N. Veena

IT Industry and Women's Agency: Explorations in Bangalore and Delhi, India

This article examines womens agency in the Information Technology (IT) industry and is based on field research in two cities in India: Bangalore and Delhi. We looked at both the software industry and IT-enabled services, particularly through the perceptions of women and men workers and managers within the IT industry. While a large number of women continue to work in gendered homes and work sites, balancing work and domestic responsibilities with little help from the men, they do, however, carry on an ongoing struggle to challenge embedded patriarchal relations within the family and in the industry. Conceding that there are socially sanctioned gender inequalities in the market, women prefer to work outside the home in an attempt to improve their social position and construct greater scope to enhance their agency, than be subject to family-based dependency and coercion.

Gender, Sexuality, and Identity Formation

The two books under review reveal many facts about the countriesThailand and India-as much by what they say as by what they do not say, how they say it, and who does the saying. Genders and Sexualities in Modem Thailand presents interesting facts about women, men, and gender relations in Thailand and, more importantly, places on record the socio-cultural landscape of Thailand and the changes being wrought in the concepts of identity, sexuality, and gender. The papers published in the Economic and Political Weekly and compiled in Ideals, Images and Real Lives are an effort in history making, ’ordering and reinterpreting the past’ (p. 1), to quote Maithreyi Krishnaraj’s introductory essay ’Permeable Boundaries.’ Using history, literary criticism, and discourse analysis, these papers delve_into different aspects of the Indian psyche to reveal the conscious and subconscious images of women. While Indian women have successfully fought to make women-friendly laws, the vast majority of Indian women in their villages and homes are unaffected. The role of culture and ideology in women’s subordination is the focus of this volume.

Deconstructing and Reconstructing Motherhood

As the medical and technological developments of the 20th century have served to increase men’s control over women’s bodies, women have rallied together to take back control over their bodies. But with the entry of New Reproductive Technologies (NRTs), we find ourselves split. Should we support the new technologies as intrinsically good (giving women more choices in life), or be wary and question them, or reject them altogether? All three views are visible around the world and this is the issue that Gupta examines in detail. The basic questions that have always confronted feminists are re-examined in

GREEN Foundation: Seeds of the Future

est and use the resources of the forest for their daily needs. GREEN (Genetic Resource, Ecology, Energy, and Nutrition) Foundation, a grassroots organization based in Bangalore city and working with small and marginal farmers in general and women farmers in particular, aims to conserve, promote, and revive biogenetic and cultural diversity in the dryland regions of South India. A research and documentation center has been set up in Thalli in Tamil Nadu, which is involved in activities such as organic farming, food processing, group training, annual seed fairs, publication of seed catalogues, reinforcing indigenous knowledge and related practices. The biodiversity conservation project began eight years ago