Shreya Sen
Shreya Sen is a Doctoral Fellow at University of Calcutta. She
participated in the workshop. She can be reached at shreya69@gmail.com
The Faculty of
Social Sciences at the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi, Finland recently
organized an International workshop on Gender,
Development, Resistance between the 7th and 8th of
June 2015, bringing together activists, practitioners and academics dedicated
to the research, analysis and discussion of upcoming issues in these areas of
study. The workshop was a follow up of the Ninth Feminist Research Conference
on ‘Sex and Capital” sponsored by ATGENDER, a European organization for gender
documentation and research, which also took place at the University of Lapland,
from 3rd to 6th June 2015. Altogether, there were 21
papers presented at the workshop over eight panels and over a span of two days,
with a keynote lecture by Dr. Paula Banerjee of the Department of South and
Southeast Asian Studies, University of Calcutta and a concluding talk by
workshop host and post-doctoral researcher at the University of Lapland, Dr.
Tiina Seppala.
In her opening
remarks, Dr. Paula Banerjee (University of Calcutta) explained how the
development paradigm favored by much of the post colonial world has resulted in
massive displacement, since the cost of development is not borne equally by all
sections of society. The most vulnerable of the population such as the indigenous
people, minorities etc. she argued, bear the cost of development while the more
endowed enjoy the fruits of development. After providing an overview of women’s
resistance to dams, mining and other development projects in Northeastern India
and in the Indian states of Orissa and West Bengal, Dr Banerjee concluded that
women occupied a significant portion of the resisting population owing to a concern
for their children and future generations, their training in Satyagraha and
their longstanding struggle against state, patriarchy and capital.
