 here. Okay. And with a brief introduction. Okay. So and with some technical information. So hi everybody. Welcome to the virtual conference, reimagining our words from below organized by the Society for the Study of Social Problems through its two committees that address the Transnational Initiatives, the Transnational Initiatives Committee and the Hadock Virtual Transnational Initiatives Committee. This conference is hosted by the Orphalia Center for Global International Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Thanks for being here today. Today we are session three developing feminist leadership and research on movements and indigenous communities in the global south that is co-organized by the guy Alindya McGovern from the Indiana University, USA and Morena Carter University of South Tempton in the UK that it's me. And before starting with, I would like to remind you some general rules and guidelines for the for the session. Please, please keep your microphones muted to avoid the quiz. Using the ad site is preferable. And if you are experiencing bandwidth issues, try turning off your camera. This session will be recorded, recorded. If you do not agree with the recording, you should leave the rest room. And in the chat box, you will find two items on both of the links are posted on the front page also on the conference front page as well. So the first link concern the guest book, you can add your name to the triple SP Transnational Initiatives Committee guest book. If you want to receive future announcement about the committee, for example, for conference and events. And the second link is to provide feedback about the conference. So this live session will last one hour and a half. And for questions and comments, you can use the chat box or raise your hand and join the discussion. So today we have we asked for papers that you can find on the web, the video presentation, you can find the video presentation on the web page. The first paper is from the university India, dedicated to existing land acquisition. The second page paper from the criminalization to cultural legitimation, narratives of lived experience of LGBT communities in India is by Heia Datta, Louisiana State University. The third paper is from Fiaia Tamla Rai, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, not asking to be their step-wife but patriarchy and within gender status of women and street vendors in Northern Nepal. And the last paper is from and presented by the government and feminist research agenda for a global women's movement against neoliberalism focused on the global South. So sorry for my pronunciation. And if I made mistake about your name, please correct me. And so I guess I leave the floor to you for the discussion and presentation and to Heia. Okay, so my presentation I have entitled the agenda for feminist research for contesting neoliberal regimes. And I just let me just remove some of these ads that are coming up. So I will focus my discussion on three things. What are the dimensions of research and research as political engagement for social change and social justice. And then I will provide suggestions for feminist research agenda for contesting neoliberal regimes towards a de-globalized world. So what are the dimensions of feminist research? I think it's important to take a review of this before we talk about implications for contesting research, contesting neoliberal globalization contesting neoliberal globalization. So one of the dimensions of feminist research is that the research connects to feminist struggle. Feminist struggle to change society so that it's more just and the liberation of women. But in some literature, it's not only the struggle of women, it's not only for the liberation of women, but also for the liberation of other marginalized groups in society. And then feminist research documents the experience of women and their concerns. We can begin to think about organic feminist inquiry. Some graduate students have used this in their thesis, for example, which begins from the experience of women. Even the questions that we formulate for inquiry, we look at the experience of women, what are the things that they are concerned about in their everyday lives. And we need to recognize the differences in the way women experience oppression, based on class, race, ethnicity and nationality, because people from different positions of power have definitions and perceptions and even notions about oppression and liberation. And dimension, another dimension is that the subjugated knowledge of women is an earth. And there are variations of ruling. And within these relations of ruling, there are again power, sub power structures. And women's knowledge are usually marginalized in this case. And feminist search challenges, structures and ideologies that oppress women. It's not only for example, relations between men and women, but looking at the different structures, economic, political, social and other ideologies about men's and women's place in society. Then it fosters empowerment and emancipation of women and other marginalized groups. So research, the product of our research should somehow contribute to the emancipation of women. And here is where women's struggles are also allied to the struggles of other marginalized groups and subjugated groups in society. And there is something unique in feminist research, the concept of reflectivity, where we also look at how we are affected by the way we do research, by the way we relate to the subjects of our research. From our own standpoint, how do we begin, for example, in the process of research? How do we design it because of our positions in society? And academics sometimes have a privileged position. And so when we look at women who are oppressed based on class race, ethnicity and other factors, we need to take a look at our own positionality in society. Now, it looks like from my own research about feminist research, that feminist research did not really emerge out of the blue. There were really some theoretical foundations from which it emerged. And in my review of this concert for many decades now, let's say 25, more than 25 years, there's something that is important to take a look at. Cognitive justice. What is this cognitive justice? It's our ability to think against dominant knowledge. And this is essential for transforming society. Our own ideas, our own frames of reference when we interpret reality somehow contribute to the subjugation of others and their understanding about society. There's also this body of literature that argues about that researchers, feminist researchers, not necessarily feminist researchers, but that researchers should also be engaged in the struggles for justice, or against suppression, against exploitation, and the subject's participation in the research process. So that the research process could also become liberating for those that we study. So there is, for example, the notion of community action research, participatory action research, indigenous forms of community engagement, advocate research, insurgent research, the idea, especially for academics, that our research should not be merely extracting, meaning we just get information, and then we don't do much. And the information sometimes, and the way we're doing research and why we do research sometimes is self-centered. It's just because we want to get academic promotion or so forth. So there is also this body of literature that talks about grassroots-oriented research, that we begin our research from the experience of those who are marginalized or exploited. So if we are going to talk about development projects or study development projects, who are the grassroots involved in there and how are they affected? And literature in indigenous communities also brings us attention to looking at the context of research, such as looking at the history and misrepresentation of certain groups, such as, for example, indigenous communities, folks, our attention to critical analysis of colonialism, and to be humbling for those of us who are in the Western world to accept the fact that Western scientific research could have been used for as a mechanism of colonization. Now, those, for example, who advocate qualitative inquiry as social justice like Norman Denson, this whole argumentation somehow finds kinship with feminist research. So in coming up and reflecting about feminist research agenda for contesting neoliberal globalization, there are three themes that I will focus. Activist response, issues needing more attention, epistemological and methodological concerns, and what are the implications of these for feminist research. First, now let's move on to activist response. There is an emerging movement called a deep globalization movement, and this is just beginning, and it's a very interesting and important movement because it's looking for ways to move away from neoliberal development. So it's blazing for those who are living under neoliberal nation states. This movement is a good movement to participate in. And there are also challenges to global capitalism. Global capitalism is the neoliberal economic project of globalization, neoliberal globalization. And so there are, for example, resistance from labor unions. And there are also challenges to imperialism and more. There's a big movement here in the U.S. and then globally because imperialism has been used to expand capitalism. Globally, and war is used to occupy lands in order to control the development and the resources of the occupied territories. And there are also challenges to international institutions of finance capital, such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, whose structural adjustment policies impose, and I don't hesitate to say impose, on borrowing countries somehow really destroy the economies of these countries. And interestingly, because this is my current research, there's a growing resistance among indigenous people, workers, peasants, and migrants, indigenous people, because they are the ones who are most affected by transnational corporations going into other countries. And