The Woman

23/07/2018

17/03/2017

Anna Chandy was the first woman in her state of Kerala to get a law degree. She strongly advocated for women’s rights during her time as a barrister. After a prolific career as an advocate, she went on to become a “munsif”, making her the first female judge.
The women workers in the agricultural lands suffered a lot and were not paid reasonable wages by the landlords. Similar was the fate of working women in other fields as well. To promote their cause and redress their grievances, Mrs. Chandy started a magazine called ''Shrimati,'' that she both founded and edited.
Despite protests, hostilities and unbearable animosities, from both her competitors and media- besides unfair campaign practices- she contested the Shree Mulam Popular Assembly in 1931 and got successfully elected for the period 1932-34.
Her tenure as a judge was nothing short of exemplary, eventually elevating to the position of district judge. She eventually became the first female judge in an Indian high court — a position she retained for nine years.
She was one of the early torch-bearers of women's rights in India and made a substantial contribution towards the progress of Indian women, especially those of Kerala. Through hard work and dedication she rose to the position of eminence at a time when women empowerment was only a by-word.

23/02/2017

Arunima Sinha lost her leg when some burglars demanded her gold chain, and on her refusal, pushed her out of the moving train. She was hit by a passing train and suffered severe injuries.Two years later she became the first woman amputee to climb the Mount Everest. From battling the difficult days in the hospital to chasing her dreams of scaling the highest peak, Sinha’s story is all about courage, passion, dedication and respect.

“I turned my artificial leg into my strength and stubbornly chose the most difficult sport for myself,” she says.

Inspired by cricketer Yuvraj Singh, who had successfully defeated cancer, she decided to “do something” with her life. She didn’t want people to pity her. Instead, she wanted to get her life back, and, with support from her brother and coach, she became more determined about what she had to do.

“When I was undergoing treatment at AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences) for four months, I could not do anything on my own. But then one day I decided to climb the Everest,” she says.

She joined Eco Everest Expedition group in the Tata Steel Adventure Foundation-run training camp in Uttarkashi and got trained under ace mountaineer Bachendri Pal. While going through a year-long rigorous mental and physical training she would sometimes feel disheartened when she could not catch up with “normal” people, but her strong dedication kept her going.

Sinha had climbed 21,110 ft up Mt Chhamser Kangri (21,798 ft) of Ladakh in September 2011, but had to abandon the expedition 690 ft short of the summit due to bad weather conditions. But her aim was to scale the Everest.

And, after immense hard work, training and 52 days of a difficult climb from Kathmandu to the top of the peak she fulfilled her dream as she conquered the highest summit which was 8,848 meters above the sea level on May 21, 2013.

“I would not have climbed Mount Everest if I had not met with the accident. Though I lost my leg in the incident, it made me much stronger. When I was going through a tough time, I remembered my mother’s words who told me that when on the edge, look behind and see how much you have climbed and you will realize that you are only one step away from your destination,” she says.

21/02/2017

"My blindness hasn’t stopped me becoming an illustrator"

"I was born prematurely and my optic nerves didn’t develop properly – I’m completely blind in my right eye and only have 10% sight in my left. Since I can remember I’ve loved drawing – but I prefer to use pencil as it’s more precise; I find I get paint everywhere. People are shocked when they realise my art was created by a blind person and question how it’s possible; I simply work using the images I see in my mind. I’ve exhibited my work to the public and last year I won the RNIB’s Young Illustrator of the Year Award. My dream is to illustrate children’s books – I won’t let being blind get in the way of that goal."

-Kimberley Burrows, 26, Manchester

Source: Marie Claire UK

20/02/2017

Saalumarada Thimmakka's life story is a testimony to the ideal that women must challenge the status quo in order to be the change that they want to see.

An environmentalist from Karnataka, Saalumarada has earned a spot in the prestigious 'BBC's 100 Most Influential Women' list. The oldest person in the list, Thimmakka has been lauded for planting over 8,000 trees in 80 years.

Besides being ostracised by her relatives and neighbours for not being able to bear children, Thimmakka has had to endure many other hardships — such as extra work, starvation, and generally heinous behaviour meted out by her husband's family.

