Journal articles on the topic 'Women's Centre (Bombay, India)'

AbstractThe decades from the 1940s to the 1960s were ones of increasing contacts between women of India and Australia. These were not built on a shared British colonial history, but on commitments to visions circulating globally of equality between races, sexes, and classes. Kapila Khandvala from Bombay and Lucy Woodcock from Sydney were two women who met during such campaigns. Interacting roughly on an equal footing, they were aware of each other's activism in the Second World War and the emerging Cold War. Khandvala and Woodcock both made major contributions to the women's movements of their countries, yet have been largely forgotten in recent histories, as have links between their countries. We analyse their interactions, views, and practices on issues to which they devoted their lives: women's rights, progressive education, and peace. Their beliefs and practices on each were shaped by their respective local contexts, although they shared ideologies that were circulating internationally. These kept them in contact over many years, during which Kapila built networks that brought Australians into the sphere of Indian women's awareness, while Lucy, in addition to her continuing contacts with Kapila, travelled to China and consolidated links between Australian and Chinese women in Sydney. Their activist world was centred not in Western Europe, but in a new Asia that linked Australia and India. Our comparative study of the work and interactions of these two activist women offers strategies for working on global histories, where collaborative research and analysis is conducted in both colonizing and colonized countries.

Abstract This essay explores two different ways by which ideas and “problems” of the “world,” “India,” “Indian literature,” and “world literature” were experienced, discussed, translated, imagined and remade in specific spaces like Bombay or journals such as The Indian PEN. I focus on one relatively formalized organization, the PEN All-India Centre, which was founded in Bombay in 1933 as the Indian branch of International PEN, and on a contemporary poet, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, and the informal network of writers and artists close to him. Through the widely different agendas, practices, concerns, contexts and forms of writer collectivization which I outline in this essay, the PEN All-India Centre in the 1940s and 1950s, and the Bombay poets of the 1960s did try to eat the corners of the world and of world literature away. They aimed to break on the world stage, reclaimed an “India” that included what was non-Indian, and put forward, through translation and a cut-and-paste “collation” of the world and world literature, an idea of internationalism and interconnectedness where provincialism was the enemy. By discussing the situated, critical, and imaginative processes of reworlding that were at stake, and the struggles they gave rise to in the case of the PEN All-India Centre, I explore how these writers also put forward defiant practices of cosmopolitanism that reallocated the Eastern and the Western, the peripheral and the significant.

An examination of the diverse patterns of women's migration challenges abiding stereotypes of Indian history: the urban worker as a male “peasant-proletariat” and women as inhabiting a timeless rural past. When men opted for circulation between town and country, wives and children undertook the actual labor of cultivation for the survival of “peasant-proletariat” households. Men retained their status as heads of the family and, even though absent for long periods, their proprietary interests in the village. Yet towards the end of the nineteenth century, many unhappy, deserted, and barren wives, widows, and other women were able to escape to the burgeoning cities of Calcutta and Bombay and the coal mines, where they experienced new processes of social and economic marginalization.Much attention has been given to women's migration to overseas colonies and the Assam teagardens. Such migration has been seen as doubly negative, not only harnessing women to the exploitative contract regimes, but also subjecting them to sexual violation. A general assumption is that women were deceived, decoyed and even “kidnapped,” since there was no possibility of “voluntary” migration by women. Such a view of women's recruitment was produced by a variety of interests opposed to women's, especially married women's, migration, and eventually influenced the colonial state to legally prohibit, in 1901, women's “voluntary” migration to Assam plantations. This provision was an explicit endorsement of male claims on women's labor within the family.

AbstractNew finds of Indobatrachus pusillus (Owen, 1847) from the Bombay (India) region are described. Some hitherto unknown skeletal elements have been revealed which render more precise the systematic position of this species. Other recently described Indobatrachus species are shown to be synonyms of I. pusillus. The opinion of Noble (1930) and Lynch (1971) on the systematic position of Indobatrachus in the subfamily Myobatrachinae of the family Leptodactylidae is confirmed. New ideas on the paleogeography of the genus Indobatrachus and its probable spread from the supposed centre of origin during the Mesozoic are presented.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the Bombay textile mills of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to provide an account of the roots of business–society relationship in India and contribute to postcolonial perspectives on corporate social responsibility (CSR). This search is premised on the understanding that India has embarked on industrialisation from a set of productive relations that differ from European feudalism. Design/methodology/approach The data for this study have been obtained from published works on Bombay Textile Mills such as Chandavarkar (1994, 2008), Morris (1965), Wolcott (2008) and Clark (1999) and some Annual Reports of Bombay Mill Owners Association. Further Kydd (1920) has been used for history of factory legislation in India. Findings Evidence suggests that practices in mills were informed by notions of custom and fairness, which resulted in flexible hours, socially acceptable wage outcomes and work sharing. Individual reputations built through use of discretion within networks of patronage spanned both workplace and neighbourhood, interlinking the social, ethical, political and economic lives of owners, jobbers and workers. Jobbers’ authority was earned in return for providing support to a production process, mirroring Birla’s (2009) “layered sovereignty” differing markedly from delegated managerial authority. Workers’ share in surplus value was important along with autonomy, both of which were negotiated through customary networks and protest. Research limitations/implications The paper suggests that a postcolonial approach to CSR implies an expansive notion of responsibility that goes beyond a Western focus on wages to encompass worker autonomy and countervailing power. Postcolonial accounts of CSR history can only be understood as emerging from a triadic interaction of imperial interest, subordinated native business and native societal relationships. This contrasts with conventional approaches that look at CSR’s emergence simply as a process internal to that society. Account of Indian CSR trajectory is in part a journey of native business from responsible practices to a messy tessellation of legal exploitation and illegal customary concerns. Practical implications The findings of this paper suggest that it is possible that customary practices of care and concern might still be surviving in Indian business even if only in the illegal and informal realm. Thus CSR programs in the Indian context might be useful to bring to centre stage these customary practices. Originality/value This study documents the evolution of business–society relations in a post-colonial context and shows how they are different from the Western trajectory.

Since graduating from medical school eight years ago, I have had the chance of experiencing clinical psychiatry in four countries on four continents; Bombay and Goa, India, my home, where I trained in medicine and began my psychiatric training; Oxford and London, United Kingdom, where I acquired a taste for academic psychiatry and completed my clinical training; Sydney, Australia, where I worked in a liaison unit in a large general hospital and a community mental health centre; and now, Harare, Zimbabwe, where I am conducting a two year study on traditional concepts of mental illness and the role of traditional healers and other care providers in primary mental health care.

AbstractIn the last 15 years, India has witnessed the expression of a variety of new non-conformist religious practices performed by Muslim women. A range of vibrant campaigns has been pioneered by Muslim women's associations, asserting women's claims to hold and lead congregational prayers, enter and manage mosques, visit shrines, officiate Muslim marriages, and issue shari‘ah-based legal decisions. This article explores the twin questions of why these experimental remodellings of women's Islamic observance and leadership have been so pronounced in the Indian context compared with much of the Islamic world, and furthermore, why Muslim women's rights activists have put such confessional matters at the centre of their work. Exploring a series of specific female-led assertions of religious agency centring upon mosques, shari‘ah councils, and a Sufi shrine, the article argues that India's variant of ‘secularism’, which has normalized the state's non-intervention in religious institutions and laws, has given women the freedom to embark upon overhauls of Islamic conventions denied to their counterparts elsewhere. Simultaneously, this same framework for handling religious questions has historically given intra-community and clerical voices particular influence in regulating Muslim community affairs and family laws, compelling activists to seek women's empowerment in individual and local community contexts to further their objectives, including through the assertion of experimental forms of religious conduct.

Background: Blood grouping consists of both forward grouping; reverse grouping and both procedures should agree with each other.A blood group discrepancy exists when results of red cell testing do not agree with serum testing, usually due to unexpected negative or positive results in either forward or reverse typing. ABO and Rh blood group discrepancy is associated with incompatible transfusion reaction.Blood group discrepancy should be resolved before transfusion and blood group to be properly labeled to prevent transfusion reaction.Methods: A prospective study was carried in SCB blood bank which is under the Department of Transfusion Medicine, SCB Medical College and Hospital, Cuttack, Odisha from January 2015 to October-2016. Total 25,559 blood samples of patients were included in the study and hemolysed samples excluded. The ABO and Rh D typing was done by tube technique using monoclonal IgM (Tulip Diagnostic P Ltd.) Anti-A, Anti-B, Anti-D and pooled A, B and O cell.Results: A total of 25,559 blood group testing were done where we found 57 blood group discrepancies with overall frequency was 0.22%. Out of 57 discrepancies we were found 20 (35.09%) cases of technical error and 37 (64.91%) cases of sample related error. Among these sample related problems, we found weak/missing antibody, weak antigen expression, rouleaux, cold autoantibodies, cold alloantibodies, Bombay phenotype with the frequency of 13.51%, 2.70%, 2.70%, 54.06%, 8.11%, 18.92% respectively.Conclusions: Mistyping either a donor or a recipient can lead to transfusion with ABO-incompatible blood, which can result in severe hemolysis and may even result in the death of the recipient. Any discrepancy between forward and reverse blood grouping methods should be resolved before transfusion of blood components.

AbstractTextile manufacturing in India and the Ottoman Empire transformed fundamentally in the nineteenth century, when mass-produced goods imported from Europe permeated local markets. Faced with increasing competition from abroad, local producers changed their techniques, materials, designs, and target customers. At the same time, processing industries emerged in places with intense mercantile activity, introducing new meanings, relations, and patterns of work. This article investigates the role played by gender in the shaping of labour markets and class politics in two export-oriented industries that developed simultaneously: the silk-reeling industry in Bursa and the cotton-spinning industry in Bombay. It shows that the secondary economic value attributed to women's work, combined with rural connections of workers, brought down wages and subsidized capitalist profits in both sectors. Within the emerging industrial workforce, ideas about appropriate roles for women and men provided the vocabulary and constituted boundaries of class politics. Bringing gender into the debate of industrial development and class, the article reveals parallels and contrasts in two non-European settings that are rarely compared in the existing historiographies.