here we find in many of these researches, politics of dispossession of indigenous land. And we find also from workers, because they are the ones who are most directly connected with transnational corporations, searching for cheap labor and peasants are also as transnational corporations, which are the instrument of global capitalism, penetrate agricultural and agribusiness development in third world countries. And there are a good number of literature on this. Now migrants provide cheap labor in wealthier countries. And so there's also this growing resistance among them, for example, migrants from Indonesia, migrants from other Asian countries, and other Africa, going, for example, to Europe, US, and the newly developing countries in Asia. So what are the questions for feminist research inquiry? So we can take a look at what initiatives are taking place among grassroots women in the global south, but also to take a look at the global north. That can be considered part of the de-globalization movement. There's very little research, because this is just beginning. I prepared a paper on the de-globalization movement, and I could hardly find literature. There's still very little. Then what forms of resistance among women and men in the global north and south that challenge global capitalism? There are centers of power that develop as global expand, both in the neoliberal nation states, as well as in the global economy, and as well as in regions, for example, in Africa, Asia, with the growth of China, imperialist power of China, as well as in Europe. So what centers of power do they target? And what problems and obstacles do they pose to their collective actions? It's important to document this. Then how are imperialisms generally? If we take a look at the war in Ukraine now, there are different imperialisms interplaying, and an important research to look at is how is this gender and how are men and women and children affected, differentially. And what forms of solidarity are taking place among women workers, peasants, urban poor, indigenous people in the global south and in the global north? I had a colleague who said to me, why do you always say global north and global south? Within the global north, there's also a global south, right? That's why it's important to look at the peripheralization within the global north and the super peripheralization, peripheralization of the global south. Now, what substantive issues I see need more attention. And what are the implications for this for feminist research? In the latest phase of global capitalism, extractivism seems to be the emphasis. And this is the unbridled extraction of raw materials. And this has really serious environmental destruction. And when you destroy the environment, you destroy livelihoods, you do not only destroy the air, the water, the food systems, you threaten food security. And so this is really a serious concern. And indigenous people are very much affected. In fact, I would say the ones who are most affected because extractivism, transnational corporations go to lands that are still on its lord and indigenous communities, usefully you stay in the mountains and where you control and mining and everything that extractivist investment and penetration of the global economy. That's why extractivism as the last frontier of global capitalism. And there is the connivance of the state and transnational corporations in extractivism. And so if there is connivance of the state and transnational corporations, you begin to see already the centers of power that resistance target and the complexity. So it's important that we take a look at the details and the dynamics of resistance and opposition. Now, what are the implications for feminist research on this? It's important now to document and inquire what forms of extractivism are taking place in the global south, global north, and how are they affecting men, women, and children. So it's not, for example, in my own research, I see corporate mining start expanding in different parts of the world, especially the global south, but also there are extractivist activities within the global north. And children are least studied. And it's important to also organize the children, the youth, then examine how environmental destruction brought about by extractivist impact men, women, and children differently because of their positions in the community and in the family relations, family economy. Children migrate, for example, and men migrate. I met in my own research, indigenous people, men moving to the urban areas, women being displaced because of corporate mining from their ancestral land. And some are thinking, I will just go and maybe be a domestic worker in other countries and we already know what are the consequences of that. Because indigenous women are most affected by extractivism. It's important now to document how they're fighting that. How do they frame issues and what issues can be learned from them in their notions about the correlation between health and environment, between food systems and environment? And how do they conceptualize de-globalization? Because these are, for example, I would say that indigenous communities are less privileged to be a capitalist community. So that's actually against capitalism that promotes individualism and private property. What are the epistemological and logical concerns and issues? One thing I see is how do we know what we do not know and what can we know in a way that is emancipatory for the participants' research? So really here, some of the dimensions of feminist research are coming in again. And what strategies can we use to give the subjected knowledge of indigenous communities? How can be heard not only in our research, but also in policy? Our research must influence policy and must become insurgent in terms of the power of transnational corporations, in terms of power of transnational corporations, because they also have their own interpretation and dreams about how development should take place and impose them in other groups globally. So the implications for feminist research is each of the dimensions of feminist research that I have discussed earlier would be most useful in giving voice to the marginalized men and women. Not all of them might be useful. So we again have to use our creativity, but also consultation with the people that we study. So what do we do with the outcomes of our research that will meaningfully impact the empowerment of men and women in the process of de-globalizing the political economy? So one dimension of de-globalization movement is to begin thinking about ways we can organize work, ways about we can use natural resources, ways we can use, for example, the resources that we extract, ways that we can get to think between human lives, human dignity, and the pursuit for profit. Now I have done publications that somehow relate to feminist research, the Globalization Labor Export and Resistance, a study of Filipino migrant domestic workers in global cities, where I have the unfilled work in Hong Kong, Rome, Taiwan, Vancouver, in Canada, and of course Chicago, and tried to look at the resistance of domestic workers who are working in this country. So migration of Filipino women to other wealthier countries, some of them work, not only double work, they work at home, but they also work in small enterprises of capitalists in other countries. Then this is where I evolved the concept of organic feminist inquiry, Filipino peasant women's exploitation and resistance, because oftentimes we think that women are not linked to transnational, peasant women are not linked to transnational capital, but in fact they are very much linked. And there is also these forms of resistance combining with peasant men. And the last two volumes, Globalization and Third World Women, Gender and Globalization Patterns of Women's Resistance, this is a good collection of feminist scholars looking at how women in Africa, Asia, Latin America, even in the Global North, and other, I have not included her Middle East, are resisting neoliberal globalization. And there are also articles and my favorite is the Marxist Feminism for a Global Women's Movement Against Capitalism. I argue that Marxist Feminism can be a good framework for studying women's resistance against communism, but also as a framework for organizing in order that they gain collective power. And there is also grassroots re-undered research as political engagement for social justice, exposing corporate mining in indigenous contexts in the Philippines. This is very much related to extractivism and somehow influenced by my notion of grassroots re-undered research to begin looking at, if we are looking at corporate mining and who are the grassroots here, it's the indigenous people. So that's where I began my inquiry. Then neoliberal globalization and transnational women's movements in the early 21st century, there are these really transnational networks, transnational movements based in neoliberal nation states that's really growing. It's very interesting to take a look at how this is expanding. For example, the International Women's Association, it began five years ago and it addresses imperialism, it addresses war and neoliberalism, and we have people from the Middle East, Cuba, Africa, and it's still alive after five years of religious work. Then of course, I have mentioned this already, neoliberal globalization in the Philippines, its impact on Filipino women and their force of resistance. Of course, I focus mostly on my research on Filipino women and the Philippines because the Philippines is a classic example of a neoliberal nation state. There is of course resistance from below, but the state and other transnational corporations and then resistance is contained and you have the United States continuing to provide military aid to an oppressive regime. So this is where I end and thank you very much. That's my email and I'm happy to converse later. Thank you. Thank you, Ligaya, for your presentation. We can leave the floor to Heia Dutta. So this is the name of my topic from decriminalization