Thinking Women

This reader attempts to see the workings of gender in day-to-day lives. The selection of material is wide ranging in terms of form and content, including creative writings in English and translations from other Indian languages, autobiographical narratives, newspaper articles, theoretical pieces, and a selection of visual material like advertisements and cartoons. The editors have been propelled by a constant attempt to foreground differences and to see how vectors like caste, class, sexuality and religion complicate one's experiences of gender, which open up issues for discussion, and make available different perspectives without offering any neat resolutions. The Reader juxtaposes different voices in such a way that it undermines the subject position of the middle class/upper caste Indian woman.