Life is not easy for an Indian woman unable to have a progeny. And for a daughter-in-law in India's rural back of beyond like Thimmakka, who belonged in this bracket, life was even tougher.

She says she was treated like a maid, working from morning till night, doing back-breaking work. A silver lining was her husband Bekal Chikkayya. He was more sensitive than the others, given that he stammered and had to experience the ridicule of people around.

"One day we thought why not plant trees and tend to them like we would our children," Thimmakka recalled.

She, along with Chikkayya, enthusiastically set about planting the banyan trees all along the stretch to the nearest town.

Together the duo have planted 8000 trees. Planting scores of trees, and then having to maintain them, is no joke. As Thimmakka says, she along with her husband tended to them like "children" for many years, protecting them from the elements, animals and other predators until they grew gigantic and independent. Her age? "105," she says, without batting an eyelid.

19/02/2017

"I’m a firefighter.

"I’ve been a firefighter at Springfield Fire Station in West Belfast for three years. I was one of the 33 people who got a job with the fire service out of 7,000 applicants. Everyone is shocked when they find out what I do – they expect firefighters to be burly men. I do a lot of work trying to change this though, by going into local schools and promoting the job to young girls. Some said they didn’t even realise women could do this, which shows there’s still a bit to be done. But we have skills men don’t, we can crawl into smaller spaces, and we’re naturally more compassionate, so can provide better emotional support to people who have just lost everything."

-Mary Kate McKevitt, 30, Belfast

Courtesy: Marie Claire UK

11/02/2017

Kunjarani Devi, at 46, is the grand old lady of Indian weightlifting.

She was the first woman weightlifter to win the Arjuna award, way back in 1990, and shared the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award with Leander Paes in 1996-1997.

The bespectacled Manipuri, the most decorated lifter of the country, competed well past her prime.

For the diminutive lady, the climb to the top was arduous. When she first took up the sport she faced a lot of resistance, not only from her family but others as well in her native Manipur.

But, having decided on making weightlifting a career, she worked tirelessly and tasted success early.

She started winning almost everything at the national level, which encouraged her to strive for honours internationally.

She put Indian weightlifting on the world map by winning a gold medal in the 48 kg category at the 18th Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, with a record overall lift of 166 kg, which included 72 kg in sn**ch and 94 kg in the clean and jerk.

In recognition of her accomplishments, the International Weightlifting Federation named her as one of the finest lifters of the 20th century.

Source: RediffSports

05/02/2017

Nicola Adams OBE is a British professional boxer. The first woman to win an Olympic boxing title, she is the 2012 and 2016 Olympic gold medallist in the women's flyweight division. As of 27 May 2016 she is the reigning Olympic, World, Commonwealth Games and European Games champion at flyweight.

On being asked how it all began Nicola says: “I was good at it, I was the only girl and I suppose I was the little star, and I loved it. I loved it when people said I boxed like a boy. It gave me a lot of confidence and street cred.” A routine developed. Nicola went to Agnes Stewart School each day, came home, did her homework, went to the gym, came back home, went to bed.” “What mum wouldn’t be happy with that?” says Dee. At the age of 13, she won her first competitive fight – there was a problem though: practically everybody hated the idea of women boxing, and it was another four years before she found a second opponent. The situation was this: the women’s sport was completely banned in the UK until 1996. You’re probably wondering why. Well, it was on the grounds that premenstrual syndrome made women too unstable to box.

“It’s hard to believe that ban carried on until 1996, and the reason is like something from a hundred years before,” she says. “But women have had to fight for everything, they had to fight for the vote, they had to fight to compete in the marathon, it’s always been a fight.”

Adams represented Haringey Police Community Club at boxing. She is openly bisexual, and was named the most influential LGBT person in Britain by The Independent in 2012. She also became the first openly LGBT person to win an Olympic boxing Gold medal, after her win at the 2012 Summer Olympics.

03/02/2017

On Wednesday, Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman in 78 years to be awarded the prestigious Fields Medal, considered the highest honor in mathematics. She was selected for "stunning advances in the theory of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces."

The Fields Medal is awarded every four years by the International Mathematical Union to outstanding mathematicians under 40 who show promise of future achievement. With the announcement of Mirzakhani and this year's other awardees—Arthur Avila, Manjul Bhargava, and Martin Hairer—there now have been 54 male and 1 female medalists.