to cultural legitimization, narratives of lived experiences of LGBTQ communities in India. So recently, in 2019, until that point of time, same sex relationships have been criminalized since the time of the British colonial rule in India, that is almost 1860s. And same sex relationships have been criminalized and looked down upon and hence the LGBTQ population has remained marginalized in the Indian society for so long. But recently this transgender persons protection of rights act have been marked as one of the groundbreaking revolutionary act that has been passed by the Supreme Court of India because it has almost read down 200 years of the colonial law that had so long marginalized the sexual minorities in India. Now, the significance of the act is probably very little on the lives of the people in India given the fact that it's too recent and there has been minimum research that has been done on the on the Indian society. And also the fact that this this law only has, I'm sorry, I don't know why that happened. This law only had certain certain certain privileges. That is, it only recognized a third group of gender, which it labels as the third gender and gives people the right to select, select the gender in case they do not identify themselves in the binary gender category. But that is that I would say that's just the just the beginning of the change and the Supreme Court is yet to yet to go ahead for more more changes and more laws are yet to come across. So basically what I'm doing in my research is that I am trying to capture the transition between how legal legal, I'm sorry, legally enacting a law affects the cultural change in in the society. So, and like I said before that there has been a gap in the literature because historically, which I'm which I'm coming in the next slide, historically, Indian culture showed a much more tolerance towards homosexuality. I believe this word is kind of outdated right now. But when I'm talking about history, this word has has a significance. So, I'm going to, I'm going to try to fill in the gaps in the literature through my research by providing information how from from the in this value civilization till the point of colonization and then post colonization, how culture and how social codes on accepting same sex relations have been transitioning. So, mainly I'm going to focus on three research themes in my paper that is how has the enactment of the law transgender persons protection of rights act 2019 affected the identities of LGBTQ persons in India. Secondly, how is the legal change being culturally accepted. And lastly, how do the legal changes affect LGBTQ persons thoughts on the idea of family and parenthood. So, so in 1960, the the section 377 of the Indian penal code, criminalized a homosexual relationship with said that whosoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man woman or animal shall be punished with imprisonment for life and shall be liable to fine. And the explanation that was provided was penetration is sufficient to constitute the carnal intercourse necessary to the offense described in this section. However, this I'm talking about the 1860s that prior to that, prior to that Indian culture has shown in its in its in its scriptures, such as the mycologies or Hindu or Buddhist religious text, how rituals were performed to give equal importance to same sex friendship or relationship. And unlike in the modern times where same sex relationship stops at certain point, we cannot imagine beyond friendship, like same sex relationship do not have a legitimization of any romantic, romantic intent after, after a certain point, that was not the case that is projected in the Indian scripts, which we see from its religious texts. So those cultures have been the indigenous culture have been therefore affected from the colonial period where the indigenous culture have been ruptured through reinterpretation from the colonial perspective. Moreover, in the present time, the media representation has has sort of brought in front of us the Western form of same sex relationship of what we understand the LGBTQ community to be is is kind of like an imitation of the Western society. So the indigenous nature of the society or, for example, I would I would like to elaborate this with an example. Let's say the word transgender in the English dictionary or in the Western society, the word transgender is sort of cannot be implemented or applied to describe in a culture like India, because they had there are several indigenous terms, which do not fit in under the umbrella term of transgender. Now, this leads to an identity crisis. Now there, these are the gaps that needs to be filled out. And I believe that through my research, I might be able to do that. So the journey of legalization legalization had begun since the 1994 in India, at least since then that has been documented when one of the non governmental organization known as the known as the AIDS, they, they bow the underland in English that could mean mobilization against discrimination. This was a group that first raised voice against criminalizing same sex relationship. And mainly they raise voice against how the health issues should be a concern for the government and how sexual minorities should be taken care of. Secondly, and and henceforth from 1994, we see that there has been several media representation and how how films, theaters, drama, poems most importantly have sort of highlighted the importance of a same sex relationship and how it has tried to modify the culture. But 2009 2013 marks marks one of the one of the most important movements or or perhaps important steps in the Indian society where two major cases the last foundation versus the government of NTC of Delhi. And in 2000 2013 14 the Nalsa case had had led the Supreme Court to actually grant this this third category of gender, which is perhaps one of one of the most important changes because it at least recognizes recognizes gender and sexual identity beyond the binary category. I'm going to use the interest intersection between several theories. First is the feminist and queer theories which believes that there has been minimum research on on on the sexual minorities in both the cases when they have been the victim or the offender that has been very less of research on this. Secondly, I would be utilizing the labeling theory and adjacent to is adjacent to it is the shaming reintegrative theory which suggests that how labeling or or due to due to the existing hegemonic social codes, how labels are how labels is invoked through social interaction in a given society and how that affects people's identity culture and how that can predict one's behavior. And lastly, I would be utilizing the ecological theoretical framework where where where it where it argues that any action any minimum action can can affect the larger larger part of the society. So it is kind of going from a micro perspective to a macro perspective. Okay, so in my paper, I I would be sort of dividing it into three three parts. The first part deals with romantic relations, politics of friendship, and gender performativity. So, so in the Indian culture, we have seen from historical historical texts, mythologies and previous research, that how our gender performances, even with our gender, our gender actually interferes with our interaction with the society in our daily life. So for example, as women, we might be more, we might be more accepted to be physically closer with with our same sex partners, because that is thought to be more feminine within quotes. But those same things are not legitimized for men, because being physically intimate is not very masculine. So these are these are these are some of the ways how friendship relations build up, and our interaction sort of shapes the way we see relationships, and how how this also sort of invokes homophobic nature in in given social spaces. In India, the gender has played a major role in nation building, because women especially have been have been represented as the backbone of culture, spirituality, and they have been given the role to maintain that feminine and masculine divide, which sort of makes it more difficult, which sort of do not recognize that how gender roles can be can can sort of can be interlinked with each other, or in reality, how the boundaries are sort of blur. Second, I would be talking about family as a concept, because because traditionally, it has been a very dominant idea about how we think of a heterosexual family formation. Now, even the law social structure, and and the culture social code, it supports the heterosexual form of family building, and therefore, marginalizing any other non heterosexual forms of family relationship. So, moreover, there are patriarchal values influence of the media, reinforcement of the motherhood, these are the things that have affected the idea of family, and how this idea has been very rigid to the rigid in the Indian Indian social scenario, given the fact that family also plays a major role in in politics and nation building. So that makes even more difficult for sexual minorities to come up with a different form of family idea. And we still do not have that legal permission for that. So therefore, some of my some of my findings have suggested how how sexual minorities depend on friendship networkings and family, family, family support to actually practice their preferred form of sexuality and gender roles. Lastly, I would be talking about parenthood and adoption. And since, like, after after talking about family, I think parenthood and parenthood and adoption have been seen as one of the major symbols of a family irrespective of the gender composition of couples. So parenthood gives gives an identity. It is not only a self identity, but it is also a social identity that that supports the idea of the family, having children in in in the in the union of the couple sort of gives a social legitimization and social support of labeling that relation as a as a family, which is the word family over here becomes very important as it signifies the depth of the