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Will change come through red gates?

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My former schoolmates are pre-ordering their copy of a coffee-table book entitled Through the Red Gates, a celebratory volume of 125 years of Ladies College, the school we attended on Flower Road, which celebrates this landmark event in 2025.   Some former schoolmates (and others) are also agonising at the possibility that the gates to the country’s governance might turn red with a Malimawa/NPP/Anura Kumara Dissanayake victory in the Presidential election next week.   The fear of a NPP/AKD victory takes several forms: it evokes the spectre of violence of the JVP (the main party in the NPP) forgetting that JVP are not the only perpetrators of terror. The political space, since 1 971 at least, has been seeped in violence - the JVP of the 1980s was particularly vicious, but s uccessive state regimes have unleashed state violence and given head to extra-judicial violent e lements that were equally virulent.   As Lionel Bopage has said in a recent interview , the violence of the JVP (and a
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Six key areas that restrain women from entering labour force - a random response to the Women's Policy Action Network

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  A recent article in the Daily Mirror r eported on a press conference organised by the Women's Policy Action Network (WPAN) of the Advocata Institute, on the vexed topic of Women's Labour Force Participation. It really sounds like a broken record So here are a few random points that I can't help but put down First point - one that is repeatedly made but which economists, especially the neo-liberal kind, repeatedly ignore.  Contributing to economic growth should not be the reason for increasing women's labour force participation. Women (like men) have a right to work and have rights at work, and policymakers have an obligation to respect and protect these rights. The ILO sums up these rights as "decent work" - "i t involves opportunities for work that is productive and delivers a fair income, security in the workplace and social protection for all, better prospects for personal development and social integration, freedom for people to express their conce
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Bound by Culture and the feminist book club

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Last evening, that is on Sunday, June 9 th , the Lakmahal Feminist Book Club met at the Lakmahal Community Library to discuss V V Ganeshananthan’s Brotherless Night.   There has been much said and written about the book and ‘Sugi’ as the author is to people she knows well has given many interviews in Sri Lanka and overseas and has had many things written about the book.  You can find links to some of these reviews and interviews at the end of this post.  The discussion at the book club was led by Neloufer de Mel, who has just retired from her position as Chair Professor of English at the Colombo University,  was a former Chairperson of the Gratiaen Trust and who is known for her a feminist scholarship.  She takes a multidisciplinary approach, drawing on literary, cultural, gender and performance studies to examine Sri Lankan socio-political, cultural and literary life.  The participants were quite diverse – age, gender and ethnicity wise. The shared perspectives were equally diverse. 
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Perahera elephants and working elephants

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  I have been watching the Perahera, year after year as a child.  It was the highlight of the August holidays when we went to see our grandparents in Kandy.  Anglophile, Christian and Central Bankers, my family used to secure seats at the Hatton National Bank where us kids watched the perahera from the balcony with wondrous eyes while the adults made it a social event with buffet,  alcohol and the company of the others.  Coloniality at its best. For us it was the spectacle, the dancers, the drummers, the fire lanterns, the smell, the noise, the colour.. and the elephants, always the elephants…Later I watched the Perahera as a Peradeniya undergraduate sitting with batchmates on the street, a very different view.  The embarrassing coloniality was shed, and it was all about being part of the crowd, belonging….Not till anthropological and historical curiosity got the better of me  many years later did I know anything about the significance of the Perahera beyond the carrying of the relic,
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Going back in time: small enterprise development project for rural women, Moneragala

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] photo by PANAP   The article by Buddhima Padmasiri -Structural Adjustment of Women’s Labour in Agriculture in Sri Lanka in Polity, January 17, 2023 unearthed some very early memories.  Buddhima uses a case study from the Moneragala District  to illustrate the exploitation and commodification of women’s labour in agriculture.    I was working for the Lanka Mahila Samiti in the early 1980s as a Project Coordinator for their Small Enterprise Development Programme for Rural Women (SEDP) funded by USAID, and was charged with developing revolving fund schemes in all of the districts in which we were working, and encouraging the women members of the Samiti to use the funds to engage in income generating projects. With hindsight, I can see the many, many shortcomings of that project, but it was my first ever ‘development’ job and I was terribly keen and  learning by doing (reading, attending conferences, talking to people etc).  To our credit we were not into promoting enterprises that ster
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Making change happen - how can the SIGI help?

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  I really couldn’t understand in the first reading what was so extraordinarily remarkable about the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) of the OECD.  The website   tells us that it is one of official data sources for monitoring SDG Indicator 5.1.1 on “Whether or not legal frameworks are in place to promote, enforce and monitor gender equality and women’s empowerment”, together with UN Women and the World Bank Group’s Women Business and the Law .  Well and good.  As an advocate for human rights in general, and women’s human rights in particular, I welcome the increase in  the body of quantitative data available in areas that are key to holding states accountable for fulfilling their obligations under CEDAW (especially) and other treaty bodies .  It’s exciting too to learn that SIGI's second dimension, related to #physicalintegrity of women, has spurred the development of mechanisms to enable access to justice for victims of sexual abuse, promoting the prevention and compre
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SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS ON THAT OTHER ARAGALAYA: a small Palm Sunday sermon!

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  (above) Daily Mirror photo; (below)  https://liturgy.co.nz/passion-palm-sunday-holy-week-2023 In the midst of a flood of social media messaging about a false prophet and a fallen angel a deep conversation with Shantha Premawardene helped me regain my sanity and restore some clear thinking.  Part of our conversation focused on Holy Week and that other Aragalaya, Palm Sunday, when Jesus rode in on a donkey to Jerusalem along with the masses, challenging the oppressive Roman government.  In 2022 Galle Face, they shouted #GoHomeGota, expressing Sri Lankans’ desire to be free of an incompetent and corrupt leader, elected no doubt, but who had driven the country to bankruptcy.  Palestinians chant Allahu Akbar! invoking the greatness of their God to free them from oppressive Israeli occupation; the masses that gathered round Jesus,  waved palm branches and shouted Hosanna! meaning Help!, help to be liberated from the rule of Caesar.    Capitalism and the cooption of the Christian message
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