with the movement and with titles informed by a feminist perspective. Her next publishing job at Zed Press, London, where she actively worked on developing a feminist list, set the stage for the inception of Kali for Women. Butalia reminisces, “I hadn’t thought of a name then and it was while talking with friends from Zed and others that the name Kali emerged."

Full report here  Business Standard

Speaking of women

The setting up of feminist publishing house Kali for Women in New Delhi in 1984, was a watershed in many ways. 25 years later, Anita Roy retraces the journey.

In the early seventies, a trio of young, wild-haired women — Harriet Spicer, Carmen Callil and Ursula Owen, got together in London to launch a feminist publishing house. They chose the name Virago — meaning ‘a fierce or abusive woman’ , according to the dictionary. The munched apple logo on Virago’s book spines became synonymous with women who — from Eve onwards — have wanted to taste forbidden fruit, a Biblical reference also echoed in the pioneering British feminist magazine at the time, ‘Spare Rib’. The Women’s Press came along a few years later, its name, and distinctive logo — an upturned iron — played on the idea that ‘women’s work’ is domestic and mundane. Another important publishing house, Pandora, promised to lift the lid and unleash women’s words on the world. During the next decade, several feminist publishing houses sprang up across the world: Spinifex in Australia, Flora Nwapa and Co and Sritti ya Sechaba in South Africa, Domes in Japan, Cuarto Propio in Chile, Le Fennec in Morocco. In South Asia, there was Simorgh and Shirkat Gah in Pakistan, Asmita Women’s Publication House in Nepal, and in India, there was Kali for Women, set up in New Delhi in 1984 followed six years later by Stree, set up Mandira Sen in Calcutta.

Full report here Business Standard