[Readmelater]

BehanVox: Inside Tamil Nadu’s Thozhi Working Women’s Hostels

This week in BehanVox: A photo story of natural farming practices of Bhil women, spaceflight packed with celebrity women, celluloid battle over 'Phule', and more

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter that brings you top stories, gender news from the world, and our team’s reading recommendations.

Hello and welcome to BehanVox! This week we take a close look at a chain of government-run working women’s hostels of Tamil Nadu, perennially in short supply as more women migrate in search of jobs. A superb photo essay tells the story of how Bhil women do natural farming in arid Aravallis. And why a spaceflight full of celebrity women is not sending us into paroxysms of joy.

Story So Far

‘Muthu’s Room’ was the setting of a delightful book scripted like a play launched four years ago. Scripted by labour and gender scholar Madhumita Datta it told the life stories of young women who had migrated from rural Tamil Nadu – and usually from agrarian families – to find jobs in the electronic assembly units of the state’s special economic zones in Kanchipuram. Though the women discussed patriarchy, oppression and discrimination at work, it was an effervescent read into their everyday lives and dreams. Most importantly for them, none of the hardships took away from the fact that they had opportunities for freedom and autonomy that were denied to them at home.

This week, we explored a variant of Muthu’s Room – the world of working women’s hostels in Tamil Nadu and found some similar stories. We specifically took a look at the state-run chain of Thozhi hostels spread across Chennai. They don’t always come cheap – the cost per person on a sharing basis can be as low as Rs 2000 a month or as high as Rs 10,000 depending on location and conveniences. This excludes a vast population of women who hold low paying jobs – in the unorganised sector for instance – and need to migrate for work.

Also, there are too few Thozhis in a state that boasts of high rates of women’s participation in the labour force.

But what the hostels do offer is independence and easy mobility. Here, I can travel independently, nobody will question me. In my hometown in Tirunelveli, I need to ask my brother to step out of home. And to reach the nearest bus facility, we have to travel 10-20 minutes by bike or walk because we are in an SC village where no bus comes,” says Mariamal Ganesan.

Archita Raghu who reports this story also delved into the history of working women’s hostels in the city and came up with interesting facts – that the move to organise lodging for migrant women workers began in the 1970s, with hostels that had just about the most basic facilities. The view was that women should be more than happy to have a safe living space that allowed them to protect their “virtue”. In the 1980s women rose in protest against this condescension.

Interestingly, these hostels are even today heavily surveilled through CCTV cameras. As we asked in this week’s puzzler in our Postcards newsletter: Do women feel safe or surveilled under a CCTV camera’s gaze?

Read our story here.

Make sure to read our strikingly illustrated photo essay on the natural farming practices of the Bhil women in Peepla village of Rajasamand district in Rajasthan by Mansi Vijay. In this region, hemmed by the Aravallis, the land is scrub and stone. Water is scarce, and agriculture is a gamble with extreme weather conditions which have made sure that either there are dry conditions or rains that bring floods.

Meet the hardworking women of the Adivasi collective, Sitaram Mahila Utpadak Samuh, to get a sense of how they have taken to natural farming. Ratnibai who works on less than half a bigha of land, owned by her family, where she has sown tomato, chilli, and turai using organic methods. And Pheplibai who made Rs 20,000 last season by selling her vegetables.

But natural farming is hard, time consuming work and the results are slow showing up. As we had reported in a three part series, natural farming for all its benefits is not without challenges (herehere and here).

Our photo essay is here.

Talking Point

Celluloid BattlePhule, directed by Anant Mahadevan, is a bio drama about educationists and reformers Jyotiba and Savitri. Its release has been held up by the objections raised by three outfits that claim to represent the Brahmin community. They allege that the film is biased in its representation of their community and could lead to “unrest”. This is despite the fact that the film has already incorporated changes suggested by the Central Board of Film Certification. Incidentally, the board has denied certification to Santosh, an award-winning film, for “its portrayal of misogyny, Islamophobia and violence in the Indian police force”, as per The Guardian.

Rampur Atrocity: An 11-year-old Dalit speech-and-hearing-impaired girl who went missing from her home on Tuesday was found raped and brutalised in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh. She was found unconscious and with serious injuries. Police have arrested an accused after an encounter during which he suffered a bullet injury in his leg. The accused was arrested and shot at in the process. We have reported repeatedly on sexual violence in UP and why Dalit survivors have few chances of finding justice or being included in crime figures (herehere and here).

Gender Bender: Britain’s top court has said that the definition of a woman under the Equality Law is based on biological sex, thus excluding trans women with gender recognition certificates. While trans activists fear that this could lead to the erosion of their rights, the judge delivering the verdict has said that it does not indicate “a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another”. To understand the rather complex situation arising out of the interpretation of this verdict read with the Gender Recognition Act, here is an explainer in Context.

Space Stunt: The NYT heading said it all: ‘One Giant Stunt For Womankind’. An all-women trip to space, surely that should be an empowering cause for women to rejoice? But what it actually was was a celebrity club of elite women, not women astronauts, taking a joy ride up Jeff Bezos’ private spaceflight startup, Blue Origin. Here is a scathing takedown of what could have been a trailblazing event.

BehanVox Recommends

Trailblazer: Aazhi pens the narrative of Maniammai, often reduced to being the wife of Periyar, a formidable leader of the Dravidar Kazhagam and relentless fighter for social justice in Tamil Nadu.

Food and conflict: In this personal story, journalist Makepeace Sitlhou writes how the Kuki-Zo tribe’s ability to eat and produce food has been affected by continuing violence in Manipur, and neglect from the state.

Dreams of Danpur: Jyoti Yadav writes the tale of Khushboo Kumari and other female students of Danpur in Bihar who dream of studying science even though high cut off rates are a deterrent.

Policies: In this long read, Henry Carnell and Madison Pauly highlight how US president Donald Trump’s policies have affected trans children, and their families.

Beyond algorithms: On Patreon, karenxcheng provides an explainer on how to control Instagram feeds, and not ‘feed’ into addictive doomscrolling.

Want to explore more newsletters? In Postcards, we send you missives on the places, people and ideas that brought Team BehanBox joy. Our monthly offering Postscript invites you, the reader, into our newsroom to understand how the stories you read came to be – from ideation to execution. Subscribe for more.

Support BehanBox

We believe everyone deserves equal access to accurate news. Support from our readers enables us to keep our journalism open and free for everyone, all over the world.

Donate Now