Journal of Women's Studies: University of North Bengal, Vol. 10

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://ir.nbu.ac.in/handle/123456789/4860

EDITORIAL

We are happy to announce that the 2021 issue of Journal of Women’s Studies is now published.

Women’s Studies Journal has focused on women's concerns, gender, sexuality, caste, literature, and media since its first publication. Feminism may appear to be an area where there has been extensive research and studies and perhaps nothing more remains to be said, but on the contrary, there endure areas untouched or unexplored enough in feminist studies with new areas of emerging concerns. Feminism is crucial to understanding the sites of sex, gender, and subjectivity. A common theme in feminist studies remains the investigation of gender inequality.

The research papers presented in this issue have as their key concerns discrimination against women, men, and the non-binary, objectification (sexual), inequality, sexism, stereotyping and representations in literature which is fundamental to feminist criticism.

Feminism(s) opens up inquiries into the unequal distribution of power under the heteronormative model, under the hegemonic gender norms structured and normalized in a society that has consistently maintained the male dominance, opens up inquiries that help to disrupt the assumptions of sex and its designations into the rigid categories of sex/ gender.

While feminism is an area that has engaged many researchers, Women’s Studies as an academic discipline is relatively young and is looked at as an unconventional discipline as far as Indian universities are concerned, although there is NET examination in it and quite a number of Universities in India offer a full credit post –graduation course in Women’s Studies.

It is important to remember that the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), funded by the government of India recognized the status of women in India as its “priority area” in the early 1970s and ordered studies for the CSWI that would seek to improve social investigations into the status of women in India through initiative in women's studies. It is important to recognize the pioneering role of the S.N.D.T Women's University Research Unit on Women's Studies, which was founded in 1974. Another pioneering organization is IWAS. The decision to form the Indian Association of Women's Studies was announced at the 1980 National Conference on Women's Studies (Mazumdar, 1981). According to Desai et al. (1984: 5), the Indian Association of Women's Studies (IAWS) adopted objectives to break the isolation between academic and social activities by welcoming all involved in teaching, research, and action for women's development as its members in order to develop and disseminate information, organize specific action programmes, and assist institutions in developing programmes related to teaching, research, and action. It aimed at establishing a stable base for starting and supporting the advancement of Women's Studies. The decision of the authorities of NBU to introduce Post graduation in Women’s Studies in University of North Bengal from 2021 has been greatly appreciated by NAAC peer team. They have recognized and appreciated the space within the academia devoted to discussions of gender inequalities (and other related inequalities) that exist in society as a significant addition to the broader spectrum of education in the area. Being multidisciplinary in approach Women’s Studies allows its students to engage in critical discussion with other academic disciplines. The interdisciplinarity of Women's Studies can be understood through its collaborative programmes that incorporate gender issues and viewpoints from a wide range of disciplines. Women's Studies attempts to disseminate knowledge of gender discrimination, understand the reasons for such discrepancies and find out ways to combat the conditions of inequality in order to identify strategies to eradicate them.

The essays in this volume are multidisciplinary; they present a slew of issues that call into question some of our conventional thinking and interpretations. The essays critique the social constructivist assessments that the politics of gender hegemony instruct and promote by using the feminist theoretical frameworks. The writings raise questions regarding the ‘personal’ and the 'political', investigate the matrices of men’s public visibility in relation to certain prevalent codes in order to get a better understanding of the pressures that men face in societies that have strong gender norms, endeavor to explore into the realms of the human psyche, discuss women’s representations in literature, research into films and the constructed ‘gazes’, attempt to redefine Fourth Wave feminism’s inclusion and intersectionality through the Digital Platforms.

The editorial board of Women’s Studies, University of North Bengal, extends its sincere thanks to the authorities of the University of North Bengal for their support and encouragement, to the members of the Advisory Committee, and the Academic Board of Women’s Studies for their valuable inputs and support. We take this opportunity to thank all the contributors for their essays. We thank NBU Press team for their patience and support. The authors reserve the responsibility of answering any future queries about methodology or citations and referencing.

I express my gratitude to the entire editorial team whose commitment and perseverance has made this issue possible.

