Indraprastha College for Women celebrated International Women’s Day with much fervor on 9th March. Through a variety of events, the Women’s Development Cell (WDC) of the College explored hitherto unexplored dimensions of womanhood. One example was the photography exhibition on the theme – Women and Ageing. A competition was held earlier in the month on the theme and the entries received were displayed on the occasion.
The day-long celebrations began with a panel discussion, which intended to explore the ‘Possibilities of Justice’. Dr. Veena Gupta, advisor of WDC explains why justice was at the core of the discourse, “We need to be aware about our struggles in the past, so that we can take it forward and realize our strength within.” The speakers on the panel were Pamela Philipose and Madhu Mehra. Philipose is currently a senior fellow with the Indian Council of Social Science Research.
Till June 2014, she was the director and editor-in-chief of Women’s Feature Service (WFS). Madhu Mehra is a lawyer, founding member and Executive Director of Partners for Law in Development (PLD), a legal resource group working on women’s rights and social justice. The discussion was chaired by the Principal, Dr. Babli Moitra Saraf, and the Question-Answer session that followed was really engaging, eliciting thought-provoking questions from both the students and staff in the audience.
The talk took an interesting turn with the panel imploring the audience to ask themselves questions which are considered taboo, to find out who their body and mind really belong to, and whether their decisions are their own or dictated by societal norms in implicit or explicit manner.
As a part of the celebrations, the other events organized included Turncoat Debate, and a creative writing competition.
‘‘Our efforts do not end with the day. As we leave the audience and participants introspecting about the theme, we intend to embark on research projects on these themes to further dig deeper into these issues, which is what the Cell stands for’’, said the President of WDC as the celebration culminated with the prize distribution.
Kritika Narula
Image Credits: Tarunima
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