This paper explores the complex relationship between Indian feminism and the law and legal systems, as reflected in the recent (2015) Bombay High Court judgment on domestic violence. It is divided into two sections. The first section looks at feminist interventions in marital disputes and domestic violence through grassroots efforts, and outlines the multidimensional and hybrid feminist understandings of domestic violence, discusses change strategies and ethical principles that underpinned their action, and addresses the enactment of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 (PWDVA) as one such strategy against domestic violence. This section also focuses on feminist dilemmas and foregrounds the issue of women’s autonomy in situations of domestic violence. The mainstreaming of feminist legal interventions through the PWDVA has brought new challenges for feminists and the second section discusses this issue by focusing on judicial intervention in deciding the boundary of counselling and mediation practices by protection officers under the PWDVA. We suggest that as seen in the 2015 judgement, while the judiciary has upheld some aspects of feminist practice and disallowed reconciliation in situations of serious physical domestic violence, its over-emphasis on equating physical violence with domestic violence and its protectionist stance has limited women’s autonomy and gone against feminist counselling principles and politics undergirding feminist interventions in situations of domestic violence. We suggest that this judgment can be read as a dialogue within a section of feminist groups in India who endorse feminist political ideals of liberty, individual rights, and equality and seek to institutionalize these within the law. This paper is an analytical and interpretive piece and not an empirical inquiry into legal practice or a survey of case law developments of the PWDVA. It focuses on normative questions of theoretical and policy relevance arising from feminist engagements with law.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of ownership structure and corporate governance on dividend policy in emerging markets, like India. The study also analyses the moderation effects of board independence between ownership and dividend payout. Design/methodology/approach The data set of 1,546 Indian firms over the period of 2006-2017 has been used in this study. Tobit and logistic regression methods has been used. The data used in this study are collected from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) Prowess database. The sample firms are listed on Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and National Stock Exchange (NSE). Findings First, the study finds a significant positive influence of corporate governance on the decision to pay dividend and is an important determinant of the payout decision. Second, the study finds a significant negative relationship of family ownership with dividend payout decisions which indicates that family firms pay lower dividend. Finally, the result from the interaction effect of board independence with family ownership has significant positive influence on dividend policy. Originality/value This is one of the first attempt to show that there is an interaction between independent board and ownership structure. It shows that more independent and non-executive directors in the board of family controlled firms are likely to pay more dividends.

Steampunk (Bradford Industrial Museum, UK)Framing India: Paris-Delhi-Bombay . . . (Centre Pompidou, Paris)E Tū Ake: Māori Standing Strong/Māori: leurs trésors ont une âme (Te Papa, Wellington, and Musée du quai Branly, Paris)The New American Art Galleries, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, RichmondScott's Last Expedition (Natural History Museum, London)Left-Wing Art, Right-Wing Art, Pure Art: New National Art (Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw)Focus on Strangers: Photo Albums of World War II (Stadtmuseum, Jena)A Museum That Is Not: A Fanatical Narrative of What a Museum Can Be (Guandong Times Museum, Guandong)21st Century: Art in the First Decade (QAGOMA, Brisbane)James Cook and the Exploration of the Pacific (Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn)Land, Sea and Sky: Contemporary Art of the Torres Strait Islands (QAGOMA, Brisbane) and Awakening: Stories from the Torres Strait (Queensland Museum, Brisbane)

This article presents four episodes from the political period 1969 to 1976 in India, focusing on the views and actions of P. N. Haksar, Principal Secretary and Advisor to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (1967–1973). Unlike the ‘national/international politics’ hitherto under focus from then, that is, the Congress split (1969), birth of Bangladesh (1971) and the JP Movement/Emergency (1974–1975), the aspects under consideration in this article are of subterranean existence. First of these aspects is the provincial reverberations of the Congress split, the case considered here being that of the Bombay Pradesh Congress Committee. Second is the attitude of the Congress Party towards left opposition, the Communist Party of India Marxist (CPI [M]) in West Bengal, as revealed through the anxieties of Governor Shanti Dhavan. The third aspect under consideration is a glimpse of centre–states relations, as shown through New Delhi’s interactions with the EMS Namboodiripad-led and CPI (M)-dominated United Front Government of Kerala. Finally, the article looks at Haksar’s attempts at planning and development for the state of Bihar. Each of these four themes was among the ‘wider range of functions’ that Mrs Gandhi wished to be performed by her Secretariat and to allow us to test how successful each of it was. Each of these provides a context for contemporary issues.

Dr. Ambedkar, who was a strong fighter and a wise scholar, has done a lot to move society toward Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood. He was the first Indian to break down barriers that kept women from getting ahead in India. By writing down the common Civil Code for Hindus and other parts of Indian society, he laid the groundwork for real and honest work. In this paper, we try to show what Dr. Ambedkar thought about women's problems in India before and after it became independent, as well as how they still matter today. Dr. Ambedkar started his movement in 1920. He made a lot of noise about how bad the Hindu social order was. In 1920, he started the journal Mook Nayak, and in 1927, he started Bahiskrit Bharat. Through its topics, he drew attention to the problems of women and the need for education, as well as the problems of the depressed. Radhabai Vadale's speech at a press conference in 1931 showed how Dr. Ambedkar tried to give women the confidence to speak up. In the Bombay Legislative Assembly, he pushed hard for measures to help women plan their families. Dr. Babasaheb worked his whole life to help women, even those who were involved in bad things like prostitution. Ambedkar made poor, illiterate women aware of their rights and gave them the motivation to fight against unfair social practises like child marriage and the devdasi system. Dr. Ambedkar tried to make sure that women's rights were a part of India's political language and constitution. He insisted that the Hindu Code bill include the most important changes and improvements. He also insisted and asked every member of parliament to help get the bill passed in parliament. In the end, he quit for the same reason. So, every sentence and word he says shows how much he cares about women and wants them to grow in every way.

Onset of south west monsoon (SWM) over Kerala is associated with intense convection followed by heavy rainfall over the west-coast of India. The intense rainfall events are usually associated with meso-scale convective systems embedded in large scale synoptic system over the Arabian Sea. Such deep and intense cumulus convection can have an important effect on the dynamics and energetics of large-scale atmospheric systems, because of the large magnitudes of the energy transformations associated with changes of phase of water in precipitating cumulus clouds as well as the strong updrafts and downdrafts in the troposphere. The prime objective of this study is to understand the convective structure (active/suppressed) of the atmosphere over the west-coast of India during ARMEX-I (Arabian Sea Monsoon Experiment). This study uses an approach to obtain the average structure of a cloud cluster and its interaction with the environment that enables in distinguishing the variation of kinematic and convective parameters from suppressed to convectively active process. Upper air observations obtained from four coastal land stations viz., Bombay, Goa, Mangalore and Trivandrum, alongwith that obtained over ORV Sagar Kanya are used to calculate both the convective and the kinematic parameters at the centre of the polygon formed by these observation locations. Time averaged circulation kinematic parameters and vertical velocity during active and suppressed convective phases off the west coast of India were discussed. The apparent heating and the apparent moisture sink are also estimated through residuals of the thermodynamic equations during intense and weak phases of SWM.

Institutionalisation of Women’s Studies (WS) in India although started in the 1970s, it took a decade further to cross the threshold of Northeastern States. The isolation which the Northeast of India has always faced in the social, economic and political spheres was also reflected in the case of establishment of the Women’s Studies Centres as the then Vice Chancellor Dr. Deba Prasad Barooah had to struggle against the University Grants Commission for establishing it in Gauhati University. Again, the narrative of WSRC, GU do not find mention in the book Narratives from Women's Studies Family: Recreating Knowledge where experiences of 17 centres from across the country are illustrated. This paper investigates all such structural difficulties, negligence and struggle faced by one of the first Women’s Studies Centre of Northeast India, established in Gauhati University (GU), since its conceptualisation to inception in 1989 till the present. It attempts in revealing the experiences of the Directors, yielding the efforts behind the setting up of the centre, the role played by different individuals both internal and external of the University towards the establishment of the Centre, the catalysts that prevented the premature decay of the Centre and most importantly the struggle for space, identity and recognition the constraints faced to obtain them. To achieve these goals oral history method was applied to explore the experiences of the previous directors and the author (2nd author) herself. The narratives illustrate the history of struggles, challenges and the subsequent development over a span of more than twenty five years. The paper documents the support the University provided despite being a patriarchal institution for fostering of the WSRC, which in gradual years took steps to produce the Department of Women’s Studies. It will also look into the progressive role Women’s Studies played not only in the varsity internally but also at the external front through research and advocacy by inducing new panoramic view towards and discussion of women’s issues in a multidimensional framework.

Anti-caste movements in India have a long history. Cultural heritage became and remains a site of political contestation by excluded communities searching for identity and equality, and gender remains at the core of their engagements. The meanings underlying the more homogenous term of ‘Dalit’ used today are part of a historical process of self-definition. Moreover, diverse Dalit countercultures suggest varied social domains in which Dalit communities are located. South Asian historiographies have been critiqued as denying histories and historical agency to Dalits. Yet Dalit studies have developed epistemologies, bringing articulations and ideas from the margins to the centre of writings on history, leading to debates around caste that have transformed notions of politics. This paper draws from one such trajectory through a nonlinear narrative, juxtaposing the intergenerational contexts of engagements: my mother Dakshayani's political and life experiences, as narrated in her autobiography (1912–1978), and my own experience in the Dalit women's and other movements in the 1980s and 1990s. While my experience saw the onset of liberalisation and the emergence and growth of ‘new social movements’, the context of Dakshayani's narrations is the Pulaya (agrestic slave caste) community in the early 1900s in Cochin, a community in the process of transforming itself. Both narratives highlight how radical traditions within the Dalit women's movement over time have consciously and critically addressed anti-caste movements, social reform, the state, peoples’ movements and the nation within a conceptual framework of equality, liberty and non-discrimination.

