Launching the Volume: ‘The Gendered Contagion: Perspectives on Domestic Violence during COVID 19.’

Amidst reports of the growing instances of domestic violence due to the ongoing pandemic and resulting lockdown, the Centre for Women and the Law (‘CWL’) and the Law and Society Committee at NLSIU, Bangalore along with the Leaflet have collaborated on an edited volume titled ‘The Gendered Contagion: Perspectives on Domestic Violence during COVID 19’.

This publication is a special issue of the Gender and Human Rights Law which is a publication series of the CWL, that has covered both collections of essays/articles as well as books/ monographs in the past. This publication has sought to bring together different perspectives on domestic violence and the diverse issues being faced by gender and sexual minorities during the current time. It has contributions from Indian lawyers, civil society members and activists working at the grassroots level along with field notes from organisations working in both Indian and neighbouring countries in South Asia.

The aim of this volume was both to bring together diverse experiences of affected people and stakeholders working on gender and sexuality issues as well as reflect on how current legal frameworks especially the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 have played out during the current pandemic.

This book is being launched with the hope that the volume contributes to literature on the impact of the pandemic from a gender perspective and also informs future legal and policy reform efforts.

Sections of the book:

• The first section titled, ‘The Shadow Pandemic’, chronicles the disproportionate and gendered challenges that the lockdown and the pandemic have brought about, including how these experiences are mediated
  by religion, caste and ability.  A special emphasis has been placed on the impact on the psycho-social condition of children during the lockdown.
• The second section titled, ‘the Dysfunctional State Protection’, covers the impact of the lockdown on the e cacious implementation of the PWDVA Act, 2005.
• The third section titled, ‘Queer Vulnerabilities’, chronicles the experience of the gender and sexual minorities (the LGBTQIA+ community) during the lockdown. This section has two sets of articles – the first set highlights the lived-experiences of the LGBTQIA+ community during the Covid-19 pandemic and the second set analyses shortcomings in legal frameworks and approaches in responding to the issues of the community.
• The fourth section titled, ‘Notes from the Neighbourhood’, includes field notes, interviews and articles from individuals and organizations in South Asia on the situation in their countries and what the key takeaways/ best practices for the social-economic and legal protection of survivors have been. The idea is to contribute towards a comparative understanding of gender and human rights issues in the South Asian sub-continent.

Meet the Team

Editors:
Prof. Sarasu Esther Thomas (Registrar, NLSIU, Bangalore)
Indira Jaising (Senior Advocate)
Akshat Agarwal, Manisha Arya, Prannv Dhawan and Vani Sharma.

Read more about the editors here.
Read more about the contributing authors here.

Acknowledgments from the editors:

We are extremely grateful to Justice Prabha Sridevan for writing the foreword to this volume. We are also grateful to Surbhi Karwa and Roshmi Goswami from the Leaflet team for helping us reach out to civil society initiatives. We are also grateful to Ms Beena Sarwar who generously supported our outreach efforts in South Asia. We are thankful to Dr Amal Sethi, Ms Bhavna Mishra, Mr Rishav Ambastha, Mr Ganesh Khemka, Mr John Simte and Mr Pradyuman Kaistha for their assistance in shortlisting student essays. We are also grateful to Sarthak Wadhwa, a member of the Law and Society Committee, for designing the cover page. We also note with gratitude the contribution of Pratik Bakshi and his associate Siva Shankar Santhosh for helping us finalise the design of the book.

We are also indebted to Heramb Mishra, Anchal Bhatheja and Jisha Garg for their diligent research and editorial assistance. This publication would not have been possible without the strident efforts of Ms Ashwini C and other staff members of the Centre for Women and the Law.