Author: Haleemah Patel
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Sex work & Feminism in India -The vexed relationships
Feminist understandings and standpoints about ‘agency’ ‘consent’ and ‘voluntary entry into sex work’ remain fertile ground for discussions and debates but also possible disconnections among the two movements, which lead them to work on parallel lines that are difficult to connect. In India a common feminist perspective concerning sex work is not only to see…
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Counterproductive Regulation of Assisted Reproductive Technologies: A Review of the Assisted Reproductive Technologies Bill, 2020
This article critically engages with the Assisted Reproductive Technologies (Regulation) Bill, 2020 (ART Bill 2020) which is set to draw curtains on a regulatory journey of more than a decade and a half to culminate in a highly restrictive approach. Engaging with the provisions of this Bill, the article foregrounds that one of the important…
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Gender Identity, Sex Work and the Dissonance of Government in Pandemic Times
In thinking with the problematics of sex work, this paper reconsiders commensuration as the structuring relation between the rhetoric of liberal governance and the exercise of state-sanctioned power in everyday life. Within debates on sex work, understanding the dissonance between the law’s rhetoric and the ways laws are interpreted, ignored or violated on the street…
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‘No single hand can produce claps’ A Feminist Evaluation of Customers Liability for Availing Sexual Services under Indian law.
by Prabha Kotiswaran. GNLU LAW & SOCIETY REVIEW. Sex work debates around the world are saturated with normative questions around the commodification of women’s bodies and whether selling sexual services is an assault on women’sdignity and human rights or whether it is merely an expression of their economic and sexual agencyin a world where a…
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Book Launch: Rhacel Salazar Parreñas – Unfree: Migrant Domestic Work in Arab States
A stirring account of the experiences of migrant domestic workers, and what freedom, abuse, and power mean within a vast contract labor system. In the United Arab Emirates, there is an employment sponsorship system known as the kafala. Migrant domestic workers within it must solely work for their employer, secure their approval to leave the…
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Book Launch: Gowri Vijayakumar – At risk: Indian sexual politics and the global AIDS crisis
Gowri Vijayakumar is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her research and teaching use feminist and transnational perspectives to illuminate the trajectories of social movements, the everyday life of the state, and the political economy of globalization. Her new book, At Risk: Indian Sexual Politics and the Global AIDS Crisis,…
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Book Launch: Selma James Our Time is Now: Sex, Race, Class and Caring for People and Planet
For over sixty years, Selma James has been organizing from the perspective of unwaged women who, with their biological and caring work, reproduce the whole human race—whatever else they do. This work goes on almost unnoticed everywhere, in every culture. It is not prioritized economically, politically, or socially, and women are discriminated against and impoverished…
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Class and Social Reproduction: Interrogating Time Use Data for Clues
The literature on agrarian change in India has largely employed class categories based upon data on land, assets and occupational status. Land and asset data tend to exist at the level of households. Indicators of occupation have neither fully counted unpaid reproductive labor nor accounted for diversified livelihood strategies. As a result, categorizations of class…
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Webinar on the Trafficking in Persons (Prevention, Care and Rehabilitation) Bill
We have recently made a submission to the Ministry of Women and Child Development on the Trafficking in Persons (Prevention, Care and Rehabilitation) Bill, 2021, on behalf of the Laws of Social Reproduction Project (Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London & IWWAGE, New Delhi). A multi stake holder international webinar to discuss the Bill…
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Regulating Reproductive Technologies: A Blow to Inclusive Family Forms
The Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2020 was tabled in the Lok Sabha in September 2020. It was referred to the department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare, which submitted its 129th report on the ART Bill, 2020 on 17 March 2021. This article critically engages with the recommendations of this report. Attempts at regulating…