Six Yards of Fabric
Sonal Desai Sonal Desai

Six Yards of Fabric

Few artefacts bring together feminism, family, art, cultural symbolism and economy the way Indian sarees do

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Undoing Gender
Sonal Desai Sonal Desai

Undoing Gender

I have often wondered what made my mother a gender troublemaker? Recent focus on changing gender norms in development discourse seem to assume change will come from the top, but will it? Or will undoing gender require starting from lived experiences of individuals?

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Sonal Desai Sonal Desai

Measuring Microaggression

Trump and Biden’s final debate on October 22 reminded me of an old blog post I had written two years ago. As citizens we know we live in a world in which bias, discrimination and outright hostility based on race, class and gender rules our lives. As social scientists, we face the challenges of measuring it? Read for a reflection on measuring micro aggression…

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Remembering our Fathers
Sonal Desai Sonal Desai

Remembering our Fathers

Remembering my father, Batuk Desai.

To my five-year-old eyes, it felt like a strange dance. First, we packed the bedroll (Indian version of a sleeping bag) for my father and collected his favorite books. We waited and waited for the police to arrive. After a few days, we decided they must have forgotten about him and unpacked his bedroll. That very night, there was a knock on the door and the local policemen, who normally accompanied their wives to my mother’s clinic, sheepishly arrived to pick him up. They waited aside while he repacked his bags and took him away.

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