CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Devi, Asha Lata |
|---|---|
| Title | Sexual Harassment in Assam: A Postcolonial Analysis of the 'Modern Indian Woman' |
| Summary | In this thesis, I explore the concept of the “modern Indian woman” and women's lived experience of gender-based violence, particularly sexual harassment. The study suggests that due to their unawareness regarding sexual harassment, women tend to comprehend gender based violence as sexual harassment. Even if sexual harassment takes away women's autonomy to use public space, sexual harassment is normalized as a form of gender performance that hegemonic masculinity demands. My ethnographic study is based on Assam, a North-Eastern state in India, which is a relatively little explored area in India. This thesis is an extension to a study I conducted in 2015-2016 on the perception of educated youths on sexual harassment in Assam. While the idea of the ‘modern woman’ suggests that women move out of the home and gain education and employment, challenging the dominant discourse of womanhood created by nationalist leaders during the post-independence era, the constant fear of being sexually harassed takes away their motivation to move out of the private space. Using the postcolonial theories of Partha Chatterjee, Asish Nandy, Gayatri Spivak, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan and Maitrayee Chaudhuri, I investigate how women bargain their identity as a ‘modern Indian woman’for sexual harassment in Assam. My research contributes to the debate about sexual harassment, showing how the popular discourse of the 'modern Indian woman' inflicts sexual harassment in the country, and how woman are creating their own subjectivities against sexual harassment. |
| Supervisor | Gailani, Nadia Jones |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/devi_asha.pdf |
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