Bengaluru :

When oral historian Urvashi Butalia joined the publishing house Zubaan, she was told that it was the first time a woman was being hired in an executive position.

Usually, they only hired women as secretaries or filing clerks.  But today, most important positions in publishing, in terms of content, is held by women, she says.

The author of The Other Side of Silence spoke to City Express about her feminist oral history project.

On her website, Posterwomen, Butalia invites women to share their personal histories.

Activists who fought for causes like women’s empowerment, abolition of dowry and curbing of lesbian suicides shared their struggles with the historian, whose project aims at archiving their wisdom.

What drew her to oral history? Batalia says, “I like listening and talking to people. It find great value in the stories I find, small or big.

But when she started out, it was a challenge to do something different in the field, she admits.

While her family was supportive of her, she knew that as a women, she would not be able to make it to the top. “There were instances of sexual harassment besides the general indifference and disbelief towards high-achieving women,” Batalia shares.

The real struggle, however, was that the women she wanted to connect with often felt they had nothing important to say and their self-confidence was extremely low.

“I have realised that there is a lot to learn from the lives of even ordinary women, such as their way of working, courage and resilience,” she says.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Bengaluru / by Aishwariya Mudaliar / June 30th, 2016