Shalu Nigam

  From the Margins: Revisiting the Concept of `Marginalized Women’ 03 September, 2014 A few days back, I attended a seminar on `Violence Against Marginalized Women and Gender Justice’. The seminar discussed issues relating to various subgroups within the category `women’ like widows, Dalit women, tribal women, refugee women, and so on and so forth. The deliberations made me think as to who constitutes `marginalized women’ when `women’ being women are marginalized in the patriarchal world. Women as a `category’ or as a `group’ in comparison to `men’ have been relegated to margins due to systemic and structural discrimination within society. Women, irrespective of their hierarchical status, ranking or background, face violence within public and private spaces, they are being doubly discriminated against and denied of basic rights and are often oppressed by norms, culture and customs in a male-dominated world where capitalism and globalization commodify and objectify women. Considering th

Yes, I Am a Woman….. By Shalu Nigam 28 July, 2014 Countercurrents.org https://www.countercurrents.org/nigam280714.htm On the occasion of this Independence Day, I continue to fight for my independence as a common woman, as a citizen of this free nation and more importantly as a human being… Yes, I am a woman and I am proud of myself. I am strong and I am growing stronger by each passing moment. I am an independent, fearless, free thinking woman making choices at every step reaffirming my pride, contesting for my dignity and in the process shaping and writing my own destiny…. I am the one with vision you see carrying bricks on construction sites... I am a woman toiling in an agriculture field awaiting for the crop of my imagination to be harvested... I am a worker working in a textile organization weaving my hopes in the garments I knit… I am a student with dreams in my eyes, cycling or running after buses… I am a scientist inventing and imagining, an architect, shaping and cementing the