relationship that is shared between the parents and the children. In the in the recent times, we have seen that biological biological methods of reproduction have been replaced by scientifically advanced methods. But that has been mostly explored among heterosexual couples, especially in India, though we see a lot of research going on on the Western society of how same sex parents have sort of sort of encountered experiences of adopting either by private agencies or government agencies or internationally. This India kind of remains the place where surrogacy takes place, but only for the Western couple. And this is not much explored in in the Indian society. Lastly, my methodology would include I aim to conduct in depth interviews to to collect narratives through my participants. And my field of research is mainly in India. I'm trying to my my data collection is still in the process. It's still going on. So that is one thing. Although there are some there are definitely quite limitations of this research, because still same sex relationships or LGBTQ community do not find it very comfortable to come out in public. So finding participants is a difficult task. But yes, of course, like there is also the other side of it where people are coming out and are willing to talk. So these are some of the limitations that as a researcher, I need to keep in mind. I had put some of the findings in my in my presentation. So these these were some of the interview questions, where I got responses. I'm not I'm not going through the detail of the responses. But some of the analysis over here that I found is that identity formation is dependent more on the culture than it is on legalization. So more mostly one of the most important point that has been raised by the participants during the process of interview is that how they sort of gives importance to the law, but they are more hopeful towards the cultural expectation to be able to be a part of the mainstream society. So that is that is one of the concern that I saw. Secondly, identities cannot be studied in isolation rather, rather it is an intersection of one social position positionality awareness of legalization creates more empowerment. Friendship networks are source of family formation. I was talking about this earlier in my discussion. Social label shapes behavior and affects family formation and adoption strategies. So, so, yeah, I mean, that that was it. And I, I, I still like have a lot of hope on the study because I feel like this is one of the studies which has which has not been explored in India as much as it should be. And I feel like the LGBTQ community in the in the Asian Asian culture is sort of it lacks a representation. We mostly study about the Western society about its progressiveness, but but we laugh, but we lack a representation of the global south as we were as we were talking about. So that was my presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for your presentation. And I think that we can it's very, very precious. Thank you. I think that we can leave the floor to Pia. I'm sorry. I'm not sure how to pronounce your name and I leave to you. The floor. Hello, everyone. It's morning here and good afternoon. If it's afternoon, where you are warm greetings. I'm busy. I'm at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. And today I'm going to present not asking to be their step wife. Hopefully I can. So, not asking to be their statewide patriarchy and within gender struggles of women's street vendors in urban Nepal and I focus on women's street food vendors. Gayatri is a 40 year old Jinnati woman and a street food vendor in Kathmandu Valley, the largest urban area in Nepal. Every morning she takes her card filled with large transparent cylindrical plastic container full of puri and another container of popped rice and small containers of ingredients that are used to prepare street foods, panipuri and chalpade. Behind Gayatri, her husband follows with a bucket of water and a rag bag containing plastic bottles filled with water. And if her husband is not around, her two sons in school uniform follow her, one son carries bucket and the younger one carries the bag with the water bottles. So, when her husband goes, he's a driver, so when he goes to work and her children go to school, all day he sells the panipuri and by herself she has an education of primary school and her average daily earning is about 1200 rupees, that's about 12 dollars. There are about 30,000 street vendors in Kathmandu Valley like Gayatri. They are pre-dominantly working class women and they are not monolid. Some are Hindu, some are non-Hindu Jinnati. Jinnatis are indigenous nationalities, mainly non-Hindu groups that constitute about 36% of population in Nepal. Jinnatis include serpas, grooms, muggers, rai, limboos and tamans. So, the women street vendors, they are of different age group, they have different family structures, different place of origin. Existing feminist literature go beyond this formal informal dichotomy. The literature does and past studies do a gendered analysis of organizing, how women organize in informal economy, what are their strategies to ensure dignified labor conditions and in the labor market and how they get empowered and also contest with the city officials for space. But the existing literature has a gap of within and between gender differences are less analyzed. So, there is a double blind patriarchy, that's patriarchy within family and outside family, that's state patriarchy as Taman 2000. So, I ask how do working class women of high caste Hindu and non-Hindu Jinnati ethnic groups navigate patriarchy while departing from domestic realms to urban public space as street food vendors. I use gender relations theory because gender is seen as an ongoing dynamic process in this theory. To give a little bit a broader picture of women's position in the context of Nepali society, let's look at women's movement in Nepal, which is very closely tied with the political changes. Until 1950s, women were more into private realms of their families largely because there was Ramayana regime and it was predominantly Hindu, right, it was known back then as a Hindu kingdom. In 1950s onward, Nepal slowly started organizing and then opening up to outside worlds. Until 1990s, there was Panchayat regime which reproduced hegemonic Hindu patriarchy. After 1990s moment, Nepali women started to work outside the family and farm. But the gender norms of Hindu that's like on equal that reproduces on equal gender relations continued in workplace and public spheres. Between 1996 and 2006, that was a decade-long Maoist insurgency where 10,000 people or more lost their lives. But within that period, women rights activism among the minoritized women like Janjati, Dalit, and Modesi came up on the surface. After 2006, there was a peace agreement between Maoist and political parties. There was people's movement and 20-year-old monarchy of system was thrown. A new constitution was promulgated in the Republican Republic. But still women are contending for equal rights, for example, citizenship through mother's name. That has been one of the biggest challenges. So let's now get back to street vending. Street vending is viewed as one of the tangible manifestations of informal economy, traditionally rooted in the cultural fabric of global south. Although large body of street vending literature focuses on southern cities in Africa, Asia, Latin America. But there has been a growing sociological inquiry in European and North American context. For example, Morales 1997 did an ethnographic field work in Chicago's Maxwell Street Market. Here on the left in the picture, you'll see a Chicago. I took it last month where we could see a person selling street foods. On the right, that was from the field in 2017 where that was the typical kind of a cart that I was explaining about cylindrical plastic container with puris and puff cries. So that's the typical cart that we see among women vendors. So anyways, in the northern cities, like in US, like Philadelphia, there are studies done there. A recent study in 2022, there was a study done by Breone and Campios de Salas. That was a case study on Los Angeles Street Vendor Campaign. That was a movement that tried to reconceptualize street vending as a women's justice issue. If we look at the global south, street vending is one of the informal self-employment sectors and where women have significant share. And the findings on women's vending street vending in the global south has a mixed result. Some see women's entry into informal labor as further subordinating them and pushing them to precarious working conditions on equal earning. There was a study by Martinez in Cali in Colombia where street vendors were likely to earn more than women. In Bangladesh, there are very few women street vendors, lastly because of the patriarchal social structure. Whereas a study by King in Ghana where women street vendors actually got empowered, they got recognition in their community as income generator. They built a strong social support networks and enhanced their self-esteem through their ability to make an economic contribution and for their children's upbringing. So let me now slightly talk about my study. So it's an intrinsic case study as Robert Steig calls it and Robert Inne talks about the case study design so I followed them. So nine women street vendors in Kathmandu were there. I spent about one and a half year in the fields. At first three months, I explored around the city, navigating and I did purpose sampling and there were varying grains of my whole goal was to find women that were of different grains, different a's, different place of course. And I came across seven ethnic Genjati women, two high caste Hindu women. I did interviews in the streets. My interviews were arranged from one, one with only one participant because she gave consent for first interview and then later she was a high caste Hindu and she was afraid her husband might not like it if I interviewed her again. So I didn't interview her again. So others were multiple interviews