We are happy to invite you all to our first talk for this semester in the Social Science Seminar Series by Mary E John. She will be presenting her paper titled ​“Indian Women in the Twenty-first Century: New Predicaments.” 

This presentation is an exploration of the new predicaments of twenty-first-century India, when women are no longer invisible and injustice against them can find public acknowledgement and witness powerful protests. 

There is considerable unevenness in the public acknowledgement of women’s issues, where some problems are much more visible than others. When women’s wrongs are identified, one issue in particular seems to saturate public awareness – namely, that of violence. Whether in homes or public places, whether victims are young or old, the list of instances of violence against women today is genuinely endless, and only keeps on mounting. 

The spotlight on violence is both a source of insight but also one that harbours potential blind spots in efforts to understand our current situation and its patriarchal underpinnings. Undoubtedly, the years following the so-called ​“Nirbhaya” Delhi gang rape have offered new understandings of sexual violence and rape culture. But there has also been an obscuring of the contexts structuring and constraining young women’s aspirations. These aspirations are much less visible, especially their deeply contradictory characteristics. 

On one hand, there is the extraordinary (but unnoticed and uncelebrated) entry of women into higher education in the last two decades to the point of crossing gender parity. On the other, India not only has one of the lowest work participation rates in the world but there has been a decline in women’s employment in the same period. 

Even as India’s #MeToo has opened up sexual harassment and violence in universities and some workplaces as never before, we must also ask ourselves the difficult question: When protests demand greater freedom from violence, how do we square this with women’s increased exclusion from basic forms of economic and social security and greater dependence on men?