Abstract Background: ABO and Rh blood groups are most important blood groups in human beings. The frequency of four main blood group systems varies in population throughout the world and even in different parts of country. Objective if this study was to identify distribution of ABO and Rh blood group system. Materials and methods: The study was conducted in rural tertiary care hospital from January 2008 to December 2012. Data were collected from Blood Bank grouping records. All blood samples processed during period of observation were included in study. Results: During the period of observation total 43,103 numbers of blood groups were performed. Patient's samples were 28,305 and donor's samples were 14,798. The frequency of blood group O in our population was 42.0% (40.1% O Rh positive and 1.8% O Rh negative). The frequency of blood group B in our population was 27.3% (25.6% B Rh positive and 1.62% B Rh negative) followed by blood group A was 25.8% (24.3% A Rh positive and 1.4% A Rh negative) and blood group AB was 4.8% (4.4% AB Rh positive and 1.4% AB Rh negative) and a two Bombay blood group donors (0.0046%). Rh positive were 94.64% and Rh negative were 5.35%. Discussion: O positive blood group is significantly high in our population. Every transfusion centre should have a record of frequency of blood group system in their population. It helps in inventory management. Knowledge of blood group distribution is important for clinical studies, for reliable geographical information and for forensic studies in the population.

Women in rural India are the country's most underserved population regarding access to skill development opportunities. Despite rhetoric at the national and international policy levels acknowledging the dearth of female participation in vocational training and subsequently skilled labour in India, female enrolment remains low. A greater understanding of factors that facilitate and hinder women's enrolment in skill development programs, particularly in the current era of pro-skill development, where vocational training is highly subsidized, if not free of cost, is required to design effective interventions that are inclusive of this perpetually side-lined population. Towards developing this improved understanding, an exploratory qualitative study was conducted in the rural Indian village of Juna Khatiwada, Madhya Pradesh, where vocational training programs for women have been made available and accessible, free of cost. Semi-structured interviews and focused group discussions were conducted with 16 women of Juna Khatiwada. In addition to identifying factors that facilitate and inhibit enrolment among the target population, the study also revealed that women who did enrol and complete vocational training courses reported better coping with domestic economic challenges. Findings from this study serve to provide recommendations on the way forward in terms of skill development policy and practice that are more inclusive of women in rural Indian. Keywords: Education and Training; Employment; Technical Vocational Rural India; Women eISSN: 2398-4287© 2021. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v6iSI4.3032

Even though Bombay has been hailed as the capital of Indian Cinema, film enthusiasts and connoisseurs would agree that it is South Indian Cinema that deserves the honour. It was 1936 when the ‘social’ films tainted with politics infiltrated the sphere of Tamil Cinema and since then, it has become extremely pervasive in all spheres of life, particularly political life. During the first phase of Tamil Cinema, that is in the pre-1950s, films such as Sevasadanam (1938), and Sabapathy (1941) were an instrument to represent the upper caste communities with upper caste protagonists revelling in their privileges. The recent phase not only addresses the caste issues explicitly but lets the Dalit occupy the centre stage. This was initiated by director Pa Ranjith in his films Madras (2014), Kabali (2016), Kaala (2018), Sarpatta Parambarai (2021) and as a producer for Pariyerum Perumal (2018). The film industry of Tamil Nadu is as heterogenous as the Indian society and has metamorphosed into an instrument incumbent for understanding the battleground of the caste system of India. My paper attempts to analyse the ways in which caste-based films are affecting the politics of Tamil Nadu and vice versa. My paper intends to reflect on how the caste-based cinematic themes have created class consciousness on one hand, but have given rise to caste-based narcissism among the people of the same caste on the other. Among this chaos and dichotomy, the enormous popularity, as well as the commercial success of films like Pariyerum Perumal and Asuran (2019), and Karnan (2021), deserves a detailed study that would enable us critically assess the cinematic representation of Dalits and their perils in the quest for social identity and acknowledgment.

The autobiographical impulse and act is central to woman's writing in India. The range of Indian women's writing generates an unending discourse on personalities, woman's emotions and ways of life. In a way, it presents the socio-cultural state in India from a woman's stance. It affords a peep into Indian feminism too. Besides giving a historical perspective, it throws ample light on woman's psychic landscape. It takes us to the deepest emotions of a woman's inner being. The varied aspects of woman's personality find expression in the female autobiographical literature. We find that a deeper study of women’s autobiographies unravel the hidden recesses of feminine psyche of Indian society. Whatsoever the position of women maybe, behind every social stigma, there is woman, either in the role of mother-in-law, sister‑in‑law or wife. The women writers with sharp linguistic, cultural and geographical environment represented the problems and painful stories of Indian women from 19th century until date. However, they have not shared the contemporary time of the history, the problems of patriarchal society, treatment women, broken marriages and the identity crises for the women remained similar. Women writers have also been presenting woman as the centre of concern in their novels. Women oppression, exploitation, sob for liberation are the common themes in their fiction. Dalip Kaur Tiwana is one of the most distinguished Punjabi novelists, who writes about rural and innocent women’s physical, psychological and emotional sufferings in a patriarchal society. As a woman, she feels women’s sufferings, problems, barricades in the path of progress as well as the unrecognized capabilities in her. Dalip Kaur Tiwana has observed Indian male dominated society very closely and has much understanding of social and ugly marginalization of women. She can be considered a social reformer as she is concerned with human conditions and devises for the betterment of women's condition in Indian Punjabi families. This paper focuses on the theme of feminist landscape. It presents the miserable plight of women characters. She has come across since her childhood. Women, who felt marginalized, alienated, isolated and detached in their lives, but were helpless as no law was there in her time to punish the outlaws. Dalip Kaur Tiwana beautifully portrays the landscape of her mind. The paper shows how Dalip Kaur Tiwana presents the unfortunate image of her mother, grandmother aunts and some other obscure women who were unable to mete out justice during their life time.

Vodafone emerged victorious in its recent challenge before the Bombay High Court of a proposed transfer pricing adjustment. The case concerned the sale of the taxpayer’s call centre business and the proper treatment of an assignment of call options.

Introduction: The prevalence of Bombay (Oh Phenotype) is not precisely known in Rajasthan state. Because of the fact that Bombay blood group is clinically significant, we decided to conduct a study at our centre to determine the prevalence of Bombay blood group among blood donor population in Western Rajasthan. Methodology: This blood bank based prospective study was carried out amongst the blood donors over a period of 11 months, i.e., from February 2019 to December 2019. Total 30,000 donor samples were screened for ABO-RhD blood grouping and antibody screening. Auto control, indirect antiglobulin test (IAT) and Bombay blood group (Anti-H lectin) tests were run on all the O blood group samples showing agglutination with O reagent cells (in reverse grouping). Donors negative on Anti-H testing were tested for saliva A, B and H antigens and interpreted. Results: Out of the total 30,000 donors, the maximum number of donors had blood group B+ (32.76%), followed by O+ (29.9%), A+ (20.41%), AB+ (8.06%), B- (3.11), O- (3.02%), A- (1.93%) and AB- (0.8%). Prevalence of Bombay blood group among study population was calculated to be 0.003%. Conclusion: Bombay phenotype is a rare blood group but not uncommon. If serum grouping is not performed, it is misdiagnosed as blood group O. Therefore both forward and reverse blood grouping should be done on 100% samples. Keywords: Bombay, Anti-H lectin, Serum grouping, Blood donors.

Dr. M.F. Ingham, Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, U.K., reported on the work of Professor V.G. Kulkarni and his colleagues at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, none of whom could attend this meeting. They are preparing some excellent material for teaching elementary astronomy in village primary schools in India. The text of Dr. Ingham’s paper was not provided to us, but we have included, below, some of the discussion which followed this interesting paper. Further information can be obtained from Professor V.G. Kulkarni, Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Tata Institute for Fundamental Research, Homi Bhabha Road, Bombay 400 005, India — Editors.

SPARC (the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres) is one of the best known NGOs working on housing issues in the Global South—perhaps most especially for its work with women pavement dwellers in Bombay in India. This article, first published in Environment and Urbanization in 1990, describes SPARC’s early work and achievements as well as how the organisation developed. The NGO profile was developed from an interview with Sheela Patel from SPARC by Diana Mitlin (coeditor of Environment and Urbanization) in November 1989, with additional material supplied by SPARC or drawn from SPARC documentation. It also engages with the organisation’s work on drug abuse and on biases against women in government sponsored income generation projects; its emphasis in its work on what it calls ‘process’ rather than projects; the measure of its own effectiveness in the extent to which it can mobilise other people and groups rather than its own growth as an organisation; the alliances it has forged with other groups, especially the National Slum Dwellers Federation of India, Mahila Milan (a federation of women’s collectives) and the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights; and its conscious policy to avoid hierarchy in its own organisation.

Dr. Ambedkar, a dedicated warrior and a profound scholar, has made major contributions to society's pursuit of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. He was the first Indian to break down obstacles to women's growth in India. By codifying the common Civil Code for Hindus and other parts of Indian society, he created the groundwork for more tangible and earnest efforts. The purpose of this article is to illustrate Dr. Ambedkar's perspective on women's issues in pre- and post-independence India, as well as its relevance in the current situation. In 1920, Dr. Ambedkar launched his movement. He began ferocious propaganda against the Hindu social system, launching the journals Mook Nayak in 1920 and Bahiskrit Bharat in 1927 to that end.Through its topics, he emphasised gender equality and the need of education, as well as the difficulties of the depressed and women. Dr. Ambedkar's support to enable women to speak fearlessly was seen when RadhabaiVadale addressed a news conference in 1931. In the Bombay Legislative Assembly, he was an outspoken supporter of family planning legislation for women. Dr. Babasaheb dedicated his life to the welfare of women, even if they were involved in undesirable habits and professions such as prostitution. Ambedkar raised awareness among impoverished, uneducated women and motivated them to combat unfair and societal practises like as child marriage and the devadasi system. Dr. Ambedkar attempted to adequately include women's rights into India's political discourse and constitution. In assembly, he persisted on the Hindu Code bill, offering fundamental adjustments and revisions. He also pushed on and summoned all legislative members to assist in passing the bill in parliament. He eventually quit for the same reason. As a result, his genuine interest and compassion for the whole development of women are shown in every statement and word.