Mirzakhani's accomplishment is all the more groundbreaking in light of the well-documented disadvantages and biases women face in math and science. For example, in a 2008 Yale study, professors were asked to rate fictional applicants for a lab manager position. When given an application with a male name at the top, professors rated the candidate more competent and hirable than when given an otherwise identical form with a female name. This bias was found in both male and female faculty members.

And that's not all women in STEM fields have to contend with: A July report found that a full 64 percent of women in various scientific fields were sexually harassed while doing fieldwork.

Mirzakhani, who grew up in Iran before earning her Ph.D. at Harvard and becoming a professor at Stanford, told the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2008 that she did not initially realize her strength in math: "I don't think that everyone should become a mathematician, but I do believe that many students don't give mathematics a real chance. I did poorly in math for a couple of years in middle school; I was just not interested in thinking about it. I can see that without being excited mathematics can look pointless and cold."

Content Source: motherjones.com

01/02/2017

Kanika Tekriwal has battled cancer. But there's no way you could gauge that from her demeanour. She looks pretty ordinary at first glance, but when she starts talking, you know she means business.
Once asked to fetch coffee in a board meeting by an elderly gentleman who was taking her to be someone who's fit for a secretarial role, the same woman has been named by the BBC as one of the top 100 most inspirational women in the world. She is the founder of Jet Set Go, an elite private aviation service for ferrying people to-and-fro, to the location of their choice.
"Cancer made me a strong person ready to face any challenge; and most importantly, to never give in. So when we began work on JetSetGo and things didn’t go my way – I didn’t get upset, but just focused on what we could do next. But, it was very difficult for people to take me seriously and think that I can provide them with an aircraft or a helicopter to transport them from Mumbai to Delhi. I had been shot down on a number of occasions and I was this mellow person. Until one day, when we had gone to make a pitch to a senior client, and being the last person to walk in, I was asked by this balding old man, 'Can you fetch me a cup of coffee?' That's when something flipped in my head and I made the decision of not being taken for granted," said Kanika in an interview to India Today.

30/01/2017

"I’ve had eight major organs removed. Last year, my partner and I were struggling to conceive so I was referred to a fertility clinic. Various tests revealed I had a rare cancer called Pseudomyxoma petritonei (PMP), which starts in the appendix and quickly spreads through the abdomen. In November I had to have eight major organs removed, including my spleen, stomach lining and diaphragm – plus a full hysterectomy and chemotherapy to get rid of the cancer. Going through early menopause has been tough, especially as I really wanted children – but I’m back at work and waiting for a scan to get the all clear. I’m looking to my future.’

-Kirsty Reid, 31, West Lothian
Story and Image courtesy: Marie Claire UK

24/01/2017

Brave, independent and unconventional, Homai Vyarawalla is known to be India’s first female photo journalist. She captured some of the most memorable and incredible moments of Indian history – from the first flag hoisting ceremony at the Red Fort on 16th August 1947 to the cremation of world renowned dignitaries like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Let's remember this amazing lady and her extraordinary contribution to Indian media.
Her work clearly narrates the story of the birth and rise of the largest democracy in the world. Despite this exceptional contribution in recording the social and political life of a nation in transition, she lived most of her life in anonymity. In a profession that is still mostly male dominated in this country, she hardly received any recognition throughout the four decades of her career.

Remembered as a dauntless woman and extremely passionate towards her work, most of her colleagues have said that she was usually the only woman standing in the front line taking photographs of events which had a deep impact on our nation’s evolution.

Her most well-known photographs include the picture of the first flag hoisting ceremony at the Red Fort on 16th August 1947, the cremation of world renowned dignitaries like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru and the epic picture of Lord Mountbatten when he was leaving India. The picture of Dalai Lama crossing over to the Indian Territory in 1959 happens to be another great inclusion in her archives.

She also photographed other moments of great historical significance such as the visit of Queen Elizabeth with Duke to India and of the meeting where the leaders voted for the June 3 Plan leading to the Partition of India. She was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 2011 for her extraordinary contributions in her field.