We appreciate all contributions to our #WriteWithUs blogs published on our Gender Matters blog. And to illustrate our gratefulness, we give out a certificate of appreciation and a stipend to the most read blog of each month. We are extremely happy to share with you that for the months April, May and June we have found our winners! Let me introduce them to you.
The month of April was graced by Priya James’s blog which tore apart some persistent myths about social class and women’s empowerment. Abuse, she says “happens to educated, free willed, ‘independent’ women in India on a daily basis”. In this way she reminds us that “women’s liberation or empowerment is not simply about imitating Priyanka Chopra’s dressing style, walking on the ramp, getting a liposuction or blindly following Western culture”. Priya is a Speech Language Pathologist by profession. She is also an AAP volunteer (until recently), NDTV blog contributor and a free spirited individual.
For the month of May, Apoorva Hasija has been selected as a winner. Apoorva is a seeker, learner and dreamer. She is pursuing research in Philosophy from Centre for Philosophy, JNU. She has taught as a Guest Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, Hindu College and in University of Delhi in past. We are rewarding her for this blog, which contains these powerful lines:
“Gender matters, because I am much more than my gender
Gender matters, because it should NOT.”
We could not agree with Apoorva. Together with her, we look forward to a time when gender norms are relaxed and people are free to choose their own gender identities.
Lastly, our winner for June is Laura Isgold. She shared how the combination of her skin color and her gender identity almost got her kidnapped in Delhi. Laura, a young Canadian woman, explained that she never felt more conscious of her gender identity prior to the event. While these were the darker sides of Indian society, Laura also noticed very positive things. She was for example thrilled by the possibility in India of registering yourself as a third gender individual. Overall she concluded that for her, gender is “by all ideals is a social construct that has universal and local meanings”. Read more about her experience here.
Do you feel like you also have something to share like our recent winners did? We of CSR are always curious about new views, opinions and thoughts on gender. Therefore we invite you to join the movement. Send us your blog about gender and we will spread your message and story through our website and on your social media platforms. Who knows, you might even become our #WriteWithUs champion of July.
Click here to submit your blog entry. In case you have any additional info to be added to your blog entry (such as a photo, video, pdf etc), please mail it to WriteWithUs@csrindia.org.
We look forward to reading your blogs!
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