In the rabi season of 2021–2022, a field experiment was set up at the Crop Research Centre–I, School of Agriculture, ITM University, Gwalior (M.P.) in a Randomised Block Design (factorial) with three replications. Twelve treatments were made up of three varieties HM Super 222, Bombay 76, and Lafar Kranti and four sulphur concentrations 0, 20, 40, and 60 kg S ha-1 to determine the ideal sulphur dosage and the ideal variety for increased output. On November 11, 2021, the experiment was planted in the CRC- I. At all of the periodic crop growth phases, with the exception of 30 DAS, there was a substantial increase in plant height, number of branches, total number of leaves, leaf area index, and dry matter accumulation from application of 0 to 60 kg S ha-1. At 60, 90 DAS and harvest, the higher values of growth parameters were recorded at the maximum amount of sulphur, or 60 kg S ha-1 with the exception of 40 kg S ha-1 where it was comparable to each other. Number of siliqua per plant, siliqua length, seed per siliqua, and seed yield were all significantly influenced by sulphur levels. The highest values were 60 kg S ha-1, which were comparable to 40 kg S ha-1. Among varieties, plant height, number of branches, total number of leaves, leaf area index, and dry matter accumulation of variety HM Super 222 were recorded significantly superior to variety Lafar Kranti and comparable to Bombay 76 at all growth stages except 30 days after sowing. Number of siliqua per plant, seed per siliqua and siliqua length of variety HM Super 222 were recorded significantly maximum to Lafar Kranti while comparable to Bombay 76. 1000 grain weight and harvest index were non-significant. Seed yield and stover yield were highest in variety HM Super 222. Economically the application of 40 kg S ha-1 and HM Super 222 variety gave maximum net return and benefit cost (BC) ratio.

Introduction: The pandemic of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID19) had a significant impact on obstetric surgeries. Obstetric surgical procedures during the COVID-19 pandemic affect individuals who are suspected or proven to be high-risk endeavors. Aim: To evaluate the demographic characteristics, indications, intraoperative and postoperative complications, and foetomaternal outcomes in the women who had an Emergency Peripartum Hysterectomy (EPH) during the first and second waves of the COVID-19 at a tertiary care centre in North India. Materials and Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study, conducted in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at a tertiary care centre in Uttar Pradesh, India, including women who underwent EPH operated from March 2020 to May 2021 in terms of demographic characteristics, indications, intraoperative and postoperative complications, and foetomaternal outcomes. Information about their self-reported health issues due to traumatic birth (when they came for a follow-up visit at five weeks) were also obtained. Simple frequency, percentage, and proportion were calculated using descriptive statistics. Results: A total number of 1827 deliveries were conducted and out them 11 cases underwent emergency peripartum hysterectomy at our institute during the time frame of the COVID-19 pandemic. All of the patients were in their 20s or 30s, with ages ranging from 21 to 34. All of these were unplanned pregnancies and arrived at various gestational ages. Eight cases had the previous scarring on the uterus, with six women having morbidly adhered placenta. All of the women in the study cohort were unbooked, and 72.73 % (eight out of 11) of them were referred to our centre because they had high-risk factors. Due to substantial blood loss, five females required Critical Care Unit (CCU) support. The study sample had a poor newborn outcome, with three early neonatal deaths out of 11 deliveries. As a part of their 5th-week followup, after the women had been stabilized and discharged from the ICU, they were asked to share their major issues related to health, psychological status and social interaction. The main worries revolved around the newborn child's and COVID-19 positive husband’s health. Pregnant women who delivered during the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant rate of postpartum depression and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Conclusion: The predominant cause of EPH in the study population was a morbidly adherent placenta. It is critical to protect women's physical and psychological health during traumatic childbirth in order to mitigate the pandemic's alreadyexisting harmful impacts.

Objective. To explore women's experiences of violence and their opinion on routine screening for domestic violence by nursing professionals in mental health care settings. Methods. This qualitative narrative research design was carried out among 20 asymptomatic women with mental illness at a tertiary care centre in Bangalore, India. Results. Narrative content analysis was performed, and five dominant themes have emerged: 1. Understanding the nature and signs of violence (subtheme: Meaning of violence), 2. Abusive experiences of women with mental illness (subthemes: Physical violence, psychological violence, social violence, sexual violence and financial violence), 3. Experiences on disclosure of violence (subthemes: Identification of violence by nursing professionals, Experiences of disclosure of violence), 4. Barriers for disclosure of abuse(subthemes: Fear of consequences, the hectic schedule of nursing staff, helplessness and hopelessness, perceived poor family support). 5.Routine screening for violence by nursing professionals (subthemes: reasons for routine inquiry of violence, nature of inquiry by the nursing professionals). Conclusion. Women with mental illness were undergoing more than one form of violence, and most of the participants supported routine screening by nursing professionals. Nurses play an essential role in identifying and supporting abused women in mental health care settings.

Introduction: Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection among antenatal women has been reported throughout the country, with a relatively high prevalence in the state of Maharashtra. Data on HIV seroprevalence in antenatal women serve as an indirect indicator of the HIV epidemic's burden in the general population and aid in predicting the same in young children. Diagnostic and treatment services for HIV are concentrated in selected states and districts with high seroprevalence, making it necessary to accurately calculate the prevalence of HIV. Aim: To assess the effectiveness of Prevention of Parentto-Child Transmission (PPTCT) services and to study the effectiveness of the National Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) Control Programme (NACP) in the functioning of PPTCT services. Materials and Methods: A retrospective observational analysis of 12-year data, from January 2007 to December 2018, was conducted in the Department of Microbiology at the Government Medical College and Hospital, Nagpur, Maharashtra, representing Central India. Data collection took place from June 2019 to December 2019, and analysis occurred over the subsequent two months (January 2020 to February 2020). The total sample size was 101,865 patients. All pregnant women registered in the Antenatal Clinic (ANC) under the PPTCT Program were included in the present study, and Strategy III of the National HIV testing algorithm was followed. The women's ages, their partners' serostatus, and records of babies born to HIV seropositive mothers were obtained and analysed. The statistical analysis of the data was performed using Stata (version 10.4.2009, STATA Corp., Texas, USA) and Epi Info 7 (version 7.1.06, 2012, CDC, Atlanta, USA), employing the Chi-square test for linear trend (Extended Mantel-Haenszel). A p-value <0.05 was considered significant. Results: The seroprevalence of HIV infection among pregnant women was 1.04% in 2007, decreasing to 0.23% by 2017. In 2009, 88.9% of women were counselled, and 100% were tested for HIV, with pretest counselling steadily increasing to 100% by 2012. The trend in HIV testing, however, remained at 100% over the span of 10 years. Post-test counselling varied from 89.6% to 99.9%, whereas the trend of HIV testing among partners fluctuated from 50% to 94.44%. The overall HIV positivity among babies, after 18 months of follow-up, was 4.77%. Conclusion: The HIV seroprevalence among the pregnant population is steadily declining. More and more women are availing themselves of the facilities at Integrated Counselling and Testing Centre (ICTC). Intensive health education and the availability of diagnostic and therapeutic services across the country have reduced the burden of the HIV/AIDS problem in the country

