Articulating Women: Interrogating Intersectionality and Empowering Women Through Critical Engagements

Gender equality is of central importance to progress within an increasingly global world, but gender roles and attitudes to gender shaped centuries ago continue to influence cultural, social and economic behaviour, and to affect decision making at a local level. This is the case even where equal opportunity policies and rhetoric pertain at a national or corporate level. Too often, policy commitments to equal opportunities for women and rhetorical statements of the importance of women's contribution to society mask real-life behaviours that inhibit women's advancement; indirectly, if not directly reinforce women's subordinate position; and translate multicultural anxieties into conflicts over gender roles and behaviours.

This project offers a unique approach. It is not only multi-organisational, multinational, and multi-disciplinary, but also places theoretical concepts of gender, particularly that of intersectionality, in dialogue both with artistic expression and representation and with the experiences of professionals who make on-the-ground interventions (as teachers, volunteer trainers, academic leaders, those in charge of arts organisations). The interchanges between these strands enable theory to inform, but also to be tested against the expressive and experiential. In the process, public awareness of the complexities of gender issues, particularly within complex social and cultural, and sometimes multi-cultural, contexts can raise awareness about the expectations associated with women's place in the community while helping to refine current feminist theories of intersectionality. The project facilitates comparative discussions, exposing individual researchers to the possibilities implicit in alternative disciplinary and theoretical methodologies, different cultural frameworks, and diverse historical periods.

The intellectual frameworks developed as part of Second and Third Wave feminism for understanding the dynamics of women's subordination, together with critiques of subaltern status developed as part of postcolonial perspectives have provided women with a set of methodological tools for responding to consciously perpetuated gender discrimination. These movements have also provided the means of exposing both institutionalised sexism and the assumptions and unexamined preconceptions that unconsciously naturalise women's subordinate position, often generating hostility when women assume positions of power. Intersectionality has emerged as a promising paradigm for addressing the complexities of compounded social marginalisation, but it is a concept born within a particular socio-historical context. As a result, it needs to be interrogated, translated, and transformed if its potential utility is to be fully realised. Local factors such as caste, which the current framework struggles to fully articulate and analyse, pose a challenge to this and other universalised models and modes of feminist theorising. Understanding and acknowledging this challenge is an important precursor both to refining the concept and to supporting successful interventions-- be they local, national, or international in origin.

The project will strengthen and extend the collaborative activities of four partner institutions dedicated to harnessing research for social change. It will develop support networks among women within academia in both India and the UK, furthering the interests of gender equality within Higher Education and beyond. The project will produce material outputs including documentaries, piloted English Language Teaching resources and volunteer training materials, and the creative reflections of an artist in residence. A volume of selected essays on "Interrogating Intersectionality" is envisaged that would help to clarify the theoretical and methodological issues, possibilities and current limitations of the concept.

Pronouncements and debates over gender identity and gendered expectations in the UK and India continue to pervade public discourse, popular culture, and political debates over policy. Forging a network where lived experience, professional practice, and creative representation are brought into dialogue with academic research and theorising enables mutual interrogation and paves the way for more nuanced and informed formulations, descriptions, representations, and professional practices. Public debates are enriched by well-designed, public facing dissemination events around the degree of gender equality that has been achieved and is achievable, particularly as gendered norms, expectations, and policies relate to the vexed issue of multiculturalism, inclusiveness, and respect for difference. By promoting an international dialogue through exchanges in both Liverpool and Bangaluru, small, targeted interventions enable multiple pathways to impact.

Increased awareness of the diversity of women's roles and status within and between different communities will help to break down simplistic assumptions and stereotypes around national, cultural and religious differences. Using women's stories to inform the development of a documentary highlighting diversity will further awareness. The documentary will serve as a starting point for discussions and analysis of the interplay between women's role and community needs and expectations within a range of different social contexts. Although focused on the experiences of Indian women, the issues raised have more general currency and will reinforce the need for sensitivity to gender issues informed by cultural awareness.

Issuing a challenge to students to produce three-minute documentaries on the subject of "women in community" will both increase public awareness and produce additional material displaying the diversity of experience. The best of the entries will be screened, introduced by their producers and followed by discussions, as part of dissemination events. Well-publicised public events will also highlight the role of women in the arts, heightening the visibility of women in this sector. Documentaries will be screened as part of public program in two important centres of culture-Bangaluru and Liverpool.

A visiting artist from Karnataka and collaboration with Milapfest will help to highlight the multiple components and complexities of women's position in the Arts. In Liverpool, public facing events will take place at Bluecoat Arts Centre and FACT, venues that facilitate public engagement. Christ University is itself readily accessible within Bangaluru and well-versed in hosting events for a non-academic audience.

English language teaching materials designed by MA students at Christ University to promote gender sensitivity through, among other things, the incorporation of gender neutral language, will develop and reinforce an awareness of gender issues among the MA students who develop the materials, the trainee teachers who make use of them, and the students who are taught with this material. Resources and materials for training volunteer workers in marginalised communities will promote an increased awareness of the need to consider gender in relation to the local social and cultural context when promoting gender equality.

Workshops and roundtable discussions around the issue of "Women and Leadership" are built into PGR Conferences and Dissemination Conferences as well as a Global Youth Congress to be held at Liverpool Hope. These will enable empowering strategic discussions, mentoring, and network building. Such events have long played an important role in helping women to achieve their potential. They build confidence, provide strategic advice, and encourage the building of mutual support networks and interest groups capable of pushing the agenda of gender equality and women's issues within the academic world and beyond.