and maximum up to five interviews were taken and each interview was for one to two hours. And two hours sounds long but when I did those interviews in the streets, so when the women often got customers at those times I stood aside and took my field notes as I waited for them and when they were not very busy, I started talking with them, having conversation with them. So I also was a consumer of street food, so basically I also consumed the food and those a's, rins of my participants were 28 to 60 years. All of them were married with children and two of them were grandmothers. So one of my, let me share one of my participants story, Sapanna, right? She is 34 years old, belonged to high caste in the group. She migrated from Nuwakku to Kathmandu when she was a child. She was married the age of 16. She has two children, her husband is a carpenter. It's a wage per hour wage paid labor and she was a literate, third grade and she knew how to write name. Her prior experience she was mostly a house maker, but then she briefly worked in a private school for a salary of 3,000 that's about $30 per month and there was no other benefit like leave and sick leave or any kinds of leave or other perks except the school provided 50% consistent or discounts on her son's monthly fees but that was not enough. So she quit that job and thought of starting selling food, street food, right? I'll come back to why she sold food. Let me introduce another participant, Charitra. She's 62 year old, Jindati ethnic woman. She also had a physical disability. She changed her, converted her release from Kira to Christianity. She had a very supportive husband but her eldest daughter didn't like her to get into the street. Why on streets was her question when she shared her plan to start street food vending but again her motivation to start street food vending was again a necessity especially she was worried about her old days. She said who would give me money? My husband's income, her husband's income was 6,000 rupees, he was a watch person outside in the church and that's about $60 per month was barely enough for our family. How could I earn? So she was more worried about earning for her old days saving so that was her motivation. So another participant Manu Singh is 31 year old Jindati woman, two children husband was a local construction contractor and she had been a subsistence entrepreneur since seventh grade. She used to sell flowers in front of Mahatma Temple. Later she handed over her business to her mother and she started chicken meat and season of vegetable store. Unfortunately she failed one of the courses in finals of in high school so she got married with one of her customers and they opened an optical shop that didn't go very well so they moved to opening a restaurant with a huge investment but April 2015 earthquake in Nepal that devastated their restaurant. About 9,000 people lost lives and it was a continuous earthquake it was not pleasant so following that earthquake was Indian geoeconomic blockade so that created a fuel crisis. Nepal is a landlocked country and lastly it depends on Indian border for supply of its any kind of imports including oil so they had to sell their restaurant and shut it down sell it and the options that were available for them because again due to the blockade there was no construction work her husband was basically unemployed so they thought of opening a meat cold store but that costed money again and they were not sure finding space and all so she thought of going to Korea she had studied Korean language for foreign employment but she wanted to be close to her family so she thought of street food vending as an alternative so let's come back to Sapuna right and why she got motivated to start street vending her daughter she passed 10th grade and wanted to join nursing schools she wanted to motivate her daughter but with her husband's income that was not enough right so she thought of and working for private school didn't help her so she thought of doing something on her own she had friends who were street food vendors so she thought they might help so she talked about it with her husband he said strict no you cannot and when she met her friends they also didn't encourage her they said no income there's no income here you don't make any earning it's a difficult task you know you have to stand and all so and she said I was not asking to be their step wife maybe they thought I will open a stall next to theirs but if there was no income why would they continue the business she was very sceptic and she was frustrated because her friends didn't help her so this is another example where you know how this starting up the business was difficult so and but then one Sarada 42 year old Janjati umansi migrated from Chetwan to Kanmandu and she said first I did not have money for the training the training came when she said how to prepare it and then she went to buy ingredients in a shop and she asked the shopkeeper how to prepare the street foods and he told her to get the training and she replied first I do not have money for the training if I had I would have spent that money for my family's grazing and she you see often use this metaphor grazing for household expenses especially on food right eating as her metaphor for grazing second I grew up slicing onions peeling of potatoes cooking curry sprinkling the right pinches of salt and other spices and serving foods in my kitchen why would I pay to learn those kitchen skills for me the setting was only different if my children did not complain about the foods I cooked I thought of treating my customers like my children this is how I gathered confidence and she paused for a while and said after all with the support of my youngest daughter for the first three four days I was on my own running the business and so for some women it was expanding kitchen work for some uh you know they had they felt you know it's it's different but since they were not getting help uh and they didn't want to spend money or didn't have money to spend on learning it but so they they they built their confidence in this way so they were re-territorializing gender norms and they were taking home kitchen work to streets right thing preparing food skills uh another interesting thing was about Munasi also tried to peek and learn she asked many other street vendors to help her no one helped so she uh tried learning uh preparing at home and uh and uh see her she had two other street vendors near her uh place so she she thought uh what would be my competitive advantage what new thing I could provide and uh something that new she thought of was found was dahi puri uh it's a curd basically curd it's uh puri uh and curd and uh we can see in the picture right that's how she prepared it and uh so she prepared learning and I asked how did you learn it and she said youtube right so see we see when you use new media to learn that uh other other women uh some of them were already an addictive customers they uh all right something happened there and uh I'll I'll continue so I thought I'll play the record because I would uh over speak I would be very excited to tell these women's stories and uh and then I would always speak so so so what what was happening was many women were already in their own words very addictive if they didn't have one of the street foods you know they would not feel content so they had to go out on the streets and eat so some of them uh so one of the participants he used to while returning from school every day she used to have and then uh but then when she dropped out of the school her parents didn't give her extra money for snacks but then she was very addictive so what she did was she became an apparentist of one of the Madaisi vendors so previously largely street vending was done by Madaisi street food vendors and they and then so so he took her as a free apparentize and then in return she would get for street food to eat so that's how she learned preparing street food uh so uh there was another uh street food vendor woman she was also very addictive and and her husband was abroad so she thought I spend the remittance that comes from uh abroad why don't I start my own business so I can eat for free so that's that's how she got motivated so these women uh tend to use a social capital uh so they use their women network for example pre-taging second hand second hand puss card mostly uh from uh other women vendors for example Sapona although some of her friends uh didn't encourage her to be street food vendor she again had other networks with other women that helped her uh so there was this struggle within gender within women network as well there was struggle but they were also getting support from their ties if all ties didn't work they were forming new ties uh she was her she made a new friend through her son's friend so the friend new friend was her so she used to drop her son at school and she made a woman who also came to drop her son and she happened to be a street food vendor so she went to her stall to help and then that's how she got sort of you know skill of learning she had a difficulty finding a location in the beginning one woman came and chased her away that you cannot stay here you have to go away from here but again she knew an old woman older woman who was a shopkeeper she referred to her as a mother though she was not her mother but she referred to her as mother and and that older woman offered her a very strategic location a location between Johnson where three or four there were three crossroads meeting and her the older woman's shop was there and she allowed her you can stay outside of my shop in front of my street right and they kind of did this uh also there was a mutual benefit of this like uh there was kind of a guardianship so the older woman see if she had to use a restroom uh Sapa and I could have a look and look at her shop if Sapa and I had to go somewhere and then the older woman could so these women provided kind of a guardianship to each other so each other and her daughter also helped her uh helped her to promote her stall as a hygienic stall my