ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

Articles by Rukmini SenSubscribe to Rukmini Sen

Stay Home, Stay Safe: Interrogating Violence in the Domestic Sphere

Though India was quick to declare the pandemic-induced lockdown, how accommodative was it of the violent and gendered realities of the country?

Sexual Harassment and the Limits of Speech

This reflexive article is about speaking out—its possibilities and its limitations. Trying to understand how feminists have always complicated the ideas around speech, this article will elaborate on the need to create spaces for talking about transgressions that are experienced in gendered relations of power within academia. The attempt here is to emphasise the need to move towards conversations while co-existing with complaint processes and realising their limits.

The Need for an Everyday Culture of Protest

Will some of the same people who have vented their anger in protest against this gang-rape at least raise voice in support of a sex worker’s livelihood, a heterosexual person’s right to live with a partner without marriage, a single parent, a lesbian or gay person’s right to chose a partner, walk with the women while they reclaim the streets at night not just on 31st December but every night; and not pass moral judgments on these groups of people? 

Police Intimidation

We, the members of the Executive Committee of the Indian Association for Women’s Studies (IAWS), write to you in shock in the face of our recent experiences of intimidation and harassment at the hands of the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) during the XIIIth National Conference of the IAWS in Wardha at

Law Commission Reports on Rape

At times the reports of the Law Commission are much more progressive than those that eventually go into amendments. On the other hand, a feminist perspective suggests that they reinforce colonial and patriarchal values. Using insights from feminist methodology, this article seeks to analyse this dichotomy. According to feminist legal theory, the legal subject is not an abstract, gender-neutral creature of the traditional legal imagination but an ideological construct, endowed with attributes that vary according to context. Between 1956 and 2009, four Law Commission reports addressed the issue of rape. However, it is noteworthy that there has been little to no change in Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code since 1860 when Thomas Macaulay drafted the code. The controversial issue of consent has not been defined or broadened, nor have the various nuances associated with it recognised. The law ministry has not accepted the terminological and paradigmatic shift from rape to sexual assault.

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