Whilst urban growth is generally accepted as a global phenomenon, this has numerous and ambivalent implications for Australia and its identity-work. Suburbia the site where the majority of Australians live, located somewhere between the privileged spaces of the city and the bush comes into focus as the emblematic topos through which the representational work of nation is articulated. Here, space becomes imbued with much current Australian political import. This article puts the discursive representation of Australian suburbia into juncture with hegemonic formations of nationness, and posits potential critical refigurations of these formations by mobilising a spatialised politics of cultural difference. Suburbia has come to represent a site of egalitarianism, signifying a truly Australian way of life. The masculinist and colonialist Australian myth of egalitarianism is constituted through a practice of carving up the land into equal portions, such that each man could have his stake in the country (Chambers 87). In this schema, the ownership of a detached house on a plot of land ensures proper and viable national subjects, since what is known as the suburban good life is nestled in a conception of house as home, where home is that which is familiar and secure. Consider John Howard's nationalist rhetoric: I believe that the concept of home is a compelling notion in our psyche…The loss of security challenges traditional notions of home and people feel the need to react to alienation…he or she must embrace what is secure, what people see as 'home.' (qtd. in Burke 8) It comes as no surprise, then, that Howard has initiated a scheme that grants $7000 to young couples toward establishing their first home. Home is not only a metaphor for nation; home is constituted in a material way through the house. The secure, housed, nation is most effectively enacted through the house and its ideal subjects: the white model of the heterosexual nuclear family. If European nostalgia is under threat, Howard's response is to maintain attempts to recover a unified national home. Ghassan Hage writes that the homely nation is itself an aspiration that guides the national subject's practices (68-9, my emphasis). Howard's anxiety is displayed in his response to the recent Tampa crisis, and it has become overwhelmingly evident who or what is not figured in his homely imaginary. Textuality becomes an effective means by which to negotiate and contest these dominant discourses of nation-space, and their prescribed modes of subjectivity. Suneeta Peres da Costa's recent novel Homework provides one such exigent re-mapping of nation-informed discourses of suburbia. Peres da Costa's text enacts a strategic invocation of cultural difference. Here, difference is not meant to connote inclusion or assimilation; difference must be seen as a dynamic constitutive mode of oppositionality, a provisional but insurrectionary and necessarily strategic other to dominant formations of nationness. As the novel's title itself suggests, home is work the work of being between spaces. Working from within the interstices of locatedness and worldliness allows the text to challenge embedded hegemonic inscriptions of nation-space. Whilst the novel was written and set in Australia, its packaging and subsequent reception also evokes the current trend of diasporic cosmopolitanism, signaling a world supposedly exempt from national belonging (Brennan qtd. in Kaplan 123). The novel was published simultaneously in the UK, the US, and Australia by Bloomsbury in 1999. The construction of this worldliness is here constituted in the politics of publishing, but this (dis)juncture between national and international, or the local and global, continues in the narrative itself. The narrative traverses both Australian domestic spaces and (imagined) international spaces. The fictive autobiography details Mina Pereira's late-childhood years as she lives with her family in suburban Rain Hill, Sydney. Whilst Mina and her sisters have grown up in Australia, their parents originate from Portuguese Goa, and Bombay, India. The narrative produces a tension between a global dislocation, where both Mr and Mrs Pereira's different and contradictory forms of homesickness are articulated, and the situatedness of Australia, where colonialism continues to construct hegemonic narratives of nationness. It is at this (dis)juncture that the narrative re-writes suburban space. Integrated into the suburban landscape and, in particular, the house itself, is the psychic space of memory. In the Pereira's house involuntary memories of former spaces and incidents in both Australia and India are evoked. A prolonged melancholia infiltrates the psychic and actual suburban spaces of the text, and in particular, the Federation house that the family lives in. If the Federation house signifies national unification, then this text enacts a kind of dis-unification of nation. With, in Gaston Bachelard's words, the past com[ing] to dwell in the new house (5), the seamless coherence of the suburban house is ruptured. As Homi Bhabha writes, [t]he recesses of the domestic space become sites for history's most intricate invasions. In that displacement, borders between home and world become confused; and, uncannily, the private and the public become part of each other, forcing upon us a vision that is as divided as it is disorienting. (9) In Homework, memory stretches beyond the limits of the nation such that nostalgia, as a politicised construction of the present, productively challenges the nation's boundaries. As Ien Ang writes, diasporas have the potential to unsettle static, essentialist and totalitarian conceptions of 'national culture' or 'national identity' with origins firmly rooted in fixed geography and common history (7). In this sense, the text interrogates the representational work of nation that attempts to maintain integrity and unity through incessant policing and securing of its borders. In Homework, the suburban house becomes unhomely, or unheimlich, in the haunting of subjects' memories that inhabit it, such that the house becomes not a tool for inculcating Australian nationness, but a zone of intermediacy between home and world. From this border space, that Homi Bhabha calls international (38) for the space of translation, negotiation, and hybridity, Australian space is unbounded and defamiliarised. Homework effectively dislodges the nation's homely imaginary by pointing to the excesses of belonging. Here home, as a mode of security and belonging, becomes detached from house. Aamir Mufti and Ella Shohat write that belonging cannot be housed simply within the material space of walls and roofs, of fenced topographies and well-drawn maps (1). This re-writing of hegemonic spatiality is concomitant with the re-constitution of prescribed modes of subjectivity. A politics of difference becomes a tool of creativity to question multiple forms of repression and dominance (Trinh 73). Cultural difference must be seen as disordering, as opening up new spaces for critical exchange (Soja and Hooper 193), and as positing new ways of critically writing and occupying spaces. By spatialising this politics of difference, the supposedly coherent spatiality of suburbia is ruptured and shown to be vulnerable. Re-narrating suburban spaces according to a politics of difference has the potential to dislodge hegemonic narratives that have become naturalised as they are mapped onto, or materialised in, real spaces. At the conclusion of Homework, the Pereira's house is enflamed. In this spectacular climax, part oneiric and fantastical, the house on fire becomes, in its pyrotechnical wizardry (255), a final recalcitrant figure to Australian suburban space. Merging with, and working against, that other sanctioned element of official multiculturalism, food, the fire sends out a toxic vapour to the hegemonic suburb: The pungent perfume that hung in a thick vapour above us was that of a vast spice warehouse burning to the ground. I could smell vast vats of mango and lime pickle; the bittersweet of cardamom spores that, with the intensity of the heat must have burst from their pods; peppercorns and paprika; turmeric, tamarind, and bay leaf; all these now lingered and mingled in a masala of mixed messages with the certain scents of dried cloves and the singular aroma of coriander. (256-7) The Federation house, with its symbolic encodings of nationness, is not only under de(con)struction here, but this image of a monstrous other further insults the suburban landscape's very senses. At the very heart of Australian suburbia is a stirring of the unhomely that is bound to repeat its disturbance to the mappings of nation. References Ang, Ien. Migrations of Chineseness. SPAN 34 (1993) : 9 pp. <http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom...> Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. 1958. Boston: Beacon, 1994. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Burke, Anthony. Australia's Asian Crisis. Australian Humanities Review June (2001) : 9 pp. 27 August 2001 <http://www.lib.latrobe.edu/AHR/archive/I...> Chambers, Deborah. A Stake in the Country: Women's Experiences of Suburban Development. Visions of Suburbia. Ed. Roger Silverstone. London: Routledge, 1997. 86-107. Hage, Ghassan. White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society. Leichhardt: Pluto Press, 1998. Kaplan, Caren. Questions of Travel: Postmodern Discourses of Displacement. Durham: Duke UP, 1996. Peres da Costa, Suneeta. Homework. London: Bloomsbury, 1999. Soja, Edward, and Barbara Hooper. The Spaces that Difference Makes: Some Notes on the Geographical Margins of the New Cultural Politics. Place and the Politics of Identity. Ed. Michael Keith and Steve Pile. London: Routledge, 1993. 183-205. Trinh, T. Minh-ha. Not You/Like You: Post-Colonial Women and the Interlocking Questions of Identity and Difference. Inscriptions 3-4 (1988) : 71-7. Links http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/litserv/SPAN/34/Ang.html http://www.lib.latrobe.edu/AHR/archive/Issue-June-2001/burke.html Citation reference for this article MLA Style Bullock, Emily. "Re-Writing Suburbia" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.2 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/suburbia.php>. Chicago Style Bullock, Emily, "Re-Writing Suburbia" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 2 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/suburbia.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Bullock, Emily. (2002) Re-Writing Suburbia. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(2). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/suburbia.php> ([your date of access]).