daughter gifted gloves nail cutter and apron to me she told me that I if I focused on my hygiene by keeping the stall clean keeping my nails short and by offering panipuri wearing gloves then customers will like cleanliness and visit my stall again and the gloves will protect my fingers from being burned by chilies you can see I prepared panipuri wearing gloves and see very proudly was showing me you know the gloves and then she was not wearing apron and she was like oh today I'm not wearing my apron because I washed it but I usually wear it so I'm like very neat and clean unlike you know uh most other vendors so so they were using this uh family capital as well as uh friend capital so there is this contestation with like who owned the city streets conventionally it's the men right uh women especially young girls are teas in the streets so so these kind of things happen but then even in the street food vending as well there was this you know contestation of this uh women for for the space there were four janjati and one cast high Hindu woman who worked until 8 p.m to 9 p.m right and and mostly uh others avoided uh going beyond uh late night right but these these women uh had their husband joining them for assistance and also for security reasons uh and others closed by 5 p.m like Ramana the the one with I only had one interview her husband was very restrictive and she belonged to a high cast and she she had to return back home early right and Goma she was janjati and see her husband she's the one whose husband was abroad and uh she had to close early because uh she didn't have a support her husband was not around so and she had children to take care of so she had to prepare them for next day's school uh Nira was another janjati woman she was very new to business and she was mostly in the evenings most of people didn't come to her stall so she was very new and so she thought you know to close the stall early uh Sharada she she said the word grazing again she had to go home early so that she can prepare grazing for her family so husbands who are often you know who initially denied except for uh Charitra's husband most husband denied but later on they also once the business started kicking off they started being supported so there was this you know negotiation going on in the beginning there was like no you cannot do you cannot be in the streets to hey let me support you so after seeing the card for example Sapna's husband who was a carpenter made new boxes for the car and bought a giant umbrella for the car so that she could get shed uh in the in the hot day uh and then uh she also said my husband is a uh is paid per hour so her husband discouraged her closing she would say if you have to close call me so I would stay in the stall you go to hospital or you go to school wherever you need to go uh and I will help uh and Manu's husband used to cook dinner uh until one evening so she she used to be her by herself she's a janjati woman and she used to be by herself on what happened one time was a drunkard came and almost turned her card upside down so for security reasons she called her husband uh and Charitra she had a disability so so her husband went out to purchase ingredients for her uh Gayatri like I told you her husband held her in carrying water and also preparing in Puri but this later these women again found preparing Puri to be very tedious so they relied mostly on Madaisi men to prepare Puri for them and they would buy it from those men and so yes they were in the business but they were still relying on mail out there for certain tasks that they could not do by themselves so the I was telling you about the Sapana who got this strategic place uh uh with the help of the older woman and this is the story where she had very difficulty in the beginning where she actually begged a person to a woman to let her do the business and she was chased away and then she was very frustrated at that moment and she thought maybe this is the reason no one supports that women in Nepal has started going off road for ways we're listening from uh in our first presentation about women going migrant uh going for labor right so she was thinking about oh this is the reason uh at home there's very uh you know hostile environment so my findings so my findings about this regular spot was so Madaisi men who were previously dominant in uh street food vending and Madaisi men means men who are from so Nepal has three kinds of land one is flat land one is hills and mountains so Madaisi is the flat land and people men from Madaisi are usually seen uh used to be seen as street food vendor and now women are coming into the picture and these Madaisi men are mostly uh footloose they would walk around their usual route or they would walk around the city street with their uh you know stuff but women are mostly sedentary they would stay in a particular place and that place would be five minutes you know walking distance not more than that from their place of residence except for Charitra who had the closest proximity see her stall was just outside of a church because that church was the place where her her husband worked and she had also disability issues so she could not walk off a little bit further like other women other women mostly placed her their stall in a very uh strategic place like road junctions and Muna for example she used her husband's network to find that place some women used other women's network uh and uh Nira the new new vendor she was like she wanted to be close to Madaisi men vendor because she was new to business and people would get crowded to the Madaisi men vendor so when there's too much crowd there will be trickle down effect people would also come to her stall but she would not want to stay too close because people would only go to Madaisi men vendors and not come to her stall and times when Madaisi men vendor didn't come in that street she would be happy because she could make more sales so that was this interesting gender dynamics between the vendors so so mostly these women looked for their children's future those were the motivating factor all day saving and and their necessity were the motivating factor for them to get into the subsistence entrepreneurship they use their social ties new media like youtube and everyday practices in in being successful janjati non-hindu women who are relatively gender equal compared to high-caste hindu women so they had relative uh flexibility in street food vending as well and there was a negotiation with patriarchal structure both in the family as well as in public space and the public space are mostly gendered and women tend to you know extended territory or claim those public spaces especially by you know taking support of husbands or kind of using this uh guardianship like the the older women looking at the you know sapanna and sapanna taking care so this mutual kind of guardianship uh held them to claim this public space so in conclusion despite varying strategies to negotiate with double bind patriarchy women were women in this sample uh that I interviewed were empowered they were financially and they were being able to make decisions previously most of them relied on especially the high-caste hindu working-class women relied on their husband now they were making decisions they gained power and sort of a control over certain aspects of their family and public life especially decisions regarding the business and the money that came from that business they had sort of a control on that so future research could do an extensive survey of street food vendors I said 30 000 street food vendors uh and more right uh and different categories and I focused on street food vending this could be selling other goods selling electronics to examine between and reading gender differences advantages disadvantages by participating in this form of economy and COVID-19 happened and so this definitely disrupted how the the way street food would be you know offered and sell so so that would be another how did this women cope and mitigate uh you know but this kind of disruptions uh this global pandemic and how did they continue their business if they continued would be interesting for future researchers to look at and understanding this gendered relations while formalizing informal economy so there is a weam you know in and international institutions like you know ILO focuses on formalization of informal economy but it's very important to understand this gender relations for this urban policymakers rather than like implementing cookie cutter kind of policies of formalization of informal economy thank you so much and if you have any questions I would be very happy to answer in the discussion thank you thank you for your wonderful presentation but is there someone else who's going to uh to present so if there are no more presenters maybe we could ask questions and or comments I find the for example the the discussion on the street the research because I was also thinking of doing research of street vendors and stalls in the Philippines because I observed one time when I was there uh there were Indian uh migrants to the Philippines and they are they were providing loans to these women and in the Philippines there's a practice that you call usury you borrow from a person so may have money but then the interest rate is very very hard so so I wanted to so these these and I saw an Indian uh men would go there collect every every afternoon from the women certain uh pay for their loans and they are in their motorcycles and I was wondering and I asked the women who are those uh oh they're the ones who provide us we pay to them every every day you know so it's usury so here you see the the Indian men migrants that they were not probably born in the Philippines but also making money on petty capitalism and uh how and it was coming to my mind how do we organize these vendors how do we organize uh these women so that they are not individual vendors and competing for space but uh organizing them uh to be to have cooperatives and and so those these are some and I found your your research I listened to