Tuesday: Preparing for the Workshops and Dharavi
I’m not clear on the usual process for setting up a leadership workshop for young women, but generally I’d imagine that it would involve researching influential women leaders, reading a few books, and possibly touring a relevant museum or historical site. Luckily for Zoe, Shilpa, Neharah, Junghee, Sara and I, the Symposium meant that we had Item One on that list covered. For reading material we turned more to the World Wide Web than to any physical library to catch the latest news items, and for our tour, we took a trip around Asia’s largest slum, Dharavi. A major part of our young women’s leadership workshop focused on a simulation of a slum redevelopment project; although we christened the slum “Awaaz,” it was quite clearly a thinly veiled version of Mumbai’s central slum, Dharavi. In order to give us something of a reality check, our coordinator, Rachel Romesburg, thought a visit to Dharavi was in order.
Dharavi is infamous not only for its astounding size and population density (one million people in the space of one and a half Central Parks), but for its extraordinary economic output: unlike other slums which may serve largely as sleeper cities for residents who work in other areas, Dharavi has its own factories and cottage industries, including recycling, pottery, and artisan leatherwork, to name a very few. As one speaker would note a few days later at the Symposium, 80% of Mumbai’s waste is recycled, compared to only 20% in the U.K. And much of this happens in Dharavi.
Seeing Dharavi did add a great deal of perspective to the workshops we would host only two days later. The tour was held by an NGO working in Dharavi called “Reality Gives”, and its focus was on dispelling negative stereotypes around slums by showcasing Dharavi’s astounding industry. In an effort to keep the tour ethical (and to avoid becoming one of the so-called poverty tours that advertise slums as some sort of exotic zoo), “Reality Gives” forbids the use of photography, and all of the tour guides are from the slum itself. While I could not agree more with these rules and I cannot disregard how valuable visiting Dharavi was while facilitating the workshop, I also could not help but remember an incident two days before.
We were in a small, one room house. It was a slum area—not Dharavi. Two young women bend over our hands, laughing and talking to us as they apply mehndi. Neighbors and family stop by frequently, talking with the women and introducing themselves to us. The woman who is doing Sara’s hand looks up suddenly and smiles. “We’re so happy to have you here,” she says to me in Marathi. “This is the first time that we’ve had foreigners here as friends. All of the others have come only to walk through and take pictures.” We did not take any photos in Dharavi, but will my friend forgive us for just walking through?
Thursday: The Workshops
Dharavi experience in hand, the five other student fellows and I took a deep breath and stepped forward into the cool shadows of the Cathedral School, one of Mumbai’s most elite private schools. The eighty-some-odd girls who would come today would hail not only from Cathedral but from a number of upper-class, private, English-speaking schools. Added to them would be a small contingent of public school students who were among those served by the Akanksha Foundation, an educational nonprofit run by “Teach for India” founder Shaheen Mistri. And now all of them would be deposited for an hour and a half into the hands of six (rather nervous) Barnard students.
The twelve young women in my group were whip-smart and talkative, and took to the workshop activities with gusto. I’m afraid that the only thing that I can take full credit for were its flaws. If the students learn anything—and I do hope that they did—it was due to their own sincere engagement, aptitude and energy. They are leaders already, ready to run the world.
And run it they did. Especially during the simulation, discussions became heated and it was clear that the situation was as real to the students as we Fellows had hoped and feared that it would be. We had run a similar workshop a few weeks before in New York, but the simulation had focused on an environmental issue rather than slum renewal. While the young women there seemed interested in the scenario and debated solutions liberally, in India the discussions had a ring of truth that was much larger than the simulation. These young women had seen slum redevelopment before with all its problems, had seen the poverty rampant on Mumbai’s streets, had seen government corruption and the successes and failures of NGOs. Their talk was energized by a veracity of experience that charged through the room like lightning. One of the Akanksha students, in an act of fearlessness I will admire until the end of my days, announced publicly that she came from a slum and had once been an object of “redevelopment.” The daughters of privilege in the room gazed at her with nothing short of deepest respect.
During the last activity, each student wrote on a sheet of paper a single word about what leadership meant for her and cheerfully acquiesced to having her photograph taken. One of the girls had used two words on her paper, and I teased her about having gone over the limit. She frowned and said—with what I believe is was genuine annoyance—”Now, are we really going to get that technical?” I laughed and said of course not, but I loved that she was so audacious. Since coming to Barnard, I can’t help but love it when girls talk back. Every young woman who I worked with that day gave me great reason to admire her, and if I could list what I respected about every one, I would. I loved their bravery and their spirit, and their eagerness to do good in the world.
Friday: The Symposium
Somehow I didn’t expect my introduction to Twitter to occur while texting frantically on my phone in the middle of a conference on women’s leadership in India, but I suppose that just goes to show that social media knows no bounds. While JungHee was spearheading the Twitter charge, I did my best to pitch in with an occasional tweet. The Barnard Global Symposium “Women Changing India” featured three panels with four distinguished women leaders on each, from such varied fields as business, law, politics, social activism, and entertainment. Each of them had made significant contributions to their individual sectors and to India as a whole, but each had faced a great deal of struggle in getting there.
Kiran Bedi spoke of changing schools after her previous one had recommended courses for her that they said would be ideal for her future as a homemaker, rather than letting her pursue the sciences she had wanted to; Shaheen Mistri acknowledged the difficulties and guilt of being a single mother and dealing with society’s pushback; Chhavi Rajawat discussed being a female sarpanch in a village that is used to a patriarchal system, and in a political realm that is far more welcoming to males than females; and Zia Mody refuted a question condemning women for wanting flexibility from their jobs so that they could balance both home and work life, arguing that such flexibility was their due. And in the background JungHee and I tried to condense such complicated discussions into 140 characters.
Are women changing India, then? Yes—but in the inspiring moments of the Symposium, it is easy to forget how very difficult that change is. Some incidents brought it back to me, however. An Indian friend (and incipient woman leader) whom I had asked to come to the Symposium texted to say that she would not be able to, because her parents—who did not speak English, and would not be able to understand what was being said at the Symposium—would have to come in her place while she would have to stay home and take care of the family’s toddler. Similarly, during a VIP party for the Symposium, a member of the Barnard party was denied entry because she had her infant with her. Here, in the midst of a conference on women’s leadership, were petty attempts to deny them that chance.
Finding a way to juxtapose this reality with the equally valid reality of how inspiring the Symposium was has been difficult. The only answer that I can think of is this: it is important to celebrate women’s achievements, but in the process we cannot forget how much work there is to be done. If we find inspiration, then its purpose should be to give us the energy to keep moving forward and to keep fighting.