Introduction The genealogy of Feminist Standpoint Theory in the 1970s prioritised “locationality”, particularly the recognition of social and historical locations as valuable contribution to knowledge production. Pioneering figures such as Sandra Harding, Dorothy Smith, Patricia Hill Collins, Alison Jaggar, and Donna Haraway have argued that the oppressed must have some means (such as language, cultural practices) to enter the world of the oppressor in order to access some understanding of how the world works from the privileged perspective. In the essay “Meeting at the Edge of Fear: Theory on a World Scale”, the Australian social scientist Raewyn Connell explains that the production of feminist theory almost always comes from the global North. Connell critiques the hegemony of mainstream Northern feminism in her pyramidal model (59), showing how theory/knowledge is produced at the apex (global North) of a pyramid structure and “trickles down” (59) to the global South. Connell refers to a second model called mosaic epistemology which shows that multiple feminist ideologies across global North/South are juxtaposed against each other like tiles, with each specific culture making its own claims to validity.However, Nigerian feminist Bibi Bakare-Yusuf’s reflection on the fluidity of culture in her essay “Fabricating Identities” (5) suggests that fixing knowledge as Northern and Southern—disparate, discrete, and rigidly structured tiles—is also problematic. Connell proposes a third model called solidarity-based epistemology which involves mutual learning and critiquing with a focus on solidarity across differences. However, this is impractical in implementation especially given that feminist nomenclature relies on problematic terms such as “international”, “global North/South”, “transnational”, and “planetary” to categorise difference, spatiality, and temporality, often creating more distance than reciprocal exchange. Geographical specificity can be too limiting, but we also need to acknowledge that it is geographical locationality which becomes disadvantageous to overcome racial, cultural, and gender biases — and here are few examples.Nomenclatures: Global-North and Global South ParadigmThe global North/South terminology differentiating the two regions according to means of trade and relative wealth emerged from the Brandt Report’s delineation of the North as wealthy and South as impoverished in 1980s. Initially, these terms were a welcome repudiation of the hierarchical nomenclature of “developed” and “developing” nations. Nevertheless, the categories of North and South are problematic because of increased socio-economic heterogeneity causing erasure of local specificities without reflecting microscopic conflicts among feminists within the global North and the global South. Some feminist terms such as “Third World feminism” (Narayan), “global feminism” (Morgan), or “local feminisms” (Basu) aim to centre women's movements originating outside the West or in the postcolonial context, other labels attempt to making feminism more inclusive or reflective of cross-border linkages. These include “transnational feminism” (Grewal and Kaplan) and “feminism without borders” (Mohanty). In the 1980s, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality garnered attention in the US along with Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), which raised feminists’ awareness of educational, healthcare, and financial disparities among women and the experiences of marginalised people across the globe, leading to an interrogation of the aims and purposes of mainstream feminism. In general, global North feminism refers to white middle class feminist movements further expanded by concerns about civil rights and contemporary queer theory while global South feminism focusses on decolonisation, economic justice, and disarmament. However, the history of colonialism demonstrates that this paradigm is inadequate because the oppression and marginalisation of Black, Indigenous, and Queer activists have been avoided purposely in the homogenous models of women’s oppression depicted by white radical and liberal feminists. A poignant example is from Audre Lorde’s personal account:I wheeled my two-year-old daughter in a shopping cart through a supermarket in Eastchester in 1967, and a little white girl riding past in her mother’s cart calls out excitedly, ‘oh look, Mommy, a baby maid!’ And your mother shushes you, but does not correct you, and so fifteen years later, at a conference on racism, you can still find that story humorous. But I hear your laughter is full of terror and disease. (Lorde)This exemplifies how the terminology global North/South is a problem because there are inequities within the North that are parallel to the division of power and resources between North and South. Additionally, Susan Friedman in Planetary Modernisms observes that although the terms “Global North” and “Global South” are “rhetorically spatial” they are “as geographically imprecise and ideologically weighted as East/West” because “Global North” signifies “modern global hegemony” and “Global South” signifies the “subaltern, … —a binary construction that continues to place the West at the controlling centre of the plot” (Friedman, 123).Focussing on research-activism debate among US feminists, Sondra Hale takes another tack, emphasising that feminism in the global South is more pragmatic than the theory-oriented feminist discourse of the North (Hale). Just as the research-scholarship binary implies myopic assumption that scholarship is a privileged activity, Hale’s observations reveal a reductive assumption in the global North and global South nomenclature that feminism at the margins is theoretically inadequate. In other words, recognising the “North” as the site of theoretical processing is a euphemism for Northern feminists’ intellectual supremacy and the inferiority of Southern feminist praxis. To wit, theories emanating from the South are often overlooked or rejected outright for not aligning with Eurocentric framings of knowledge production, thereby limiting the scope of feminist theories to those that originate in the North. For example, while discussing Indigenous women’s craft-autobiography, the standard feminist approach is to apply Susan Sontag’s theory of gender and photography to these artefacts even though it may not be applicable given the different cultural, social, and class contexts in which they are produced. Consequently, Moroccan feminist Fatima Mernissi’s Islamic methodology (Mernissi), the discourse of land rights, gender equality, kinship, and rituals found in Bina Agarwal’s A Field of One’s Own, Marcia Langton’s “Grandmothers’ Law”, and the reflection on military intervention are missing from Northern feminist theoretical discussions. Moreover, “outsiders within” feminist scholars fit into Western feminist canonical requirements by publishing their works in leading Western journals or seeking higher degrees from Western institutions. In the process, Northern feminists’ intellectual hegemony is normalised and regularised. An example of the wealth of the materials outside of mainstream Western feminist theories may be found in the work of Girindrasekhar Bose, a contemporary of Sigmund Freud, founder of the Indian Psychoanalytic Society and author of the book Concept of Repression (1921). Bose developed the “vagina envy theory” long before the neo-Freudian psychiatrist Karen Horney proposed it, but it is largely unknown in the West. Bose’s article “The Genesis and Adjustment of the Oedipus Wish” discarded Freud’s theory of castration and explained how in the Indian cultural context, men can cherish an unconscious desire to bear a child and to be castrated, implicitly overturning Freud’s correlative theory of “penis envy.” Indeed, the case of India shows that the birth of theory can be traced back to as early as eighth century when study of verbal ornamentation and literary semantics based on the notion of dbvani or suggestion, and the aesthetic theory of rasa or "sentiment" is developed. If theory means systematic reasoning and conceptualising the structure of thought, methods, and epistemology, it exists in all cultures but unfortunately non-Western theory is largely invisible in classroom courses.In the recent book Queer Activism in India, Naisargi Dev shows that the theory is rooted in activism. Similarly, in her essay “Seed and Earth”, Leela Dube reveals how Eastern theories are distorted as they are Westernised. For instance, the “Purusha-Prakriti” concept in Hinduism where Purusha stands for pure consciousness and Prakriti stands for the entire phenomenal world is almost universally misinterpreted in terms of Western binary oppositions as masculine consciousness and feminine creative principle which has led to disastrous consequences including the legitimisation of male control over female sexuality. Dube argues how heteropatriarchy has twisted the Purusha-Prakriti philosophy to frame the reproductive metaphor of the male seed germinating in the female field for the advantage of patrilineal agrarian economies and to influence a homology between reproductive metaphors and cultural and institutional sexism (Dube 22-24). Attempting to reverse such distortions, ecofeminist Vandana Shiva rejects dualistic and exploitative “contemporary Western views of nature” (37) and employs the original Prakriti-Purusha cosmology to construct feminist vision and environmental ethics. Shiva argues that unlike Cartesian binaries where nature or Prakriti is inert and passive, in Hindu Philosophy, Purusha and Prakriti are inseparable and inviolable (Shiva 37-39). She refers to Kalika Purana where it is explained how rivers and mountains have a dual nature. “A river is a form of water, yet is has a distinct body … . We cannot know, when looking at a lifeless shell, that it contains a living being. Similarly, within the apparently inanimate rivers and mountains there dwells a hidden consciousness. Rivers and mountains take the forms they wish” (38).Scholars on the periphery who never migrated to the North find it difficult to achieve international audiences unless they colonise themselves, steeping their work in concepts and methods recognised by Western institutions and mimicking the style and format that western feminist journals follow. The best remedy for this would be to interpret border relations and economic flow between countries and across time through the prism of gender and race, an idea similar to what Sarah Radcliffe, Nina Laurie and Robert Andolina have called the “transnationalization of gender” (160).Migration between Global North and Global SouthReformulation of feminist epistemology might reasonably begin with a focus on migration and gender politics because international and interregional migration have played a crucial role in the production of feminist theories. While some white mainstream feminists acknowledge the long history of feminist imperialism, they need to be more assertive in centralising non-Western theories, scholarship, and institutions in order to resist economic inequalities and racist, patriarchal global hierarchies of military and organisational power. But these possibilities are stymied by migrants’ “de-skilling”, which maintains unequal power dynamics: when migrants move from the global South to global North, many end up in jobs for which they are overqualified because of their cultural, educational, racial, or religious alterity.In the face of a global trend of movement from South to North in search of a “better life”, visual artist Naiza Khan chose to return to Pakistan after spending her childhood in Lebanon