it but when I saw you you know uh uh presenting in person uh although we are we are far away I mean it was a different way of of listening because I find the the the technology yes but you're I cannot react immediately you know so thank you for your presentations okay here is now Muren thank you a lot for your presentations yeah we are missing the last presentation because we are missing the presenter so I think that we have a few no we have a few meals for discussion but I think that there are other questions or comments so they are very very welcome please Cynthia please oh thank you those are wonderful presentations I I think I missed a little bit of uh we we uh I'm sorry if I pronounced your name wrongly uh we uh we are yes but I think he did a very good summary so I had some ideas about I think the all the three presentations are wonderful I think I'm just going to ask a question to each of you uh first of all I'd like to ask Professor McGovern a question so it seems to me that um you know um I think if I remember correctly except for China the the the new globalism policies executed by some you know like international organizations such as World Bank and everything did not produce very good results in terms of helping the the local people in different countries you know starting from like Egypt, India, you know the Philippines to be self-sufficient or you know economically so I think that was the plan's original purpose so and and there's the there's the gender dimension to this in your presentation um so did I so my question is um is there a kind of like multiple these these advantage these women are experiencing you know because number one there this is the international policy right uh executed in a certain way um to to really advance profits for for corporations number two there's the local government probably um you know I don't know what their interest is in this but they may have different interests than the local people and thirdly um I don't know the exact numbers for the economy in the Philippines um maybe women do have to have a job to support themselves and their family and so and and fourthly um in terms of gender relations you know with the family so that's that's the gender relations with the state government and you know the gender roles in the society in the private sphere I don't know what their relationship is with their you know fathers, husbands and everything in terms of divisional labor and things like that so this is my question thank you okay all right so um let me begin with differences I think your question differences of women's experience and then so let me emphasize everything um women particularly are the ones who are because of the and there are literature also like development debacle by Walden Delio the women take up also the responsibility of supporting the family and there is a very high unemployment rate uh it's also a moment and women also do informally uh engage in informal economy vending and so forth but when the labor export program in the Philippines was started sometime in the early 1970s and continuing today uh at first it was the men who were going to the Middle East and construction industries but later on it was the women who are migrating in and in fact most of them most of them are in the informal economy but also in domestic work the men are in construction in the Middle East so there is responsibility also the the burden of this structure like dozen policies are borne both by the men and the women so if the men are migrating then family disruption also men get affairs some family broken and the children in my research for example in this book sometimes grow up not really knowing very well their parents and then when they go back the parents there is this kind of I have not seen them grow so that's why these structural adjustment policies as you have said more for the interest if you take a look at of transnational capital and profit making I begin to see that both the informal economy and the formal economy really what what structural adjustment policies create in terms of job displacement and then migration there is the informal economy also picking up but it is also within capitalist relations so we are not petty capitalism actually is becomes the foundation of global capitalism so we need really to begin thinking how can we create among grassroots this kind of non-capitalist path but more of cooperatives and and and and there are already proposals for that in the peace peace agreement peace talks of the different groups like the national democratic front but the philippine government keeps suppressing that and I have reviewed that whole program creation of cooperatives or peasants urban poor really if we give expression to these in policy in different countries right then we would be able to let's say organize them in an international solidarity frame is there any other question that I didn't answer well thank you so much that's very informational and and and and important the yeah those are you know pretty much my my questions you know it's how how how their life kind of like unfolds on the daily basis and yeah how they how they cope with that thank you very much so if I may ask here a question here data question so yeah that's that's very interesting I mean in terms of general relations in India one book that I cited many times is by doctor host child so she was talking a lot about she was comparing general relations in the U.S. which is the market economy versus India which is you know which is is a traditional society and everything so she mentions a lot of the the gender relations mostly among heterosexual you know a relationship for example there's the so like the older generation women would be sympathetic with the younger generation in terms of their rights human rights right at the same time they are coordinating with patriarchy in terms of doing the things they're supposed to do right so the so-called colonized colonizer and in terms of women in the same generation there's the status hierarchy based on whether this person is the first wife the second wife or third wife I think the the time frame that she used to book on was probably up to the 1990s or early 2000s so I just wonder you know because LGBTQ legal rights or like all their rights in the in the society whether people really respect that or not comes out of this this kind of like background you know for example caste system was was was legally abandoned probably in the 1990s but then there's social code still so I just wonder how this would relate to LGBTQ movement and the outcome of the movement and and and they're recently gained legal rights thanks I'm sorry um can you please restate the question once again so I'm the question is what is the gender relationship relations in the larger society in terms of you know men versus women um hierarchy among women would impact um the the the the rights legal rights as well as their you know like social rights now yeah okay so yeah like so like I was telling in my presentation like India still holds that dominant ideology of its spiritualism where it sort of has a very definite gender roles assigned for men and women so in in cases where there's a hierarchy of women the problem is that it still falls back to that given patriarchal system that rose at during the 1940s at the time of the rise of the Indian nationalist movement so so given saying that I would say that there are a lot of differences now what I'm saying cannot be generalized throughout India because the the power hierarchy is also different in different region like there's a rural so so rural and urban divide like there's there's the north north and the southern divide there is also the east and the west the linguistic community divide so so I would say that the hierarchy basically depends on a lot of intersections of the of the social category so yeah I would say that how it affects is is how not only the power hierarchy that interplays between the between women in the Indian society but is also sort of influenced by the global politics of power play throughout so I think I think that is how it has affected the Indian society so far and hence we we are fortunate enough to sort of witness this change the enactment of the law I don't know if I have been able to answer the question if not please do do I like to clarify what I heard so when you mentioned the rural versus urban divide south versus northeast versus west is this is more global right if you're not talking about no I'm not talking about India you you were talking about yeah yeah oh so uh so the rural versus urban divide basically like you know rural area is pretty much like underdeveloped urban areas some areas are highly developed we but there's there are still kind of like you know class difference right yes there is but in terms of speaking about the identity politics that is built for sexual minorities I would say that I wouldn't I wouldn't sort of very clearly distinguish between the rural as underdeveloped or the urban as highly developed because the way uh sexuality is performed cannot be termed as underdeveloped or overdeveloped because I'm just saying the economic kind of situation in rural versus yeah yeah right and south north is also like kind of this this kind of contrast and east and west is the same linguistic there is the linguistic issue as well you mentioned yes I'm just trying to yes to understand yeah when you when you had the three you know three economists what do they mean within the context of India so I would like to I would like to clarify that more about the economic part because I am looking at the social and the cultural part more right now than the economic part so probably I might be able to partially answer your question so when I was talking about the divide or the social positions in the Indian context I was talking about how power play how social and cultural power play sort of reshapes the identity of sexual minorities yeah sorry yeah so I understand now so when you when you talk about rural versus urban south north east west is more about power structure and you also