With best wishes.

Dr. Zinia Mitra
Professor, Department of English & Director, Centre for Women’s Studies

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    About the Contributors :
    (University of North Bengal, 2021)
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    Taming the Mind : Women in the Lunatic Asylums of Colonial Bengal
    (University of North Bengal, 2021) Bhattacharya, Dahlia
    The Lunatic Asylums in the colonial period did not have proper medical treatment or identification of female patients. The infrastructural facilities for the women were not given attention by the asylums.The Victorian morality recognized ‘work’ as a therapy and the ‘mentally ill’ were made to work in the garden, carpentry, grinding wheat and other works, leading to monetary gain in the asylums of Bengal.. The funds were applied to maintain the asylums, sometimes the local jails and led to profits for the British. The paper seeks to look into the colonial policy with regard to asylums and the hard work imposed upon the female lunatics leading to asylum ‘industries’ and how it received a new direction of economic gain.
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    Scribbles on Theorizing the Personal in Feminism and Women’s Research
    (University of North Bengal, 2021) Mitra, Zinia
    The terms "personal" and "political," like "private" and "public," are undergoing important changes in the current era, where Carol Hanisch's famous dictum "the personal is political" still serves as a persuasive justification for more recent uses of primary evidences in research and autobiography studies. Second wave feminism has clearly benefited from the awareness that ‘the personal is political,’ which influenced the growth of social analyses and theories, sparked fresh activities, and expanded the range of topics that could be categorized as ‘feminist issues.’ We have a strong aversion to the notion of subjectivity even in the context of subjective writing projects and are aware of the impersonal, distant tone employed and encouraged in academic works. The article questions why certain personal/subjective information is valued as knowledge or truth while some other information is downplayed or dismissed as anecdotal or just as personal experience, and it proceeds to examine feminist research and interventions in the area.
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    Power, Patriarchy and Women’s Agency in Microfinance
    (University of North Bengal, 2021) Chakroborty, Bhaskar
    Technological innovation and environmental degradation have been prime agents for the existence and altering of social systems, historically world over. If latter provides basic resources for survival and sustenance and builds essential link between man and nature for human existence; the other provides tools (machines, industries etc.) with which to exploit resources for the same by earning livelihood (central to work). There are the changes seen and experienced not only in material world in terms of change in economic production from agriculture to industry, but also in terms of gender relations, with respect to women and work; especially because their work has been considered as informal and soft menial household work. Various theorists have studied this relationship between women and work (especially in the context of rural agriculture and allied activities), by framing an essential link between women, production and technological innovations. The paper focuses on the changing nature of work in relation to women’s participation in agriculture, as central to development. Then it looks at women empowerment thorough microfinance assistances.
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    ‘Matinee Idol’ and his Spectators: The Female and the Male Gaze
    (University of North Bengal, 2021) Sen, Sudarshana
    The 24 July 1980 was a fateful day for the Bengali movie viewers. The superstar of Bengali cinema breathed his last. The year 2020 marked his fortieth death anniversary. The euphoria with the star of fifties and sixties lasts even today. His mannerisms, styled acting and his charisma had inflated profit for the producer, showered fame for himself creating a furor among the cine-goers. This article will focus on how spectatorship and gendered gaze can build a ‘star’ and what their relation to the star may be and what were the elements that acted as a catalyst to this.
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    “Equality and not about Equal Rights”: Redefining Fourth-Wave Inclusion and Intersectionality through the Digital Platform Agent of Ishq
    (University of North Bengal, 2021) Hazra, Mousumi
    The definition of the historically abounding F-Word, Feminism, is continuously being shifted from one notion to another, varying in accord with class, caste, and gender across generations. Starting with the website Everyday Sexism launched by Laura Bates in 2012, Fourth wave feminism has recently witnessed a paradigmatic shift from the previous waves of feminism. Currently, as we consider the fluidity of gender construction and interact with various forms of it every day, social media or representation of women on-screen has been one of the most influential factors behind constructing our ‘already gendered’ selves. As the applications of power disseminate the idea of empowerment, equality and freedom also differ alongside. Hence, today’s feminism looks up to a lot more exposure where people can put themselves out there without adhering to any kind of censorship or asceticism. This approach has been productively exercised through the online multimedia digital platform Agent of Ishq, directed and introduced by the filmmaker Paromita Vohra in 2015. This research will initially be focused on the way how some mainstream Indian movies, featured to be among the ‘top 10 feminist films’, formed the idea of feminism vis-à-vis how far the feminist implication through Agent of Ishq addresses and adheres to the current ‘wave’ of feminism in India. Keywords:
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    Voices beyond Death: The Spirits of Women in the Short Stories by Rabindranath Tagore
    (University of North Bengal, 2021) Sarkar, Sanghita
    Fears of ghosts and ghoul and devotion towards the unnumbered local gods and goddess have always been an integral part of Bengali belief system. Inevitably, this has left a profound impact on Bengali literature as well. Be it the great Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore or the compositor of Bengali folk narratives Dakshinaranjan Mitra – spirits and ghosts have always been an inseparable part of Bengali writers’ creations. Though often reduced to the category of children’s fictions, many of these Bengali ghosts’ stories have crossed the boundaries of superstitions and beliefs and plunged into the opaque realm of human psychology. The current paper is an attempt to delve into this uncertain realm of human psyche with the help of three short stories by Rabindranath Tagore – ‘Kankal’ (The Skeleton),’Nishithe’ (In the Night), ‘Monihara’ (The Lost Jewel). The paper with the help of psychoanalytical feministic philosophy has attempted to explore how these ghosts’ stories have gone beyond the limits of local beliefs and superstitious sensations and brought out the problematic representation of gender roles and identities in contemporary Bengali society. In order to bring out the societal fissures the current paper here tries to raise such hypothetical questions as: i) How do these short stories expose in a covert manner the subjugation of the women in contemporary Bengali society? ii) How has the woman-self obtained voice after death in these short stories? iii) How do these stories register protests by the woman-spirits against the patriarchal Bengali socio-cultural beliefs and system?
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    Gender Roles and the Quest for Identity: A Study of Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence
    (University of North Bengal, 2021) Akram, Wasim
    Women in all ages remain the object of suppression. They often neither have any voice nor an independent identity of their own. Men become the deciding factor about how a woman should behave and act. They have always been taught to be docile, submissive, and conventional to be accepted by the society. They are made to behave in a certain stereotypical way to maintain the male supremacy. They are given a position inferior to men in a hierarchical social structure, controlled and dominated by men and they merely serve as objects of this control and rule. The whole purpose of their existence revolves around serving in the family as someone’s daughter, wife, sister or mother. These stereotypical gender roles assigned to them by the society keep them confined within the four walls of familial entanglement where they do not have any voice or agency. Shashi Deshpande in her novel, That Long Silence captures this traumatized and painful existence of women in a middle-class Indian family. The novelist portrays the ever-suffering existence and the quest for independent identity of women through the presentation of the character of Jaya who has to maintain silence throughout her married life for the fear of disrupting familial comfort and security. I, in my paper, will attempt to address this crisis raised by the author and also show how the society creates a boundary for women to delimit their capabilities and stifle their voice and agency in a constrictive social structure that does not allow women to speak.
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    “Where are the tlawmngai Zo/Mizo men?” Gendered living spaces and Masculinity codes
    (University of North Bengal, 2021) Chakraborty, Anup Shekhar
    In order to address the gender disparities that exist in developing societies, it is necessary to have an understanding of gendered spaces. Institutions, both formal and informal, frequently play a role in determining how a society’s resources, freedoms, and privileges are distributed among its members. This research investigates the matrices of men’s public visibility in relation to the tlawmngaihna code in order to get a better understanding of the pressures that men face in societies that have strong gender norms. The research does this by looking at the world through the lens of men and masculinities. Both the machismo of politics and the edicts of the Nexus of Patriarchy place constraints on the naturalness of men and their capacity to connect with the natural world. The conventional masculine members of the Zo and Mizo ethnic group are reimagined as exemplars of ecologically responsible perfection. Despite this, members of the community and outside observers continue to question their visibility, asking, “Where are the tlawmngai Zo/Mizo men?”