The Changing Roles of Indian Women in the Diaspora

When women left India as indentured labourers, beginning in the 1840s, they immediately became agents of change in gender relations with men in a patriarchal system. Most of them came as wage-earning plantation workers, not as appendages and dependents to their husbands. They were never full-time homemakers; they had to work in the fields and also take care of their children at home. They earned for their family just like men. 

About one hundred years later in the 1950s, girl children in the Indian Diaspora were sent to school and now outnumber and outperform boys in exams. Indian women eventually entered the workplace, even in male-dominated sectors such as medicine, law, science, business, banking, finance, politics and public service.

They now marry at a later age and bear less children, some as few as one or two. Some choose their career over marriage and family. They have won the battle for reproductive rights over their own bodies. Indian women in the Diaspora stood against the dowry system, and arranged and child marriages, and are still fighting against gender abuse. They have been striving to empower themselves more, and to establish their own identity, leaving behind their marginalised and invisible lives. They now have a (greater) voice in private and public spaces.

Please join us THIS SUNDAY for  the 119^th weekly ICC  ZOOM Public Meeting, September 11, 2022 at (1.00 p.m. Belize), (3.00 p.m. New York/Eastern time), (3.00 p.m. Trinidad/Atlantic time), (3.00 p.m. Guyana), (4.00 p.m. Suriname), (8.00 p.m. England), (9.00 p.m. South Africa), (Sun 12 midnight, India, ND), (Mon 7.00 a.m. Fiji).   

  TOPIC:   

The Changing Roles of Indian Women in the Diaspora

SPEAKERS:   

KRITILATA RAM (Mauritius) -  Founder and Director of SSR Disability School, Triolet. Former Senior Advisor, Prime Minister’s Office. Former Board Governor, University of Technology.

DR. KOGIELAM ARCHARY (South Africa) - Research Associate at the University of South Africa. Series Editor of Tell Your Mother’s Story , a publication of the Oral History Association.

DR. GABRIELLE HOSEIN (Trinidad) - Senior Lecturer and Head of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at UWI, St. Augustine. Weekly columnist of Diary of a Mothering Worker.

SEETA DALLOO (Guyana) - BSc in Social Work. Probation and Social Services Officer at the Ministry of Human Services and Social Services. Coordinator, Blairmont Hindu Youth Organisation.

NAFIESA ALI (Trinidad) - Real Estate and Construction Business Executive. Graduate in Fabric/Batik Design and Cosmetology. Wife of deceased parliamentarian and economist, Ashraf Ali

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