before being trained at the University of Oxford. Living in Karachi over twenty years, Khan travels globally, researching, delivering lectures, and holding exhibitions on her art work. Auj Khan’s essay “Peripheries of Thought and Practise in Naiza Khan’s Work” argues: “Khan seems to be going through a perpetual diaspora within an ownership of her hybridity, without having really left any of her abodes. This agitated space of modern hybrid existence is a rich and ripe ground for resolution and understanding. This multiple consciousness is an edge for anyone in that space, which could be effectively made use of to establish new ground”. Naiza Khan’s works embrace loss or nostalgia and a sense of choice and autonomy within the context of unrestricted liminal geographical boundaries.Early work such as “Chastity Belt,” “Heavenly Ornaments”, “Dream”, and “The Skin She Wears” deal with the female body though Khan resists the “feminist artist” category, essentially because of limited Western associations and on account of her paradoxical, diasporic subjectivity: of “the self and the non-self, the doable and the undoable and the anxiety of possibility and choice” (Khan Webpage). Instead, Khan theorises “gender” as “personal sexuality”. The symbolic elements in her work such as corsets, skirts, and slips, though apparently Western, are purposely destabilised as she engages in re-constructing the cartography of the body in search of personal space. In “The Wardrobe”, Khan establishes a path for expressing women’s power that Western feminism barely acknowledges. Responding to the 2007 Islamabad Lal Masjid siege by militants, Khan reveals the power of the burqa to protect Muslim men by disguising their gender and sexuality; women escape the Orientalist gaze. For Khan, home is where her art is—beyond the global North and South dichotomy.In another example of de-centring Western feminist theory, the Indian-British sitar player Anoushka Shankar, who identifies as a radical pro-feminist, in her recent musical album “Land of Gold” produces what Chilla Bulbeck calls “braiding at the borderlands”. As a humanitarian response to the trauma of displacement and the plight of refugees, Shankar focusses on women giving birth during migration and the trauma of being unable to provide stability and security to their children. Grounded in maternal humility, Shankar’s album, composed by artists of diverse background as Akram Khan, singer Alev Lenz, and poet Pavana Reddy, attempts to dissolve boundaries in the midst of chaos—the dislocation, vulnerability and uncertainty experienced by migrants. The album is “a bit of this, and a bit of that” (borrowing Salman Rushdie’s definition of migration in Satanic Verses), both in terms of musical genre and cultural identities, which evokes emotion and subjective fluidity. An encouraging example of truly transnational feminist ethics, Shankar’s album reveals the chasm between global North and global South represented in the tension of a nascent friendship between a white, Western little girl and a migrant refugee child. Unlike mainstream feminism, where migration is often sympathetically feminised and exotified—or, to paraphrase bell hooks, difference is commodified (hooks 373) — Shankar’s album simultaneously exhibits regional, national, and transnational elements. The album inhabits multiple borderlands through musical genres, literature and politics, orality and text, and ethnographic and intercultural encounters. The message is: “the body is a continent / But may your heart always remain the sea" (Shankar). The human rights advocate and lawyer Randa Abdel-Fattah, in her autobiographical novel Does My Head Look Big in This?, depicts herself as “colourful adjectives” (such as “darkies”, “towel-heads”, or the “salami eaters”), painful identities imposed on her for being a Muslim woman of colour. These ultimately empower her to embrace her identity as a Palestinian-Egyptian-Australian Muslim writer (Abdel-Fattah 359). In the process, Abdel-Fattah reveals how mainstream feminism participates in her marginalisation: “You’re constantly made to feel as you’re commenting as a Muslim, and somehow your views are a little bit inferior or you’re somehow a little bit more brainwashed” (Abdel-Fattah, interviewed in 2015).With her parental roots in the global South (Egyptian mother and Palestinian father), Abdel-Fattah was born and brought up in the global North, Australia (although geographically located in global South, Australia is categorised as global North for being above the world average GDP per capita) where she embraced her faith and religious identity apparently because of Islamophobia:I refuse to be an apologist, to minimise this appalling state of affairs… While I'm sick to death, as a Muslim woman, of the hypocrisy and nonsensical fatwas, I confess that I'm also tired of white women who think the answer is flashing a bit of breast so that those "poor," "infantilised" Muslim women can be "rescued" by the "enlightened" West - as if freedom was the sole preserve of secular feminists. (Abdel-Fattah, "Ending Oppression")Abdel-Fattah’s residency in the global North while advocating for justice and equality for Muslim women in both the global North and South is a classic example of the mutual dependency between the feminists in global North and global South, and the need to recognise and resist neoliberal policies applied in by the North to the South. In her novel, sixteen-year-old Amal Mohamed chooses to become a “full-time” hijab wearer in an elite school in Melbourne just after the 9/11 tragedy, the Bali bombings which killed 88 Australians, and the threat by Algerian-born Abdel Nacer Benbrika, who planned to attack popular places in Sydney and Melbourne. In such turmoil, Amal’s decision to wear the hijab amounts to more than resistance to Islamophobia: it is a passionate search for the true meaning of Islam, an attempt to embrace her hybridity as an Australian Muslim girl and above all a step towards seeking spiritual self-fulfilment. As the novel depicts Amal’s challenging journey amidst discouraging and painful, humiliating experiences, the socially constructed “bloody confusing identity hyphens” collapse (5). What remains is the beautiful veil that stands for Amal’s multi-valence subjectivity. The different shades of her hijab reflect different moods and multiple “selves” which are variously tentative, rebellious, romantic, argumentative, spiritual, and ambitious: “I am experiencing a new identity, a new expression of who I am on the inside” (25).In Griffith Review, Randa-Abdel Fattah strongly criticises the book Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks, a Wall-Street Journal reporter who travelled from global North to the South to cover Muslim women in the Middle East. Recognising the liberal feminist’s desire to explore the Orient, Randa-Abdel calls the book an example of feminist Orientalism because of the author’s inability to understand the nuanced diversity in the Muslim world, Muslim women’s purposeful downplay of agency, and, most importantly, Brooks’s inevitable veil fetishism in her trip to Gaza and lack of interest in human rights violations of Palestinian women or their lack of access to education and health services. Though Brooks travelled from Australia to the Middle East, she failed to develop partnerships with the women she met and distanced herself from them. This underscores the veracity of Amal’s observation in Abdel Fattah’s novel: “It’s mainly the migrants in my life who have inspired me to understand what it means to be an Aussie” (340). It also suggests that the transnational feminist ethic lies not in the global North and global South paradigm but in the fluidity of migration between and among cultures rather than geographical boundaries and military borders. All this argues that across the imperial cartography of discrimination and oppression, women’s solidarity is only possible through intercultural and syncretistic negotiation that respects the individual and the community.ReferencesAbdel-Fattah, Randa. Does My Head Look Big in This? Sydney: Pan MacMillan Australia, 2005.———. “Ending Oppression in the Middle East: A Muslim Feminist Call to Arms.” ABC Religion and Ethics, 29 April 2013. <http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2013/04/29/3747543.htm>.———. “On ‘Nine Parts Of Desire’, by Geraldine Brooks.” Griffith Review. <https://griffithreview.com/on-nine-parts-of-desire-by-geraldine-brooks/>.Agarwal, Bina. A Field of One’s Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1994.Amissah, Edith Kohrs. Aspects of Feminism and Gender in the Novels of Three West African Women Writers. Nairobi: Africa Resource Center, 1999.Andolina, Robert, Nina Laurie, and Sarah A. Radcliffe. Indigenous Development in the Andes: Culture, Power, and Transnationalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009.Anzaldúa, Gloria E. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987.Bakare-Yusuf, Bibi. “Fabricating Identities: Survival and the Imagination in Jamaican Dancehall Culture.” Fashion Theory 10.3 (2006): 1–24.Basu, Amrita (ed.). Women's Movements in the Global Era: The Power of Local Feminisms. Philadelphia: Westview Press, 2010.Bulbeck, Chilla. Re-Orienting Western Feminisms: Women's Diversity in a Postcolonial World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.Connell, Raewyn. “Meeting at the Edge of Fear: Theory on a World Scale.” Feminist Theory 16.1 (2015): 49–66.———. “Rethinking Gender from the South.” Feminist Studies 40.3 (2014): 518-539.Daniel, Eniola. “I Work toward the Liberation of Women, But I’m Not Feminist, Says Buchi Emecheta.” The Guardian, 29 Jan. 2017. <https://guardian.ng/art/i-work-toward-the-liberation-of-women-but-im-not-feminist-says-buchi-emecheta/>.Devi, Mahasveta. "Draupadi." Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Critical Inquiry 8.2 (1981): 381-402.Friedman, Susan Stanford. Planetary Modernisms: Provocations on Modernity across Time. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.Grewal, Inderpal, and Caren Kaplan. Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994.Hale, Sondra. “Transnational Gender Studies and the Migrating Concept of Gender in the Middle East and North Africa.” Cultural Dynamics 21.2 (2009): 133-52.hooks, bell. “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance.” Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992.Langton, Marcia. “‘Grandmother’s Law’, Company Business and Succession in Changing Aboriginal Land Tenure System.” Traditional Aboriginal Society: A Reader. Ed. W.H. Edward. 2nd ed. Melbourne: Macmillan, 2003.Lazreg, Marnia. “Feminism and Difference: The Perils of Writing as a Woman on Women in Algeria.” Feminist Studies 14.1 (Spring 1988): 81-107.Liew, Stephanie. “Subtle Racism Is More Problematic in Australia.” Interview. music.com.au 2015. <http://themusic.com.au/interviews/all/2015/03/06/randa-abdel-fattah/>.Lorde, Audre. “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism.” Keynoted presented at National Women’s Studies Association Conference, Storrs, Conn., 1981.Mernissi, Fatima. The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam. Trans. Mary Jo Lakeland. New York: Basic Books, 1991.Moghadam, Valentine. Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003.Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. Talkin' Up to the White Woman: Aboriginal Women and Feminism. St Lucia: Queensland University Press, 2000.Morgan, Robin (ed.). Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology. New York: The Feminist Press, 1984.Narayan, Uma. Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third World Feminism, 1997.