mentioned the perceptions of homosexuality in Indian culture which is not which is not very receptive basically which is not very right now right now yes all right thank you thank you all right I do have since then I'm dominating the dialogue but since you know if if Dr Tateri has has a question please ask I can ask the question up to you to to I can go ahead okay yeah yeah absolutely fine yeah okay okay so I do have a question I think it's a wonderfully done fieldwork about women vendors in Nepal so I know about the caste system in India so obviously Nepal has a kind of similar system where you mentioned some working class women from high caste versus low caste so is that more social caste or people's you know social code although there's no formal system caste system and my my second question is how does class and how you know like unfold again this background of formal or informal or legal and social caste system thank you thank you thank you Dr Zhang for your question the the caste system is something that's caste especially caste discrimination is illegal it's not allowed by law and it's mostly the social construct the remnants of you know the past regimes that have gone and the and the gender norms that you know limited women in the past within the domestic realms so it's more like that like a subtle cord there you know no one talks about do you have a caste discrimination no one says it's there right it's oh who talks about caste you might be talking about last century we all are very equal right but when it comes to when it comes to everyday practices and that enters very softly right even the women even the non even the janjati non-hindu women they they within the family they might have this you know a little bit of freedom and autonomy but within the state patriarchy they are still within the state patriarchy so they would play the negotiation would go like oh my husband prepares that that street food better than me and maybe he does but it it's coming from you know you're appreciating so you know so there's there's lots of hidden stuff going on and I didn't find again this is only nine participants in that interview I did walk around several other women vendors but I didn't find low-cost women vendors because it's so the so-called low-cost or so-called untouchables are again perceived or stereotyped as we cannot eat you know food that are touched by them right so so that subtle stuff is there but again formally very openly society-wise you know I might be criticized like hey you are doing some laundry washing and some conferences but there's no caste discrimination right so that that is there and I'm sorry I missed your second question that was very important I remember it's very important we did with your mind helping yeah yeah great yeah now I understand this is more kind of a social code people don't say it because it's it's illegal but they do it right in a subtle way so how how I think my second question is how do class and caste the social caste intertwine yeah so as as we look at so these are working class women that I looked right if you look at middle class women then they're the tension of so again the public space and that might come into interplay but they're more into relatively formal kind of if they are entrepreneurs relatively formal or more formal kind of occupations like teaching nursing you know but again we can see the gendered occupation as well within the middle class as well but yeah we do we do see you know there are more similarities I think in the working class but again I this is not out of this is out of more like observation and study rather than research but in in as we go higher class you know there are again differences but it's more towards they're into education if you see most of these working class women only few had high high school education right most of them had second grade third grade barely could write name but when it comes to when it comes to formal like middle class again there is also struggle like again who is in the authority position right and traditionally it has been the high caste Hindu men right and women are slightly coming into picture but mostly it has been high caste Hindu men in in in dominantly in those sectors so again caste do interplay like getting for example in academia getting tenured position right in in in Nepali academy it's difficult for people coming from disadvantage background but obviously they are breaking the glass ceiling that's the you know positive note but again there is a huge negotiation and navigation going on there thank you thank you I think you kind of answered my second question we answered my first question somehow so number one these are all working class women because they are not doing middle class jobs right like teaching and everything and number two if you compare low cost versus high cost even the even though the low cost women could still you know produce enough money to to invest in this their business are doomed all this doomed to fail because nobody's going to to touch their food so so the high cost when women vendors probably have a better chance if they you know if they do the business basically and then there's this nonjanjati they come into the picture in a different area they have sort of a liberate kind of equality within family I talked about a case of sarada her husband didn't oppose her right and other nonj... so it was very easier for non-hindu women to convince and these are not low cost they are just in the conventional caste system they're put that put that like you know in hierarchy but these nonjati nonjanjati women are not untouchables they're like if you're familiar with a caste system in India it's similar in Nepal but it's again quoted slightly differently given the ecology in the past right so it's but then it's similar especially with the untouchables right so they didn't they were not in the picture but this nonjanjati women had an interesting dynamics they could claim the space you know the way they claim their space in family they could claim the public space as well with the relative ease than the high caste women oh so the low cost women actually have an easier time in public and private space no so the no I'm sorry to confuse you so in the in the caste system it's in the past even the non Hindus were brought into the caste system like for example Muslims they they follow completely different religion right but they were put at the lowest strata of Hindu caste system these non these janjati meaning janjati meaning indigenous peoples they didn't follow Hinduism right they followed their own religions like Kiran Buddhism other religions but they were also brought into Hindu caste system and put into different strata but these these in the traditional Hindu system they were put in a strata that they were lower than the high caste but they were above than the untouchables so in the conventional Hindu system they are somewhere in the middle but it's not necessary that they follow Hinduism like I gave you an example of a charitra right she was a kiran but she converted her religion to Christianity and Kiran is not not a Hindu religion they follow different reason so there's this relative gender equality in these indigenous peoples communities compared to conventional you know Hindu Hindu Hindu society so so that was the interplay so there is no like dichotomy there are layers in in the caste system as well so religion is also affecting this thank you those are my questions and thank you so much to all three speakers thank you thank you for your questions and also for their replies very very interesting presentation we had today thank you so we are approaching to the end of our session and I think that I have just some closing words and final remarks I would like to thank you again for this very very interesting discussion presentation and so participation and so you will find the video recording of this live session on the session web page so we have this kind of legacy online for years and years so but it's it was a very very interesting session I don't know if Ligaya have some final words remarks for everyone you need to unmute Ligaya I'm sorry yeah one of the important reasons why we organize this transnational initiative project this is the first time we are doing this is really to network people from different parts of the world and we could not do that by physically coming because it would be very expensive and also because of the pandemic and what we really wanted was to create networks among us so that we can continue our discussions not only because of research but also maybe we could begin thinking about themes of partnerships in research or any other like actions that we can do some of us are activists scholar activists because that is part of our notion of what a scholar should be scholar activists so we hope that this will not be the end we here we can join the international the transnational initiative committee because this is a reach out and really I'm very amazed with the with the papers and then presentations I listen to the to the way late at night and then I was already in bed and I'm still listening and then and then when you see present in person it's very different and I one thing my struggle is I do not like talking to machines so I had to rerecord several times my presentation and still I was unhappy but somebody told me you are so perfectionist so just send it and then so I was able to overcome we had difficulties and I can see that you might have also experienced some difficulties you know recording and then deleting and then re-changing so please share that with us because we will evaluate this is our first experience we would like to hear from those who are not in the transnational initiative committee so and you join join the international transnational initiative committee okay thank you thank you Ligaya and thank you everybody again and we hope to to meet you again at one of the next events organized by Triple SP thank you thank you and good luck for your with your research and and your work thank you again thank you thank you bye everyone