Giving Compass' Take:

• Shipra Deo,  writing for News Deeply, interviewed rural Indian women to hear their stories of courage in overcoming gender norms and cultural practices that hurt them.

• How can local communities in India create support systems or groups for women, especially women who are widows? 

• Read about why women won't reach gender parity in the workforce in India. 

As I have worked with and listened to women in India’s rural communities, I have learned that resistance by women is as old as suppression itself.

In a village in the Shahjahanpur district of Uttar Pradesh, India, I met a woman named Devki Bua, then 75 years old. She had been asked to leave a women’s discussion group by my colleague, who had mistaken her for a man because of the way she was dressed.  She found that her dress, the saree draped around her body, was obstructing her work and at the same time attracting unwanted attention.

“The day women realize that they are complete in themselves and don’t need to depend on a man for their lives, they will move ahead,” she said.

I met Sudevi in Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh, when she was a young widow of 24. She could never forget the ordeal that came with becoming a widow. It took her more than a year of mourning and silence to realize the same society that had taken her dignity and labeled her as unfit for anything productive would not help her support herself.

She joined a women’s collective and in discussions with her fellow women realized that she was not responsible for her widowhood and had the right to live a life of her own.

The lives of women such as Devki and Sudevi are so often determined by a host of norms, cultural practices or informal rules.  None of these norms is based in law, but attempts to disregard them are often met with serious ridicule and exclusion from family and community. Anyone defying these norms must possess strong convictions and courage to withstand the fierce societal backlash.

Read the full article about rural Indian women by Shipra Deo at News Deeply