What we wear signals our membership within groups, be theyorganised by gender, class, ethnicity or religion. Simultaneously our clothing signifies hierarchies and power relations that sustain dominant power structures. How we dress is an expression of our identity. For Veblen, how we dress expresses wealth and social stratification. In imitating the fashion of the wealthy, claims Simmel, we seek social equality. For Barthes, clothing is embedded with systems of meaning. For Hebdige, clothing has modalities of meaning depending on the wearer, as do clothes for gender (Davis) and for the body (Entwistle). For Maynard, “dress is a significant material practice we use to signal our cultural boundaries, social separations, continuities and, for the present purposes, political dissidences” (103). Clothing has played a central role in historical and contemporary forms of political dissent. During the French Revolution dress signified political allegiance. The “mandated costumes, the gold-braided coat, white silk stockings, lace stock, plumed hat and sword of the nobility and the sober black suit and stockings” were rejected as part of the revolutionary struggle (Fairchilds 423). After the storming of the Bastille the government of Paris introduced the wearing of the tricolour cockade, a round emblem made of red, blue and white ribbons, which was a potent icon of the revolution, and a central motif in building France’s “revolutionary community”. But in the aftermath of the revolution divided loyalties sparked power struggles in the new Republic (Heuer 29). In 1793 for example anyone not wearing the cockade was arrested. Specific laws were introduced for women not wearing the cockade or for wearing it in a profane manner, resulting in six years in jail. This triggered a major struggle over women’s abilities to exercise their political rights (Heuer 31).Clothing was also central to women’s political struggles in America. In the mid-nineteenth century, women began wearing the “reform dress”—pants with shortened, lightweight skirts in place of burdensome and restrictive dresses (Mas 35). The wearing of pants, or bloomers, challenged gender norms and demonstrated women’s agency. Women’s clothes of the period were an "identity kit" (Ladd Nelson 22), which reinforced “society's distinctions between men and women by symbolizing their natures, roles, and responsibilities” (Ladd Nelson 22, Roberts 555). Men were positioned in society as “serious, active, strong and aggressive”. They wore dark clothing that “allowed movement, emphasized broad chests and shoulders and presented sharp, definite lines” (Ladd Nelson 22). Conversely, women, regarded as “frivolous, inactive, delicate and submissive, dressed in decorative, light pastel coloured clothing which inhibited movement, accentuated tiny waists and sloping shoulders and presented an indefinite silhouette” (Ladd Nelson 22, Roberts 555). Women who challenged these dress codes by wearing pants were “unnatural, and a perversion of the “true” woman” (Ladd Nelson 22). For Crane, the adoption of men’s clothing by women challenged dominant values and norms, changing how women were seen in public and how they saw themselves. The wearing of pants came to “symbolize the movement for women's rights” (Ladd Nelson 24) and as with women in France, Victorian society was forced to consider “women's rights, including their right to choose their own style of dress” (Ladd Nelson 23). As Yangzom (623) puts it, clothing allows groups to negotiate boundaries. How the “embodiment of dress itself alters political space and civic discourse is imperative to understanding how resistance is performed in creating social change” (Yangzom 623). Fig. 1: 1850s fashion bloomersIn a different turn is presented in Mahatma Gandhi’s Khadi movement. Khadi is a term used for fabrics made on a spinning wheel (or charkha) or hand-spun and handwoven, usually from cotton fibre. Khadi is considered the “fabric of Indian independence” (Jain). Gandhi recognised the potential of the fabric to a self-reliant, independent India. Gandhi made the struggle for independence synonymous with khadi. He promoted the materials “simplicity as a social equalizer and made it the nation’s fabric” (Sinha). As Jain notes, clothing and in this case fabric, is a “potent sign of resistance and change”. The material also reflects consciousness and agency. Khadi was Gandhi’s “own sartorial choices of transformation from that of an Englishman to that of one representing India” (Jain). For Jain the “key to Khadi becoming a successful tool for the freedom struggle” was that it was a “material embodiment of an ideal” that “represented freedom from colonialism on the one hand and a feeling of self-reliance and economic self-sufficiency on the other”. Fig. 2: Gandhi on charkha The reappropriating of Khadi as a fabric of political dissent echoes the wearing of blue denim by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at the 1963 National Mall Washington march where 250,000 people gather to hear Martin Luther King speak. The SNCC formed in 1960 and from then until the 1963 March on Washington they developed a “style aesthetic that celebrated the clothing of African American sharecroppers” (Ford 626). A critical aspect civil rights activism by African America women who were members of the SNCC was the “performance of respectability”. With the moral character of African American women under attack (as a way of delegitimising their political activities), the female activists “emphasized the outward display of their respectability in order to withstand attacks against their characters”. Their modest, neat “as if you were going to church” (Chappell 96) clothing choices helped them perform respectability and this “played an important performative role in the black freedom struggle” (Ford 626). By 1963 however African American female civil rights activists “abandoned their respectable clothes and processed hairstyles in order to adopt jeans, denim skirts, bib-and-brace overalls”. The adoption of bib-and-brace overalls reflected the sharecropper's blue denim overalls of America’s slave past.For Komar the blue denim overalls “dramatize[d] how little had been accomplished since Reconstruction” and the overalls were practical to fix from attack dog tears and high-pressure police hoses. The blue denim overalls, according to Komar, were also considered to be ‘Negro clothes’ purchased by “slave owners bought denim for their enslaved workers, partly because the material was sturdy, and partly because it helped contrast them against the linen suits and lace parasols of plantation families”. The clothing choice was both practical and symbolic. While the ‘sharecropper’ narrative is problematic as ‘traditional’ clothing (something not evident in the case of Ghandi’s Khandi Movement, there is an emotion associated with the clothing. As Barthes (6-7) has shown, what makes ‘traditional clothing,’ traditional is that it is part of a normative system where not only does clothing have its historical place, but it is governed by its rules and regimentation. Therefore, there is a dialectical exchange between the normative system and the act of dressing where as a link between the two, clothing becomes the conveyer of its meanings (7). Barthes calls this system, langue and the act of dressing parole (8). As Ford does, a reading of African American women wearing what she calls a “SNCC Skin” “the uniform [acts] consciously to transgress a black middle-class worldview that marginalised certain types of women and particular displays of blackness and black culture”. Hence, the SNCC women’s clothing represented an “ideological metamorphosis articulated through the embrace and projection of real and imagined southern, working-class, and African American cultures. Central to this was the wearing of the blue denim overalls. The clothing did more than protect, cover or adorn the body it was a conscious “cultural and political tool” deployed to maintain a movement and build solidarity with the aim of “inversing the hegemonic norms” via “collective representations of sartorial embodiment” (Yangzom 622).Fig. 3: Mississippi SNCC March Coordinator Joyce Ladner during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom political rally in Washington, DC, on 28 Aug. 1963Clothing in each of these historical examples performs an ideological function that can bridge, that is bring diverse members of society together for a cause, or community cohesion or clothing can act as a fence to keep identities separate (Barnard). This use of clothing is evident in two indigenous examples. For Maynard (110) the clothes worn at the 1988 Aboriginal ‘Long March of Freedom, Justice and Hope’ held in Australia signalled a “visible strength denoted by coherence in dress” (Maynard 112). Most noted was the wearing of colours – black, red and yellow, first thought to be adopted during protest marches organised by the Black Protest Committee during the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane (Watson 40). Maynard (110) describes the colour and clothing as follows:the daytime protest march was dominated by the colours of the Aboriginal people—red, yellow and black on flags, huge banners and clothing. There were logo-inscribed T-shirts, red, yellow and black hatband around black Akubra’s, as well as red headbands. Some T-shirts were yellow, with images of the Australian continent in red, others had inscriptions like 'White Australia has a Black History' and 'Our Land Our Life'. Still others were inscribed 'Mourn 88'. Participants were also in customary dress with body paint. Older Indigenous people wore head bands inscribed with the words 'Our Land', and tribal elders from the Northern Territory, in loin cloths, carried spears and clapping sticks, their bodies marked with feathers, white clay and red ochres. Without question, at this most significant event for Aboriginal peoples, their dress was a highly visible and cohesive aspect.Similar is the Tibetan Freedom Movement, a nonviolent grassroots movement in Tibet and among Tibet diaspora that emerged in 2008 to protest colonisation of Tibet. It is also known as the ‘White Wednesday Movement’. Every Wednesday, Tibetans wear traditional clothes. They pledge: “I am Tibetan, from today I will wear only Tibetan traditional dress, chuba, every Wednesday”. A chuba is a colourful warm ankle-length robe that is bound around the waist by a long sash. For the Tibetan Freedom Movement clothing “symbolically functions as a nonverbal mechanism of communication” to “materialise consciousness of the movement” and functions to shape its political aims (Yangzom 622). Yet, in both cases – Aboriginal and Tibet protests – the dress may “not speak to single cultural audience”. This is because the clothing is “decoded by those of different political persuasions, and [is] certainly further reinterpreted or reframed by the media” (Maynard 103). Nevertheless, there is “cultural work in creating a coherent narrative” (Yangzom 623). The narratives and discourse embedded in the wearing of a red, blue and white cockade, dark reform dress pants, cotton coloured Khadi fabric or blue denim overalls is likely a key feature of significant periods of political upheaval and dissent with the clothing “indispensable” even if the meaning of the clothing is “implied rather than something to be explicated” (Yangzom 623). On 21 January 2017, 250,000 women marched in Washington and more than two million protesters around the world wearing pink knitted pussy hats in response to the remarks made by President Donald Trump who bragged of grabbing women ‘by the pussy’. The knitted pink hats became the “embodiment of solidarity” (Wrenn 1). For Wrenn (2), protests such as this one in 2017 complete with “protest visuals” which build solidarity while “masking or excluding difference in the process” indicates “a tactical sophistication in the social movement space with its strategic negotiation of politics of difference. In formulating a flexible solidarity, the movement has been able to accommodate a variety of races, classes, genders, sexualities, abilities, and cultural backgrounds” (Wrenn 4). In doing so they presented a “collective bodily presence made publicly visible” to protest racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and xenophobic white masculine power (Gokariksel & Smith 631). The 2017 Washington Pussy Hat March was more than an “embodiment tactic” it was an “image event” with its “swarms of women donning adroit posters and pink pussy hats filling the public sphere and impacting visual culture”. It both constructs social issues and forms public opinion hence it is an “argumentative practice” (Wrenn 6). Drawing on wider cultural contexts, as other acts of dissent note here do, in this protest with its social media coverage, the “master frame” of the sea of pink hats and bodies posited to audiences the enormity of the anger felt in the community over attacks on the female body – real or verbal. This reflects Goffman’s theory of framing to describe the ways in which “protestors actively seek to shape meanings such that they spark the public’s support and encourage political openings” (Wrenn 6). The hats served as “visual tropes” (Goodnow 166) to raise social consciousness and demonstrate opposition. Protest “signage” – as the pussy hats can be considered – are a visual representation and validation of shared “invisible thoughts and emotions” (Buck-Coleman 66) affirming Georg Simmel’s ideas about conflict; “it helps individuals define their differences, establish to which group(s) they belong, and determine the degrees to which groups are different from each other” (Buck-Coleman 66). The pink pussy hat helped define and determine membership and solidarity. Further embedding this was the hand-made nature of the hat. The pattern for the hat was available free online at https://www.pussyhatproject.com/knit/. The idea began as one of practicality, as it did for the reform dress movement. This is from the Pussy Hat Project website:Krista was planning to attend the Women’s March in Washington DC that January of 2017 and needed a cap to keep her head warm in the chill winter air. Jayna, due to her injury, would not be able to attend any of the marches, but wanted to find a way to have her voice heard in absentia and somehow physically “be” there. Together, a marcher and a non-marcher, they conceived the idea of creating a sea of pink hats at Women’s Marches everywhere that would make both a bold and powerful visual statement of solidarity, and also allow people who could not participate themselves – whether for medical, financial, or scheduling reasons — a visible way to demonstrate their support for women’s rights. (Pussy Hat Project)In the tradition of “craftivism” – the use of traditional handcrafts such as knitting, assisted by technology (in this case a website with the pattern and how to knit instructions), as a means of community building, skill-sharing and action directed towards “political and social causes” (Buszek & Robertson 197) –, the hand-knitted pink pussy hats avoided the need to purchase clothing to show solidarity resisting the corporatisation of protest clothing as cautioned by Naomi Klein (428). More so by wearing something that could be re-used sustained solidarity. The pink pussy hats provided a counter to the “incoherent montage of mass-produced clothing” often seen at other protests (Maynard 107). Everyday clothing however does have a place in political dissent. In late 2018, French working class and middle-class protestors donned yellow jackets to protest against the government of French President Emmanuel Macron. It began with a Facebook appeal launched by two fed-up truck drivers calling for a “national blockade” of France’s road network in protest against rising fuel prices was followed two weeks later with a post urging motorist to display their hi-vis yellow vests behind their windscreens in solidarity. Four million viewed the post (Henley). Weekly protests continued into 2019. The yellow his-vis vests are compulsorily carried in all motor cars in France. They are “cheap, readily available, easily identifiable and above all representing an obligation imposed by the state”. The yellow high-vis vest has “proved an inspired choice of symbol and has plainly played a big part in the movement’s rapid spread” (Henley). More so, the wearers of the yellow vests in France, with the movement spreading globally, are winning in “the war of cultural representation. Working-class and lower middle-class people are visible again” (Henley). Subcultural clothing has always played a role as heroic resistance (Evans), but the coloured dissent dressing associated with the red, blue and white ribboned cockades, the dark bloomers of early American feminists, the cotton coloured natural fabrics of Ghandi’s embodiment of resistance and independence, the blue denim sharecropper overalls worn by African American women in their struggles for civil rights, the black, red and orange of Aboriginal protestors in Australia and the White Wednesday performances of resistance undertaken by Tibetans against Chinese colonisation, the Washington Pink Pussy Hat marches for gender respect and equality and the donning of every yellow hi-vis vests by French protestors all posit the important role of fabric and colour in protest meaning making and solidarity building. It is in our rage we consciously wear the colours and fabrics of dissent dress. ReferencesBarnard, Malcolm. Fashion as Communication. New York: Routledge, 1996. 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Pussy Hat Project. “Design Interventions for Social Change.” 20 Dec. 2018. <https://www.pussyhatproject.com/knit/>.Roberts, Helene E. “The Exquisite Slave: The Role of Clothes in the Making of the Victorian Woman.” Signs (1977): 554-69.Simmel, Georg. “Fashion.” American Journal of Sociology 62 (1957): 541–58.Sinha, Sangita. “The Story of Khadi, India's Signature Fabric.” Culture Trip 2018. 18 Jan. 2019 <https://theculturetrip.com/asia/india/articles/the-story-of-khadi-indias-fabric/>.Yangzom, Dicky. “Clothing and Social Movements: Tibet and the Politics of Dress.” Social Movement Studies 15.6 (2016): 622-33. Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions. New York: Dover Thrift, 1899. Watson, Lilla. “The Commonwealth Games in Brisbane 1982: Analysis of Aboriginal Protests.” Social Alternatives 7.1 (1988): 1-19.Wrenn, Corey. “Pussy Grabs Back: Bestialized Sexual Politics and Intersectional Failure in Protest Posters for the 2017 Women’s March.” Feminist Media Studies (2018): 1-19.