While most of us are fans of cinema, for the majority of the population what comes through when they watch a movie, is the people they see on the screen. We are molded in a way to perceive what is on screen rather than what is off it. But there is so much more to movies than what we watch on screen. It's a long-drawn process and so many people are involved in it. And the key people in that list are cinematographers. Being a technical field the obvious gender bias prevails and sort of overshadows a lot of the work being done. Joining our hosts Shriya and Sukanya in this episode is cinematograph ..read more

Academia is a space that we all engage with for the longest part of our lives. From school to professional education spaces, universities, career milestones, and the like, we keep learning and keep interacting with some kind of mentorship/training. If we look at the people who work in academia, especially in research and teaching, there are a lot of stereotypes that become visible. Right from people generally saying that ‘teaching is a woman’s natural instinct’, to the glaring gap in the number of women holding decisive positions in academia, there seem to be quite many glass ceilings in the s ..read more

Sex or anything around the topic is more often than not seen and depicted and talked about in a titillating fashion. When we talk about sex education, it is still looked at as something wrong, something that needs to be stopped. Many would rather have the wrong information about sex instead of actually sitting down with a sex educator. There is a need to de-stigmatise sex and sexuality and look at it from a more comprehensive, inclusive, and pleasure-positive outlook. Joining our hosts Shriya and Sukanya in this episode is the amazing and talented Leeza Mangaldas! Leeza has built a career in s ..read more

In this episode of our podcast, we are talking about something that we have all engaged with but are often stopping ourselves from talking about it. Porn as we know it is possibly the most consumed form of media out there. However, the vulgarisation of porn happens with this whole treatment of the form only for a titillating objectifying purpose. Most porn that is readily available is also made from an extreme white-cis-het male gaze, where female pleasure seems to be completely sidelined. However with the advent of ethical porn and feminist creators that landscape is slowly changing. Joining ..read more

Throughout the course of the episode this season, we have been talking about how gender is stereotyped in different work industries. When we speak about work, we generally think of someone working for someone else. Now, if you think about an entrepreneur it sounds very exciting because you are your own boss. But that also comes with a lot more responsibilities. You are responsible for generating revenue, maintaining your staff, ensuring there is a good working environment, and so on. Into this mix, if you put a woman at the core of this business a platform that speaks about gender, it becomes ..read more

When we imagine a woman at work, what do we think? Or rather, what are we taught to think of? There are certain professions that our society assigns to women - workspaces that reflect values like nurture and caregiving. Imagining dynamic workspaces with women who ace the ladder through their skills is still slightly alien to us. Through the course of this season of our podcast, we have been steadily debunking such workplace gender stereotypes. In this episode, we are going to speak to someone who works in the field of science. Joining our hosts Shriya and Sukanya in this episode is resear ..read more

On the 21st of February, Seattle became the first city in the United States to explicitly ban discrimination on the basis of caste after the ordinance was passed by the City council. The ordinance was introduced by council member Kshama Sawant. Kshama grew up in Mumbai moved to the US and completed a Ph.D. in economics from North Carolina State University. She is a member of the Socialist Alternative, the first, and the only member of the party to be elected into public office. She has been a council member since 2014. She has been crucial in the historic change in minimum wage law in the city ..read more

We have discussed how gender reflects in various fields of work, in the previous episodes of this podcast. We all have different kinds of work environments. In some workplaces, we can afford to keep our persona, views, and opinions private. In other professions, that is not an option. Journalism is one such area of work where there is a lot of public gaze on the journalist, especially with the advent of digital and multimedia journalism. One often has to put their face, voice, opinions, and political views out there. They are scrutinised, correlated, juxtaposed, and many  kinds of consequ ..read more

The development sector is among the many fields where critical investigations in social engineering, policy pushing, social audit, and accountability initiatives, happen, among other projects. Often, with women who work in this sector, there is a stereotypical representation attached - the NGO woman - geeky, always serious, somewhat rigid - and these are all the images we have seen in popular culture and narratives that are largely male and far from the truth. So what is it to be a woman working in the development sector in India? Joining our hosts Shriya and Sukanya in this episode is human r ..read more

When we talk about the role of gender in art or the relationship between gender and art, we cannot discount the fact that gender presentation and representation in art is not just in the hand of the artist but an outcome of the sociocultural process that defines sexual and social identity. With this in mind, we also need to talk about what art/artists include and what it excludes. How hierarchies and marginalisations and disparity can also showcase itself in art. And how art itself can become a way to push back on the same.  Joining our hosts Shriya and Sukanya in this episode is visual a ..read more