From the taxi drivers’ rear-view mirror: masculinity, marginality and sexual violence in India’s capital city, Delhi

Abstract

Her teaching and research interests are anchored in political sociology, gender and development. Her research focus has been on gender politics at the intersections of movements for subaltern assertion, religious nationalism, and development in a neo-liberal era, examining in particular questions of mobilization and organisation of women, their multiple and intersecting identities -gender, caste, class, religion and region, their presence and representation in development policies and practice, and changes in the dominant gendered social relations, in both rural and urban spaces in South Asia, especially India. Her research has been published in Modern Asian Studies, Contemporary South Asia, Gender and Development, and Indian Journal of Gender Studies, among others. From the taxi drivers' rear-view mirror: masculinity, marginality and sexual violence in India's capital city

(Dis)empowering the feminine? Spatializing the interlace of gender‐class‐neoliberal managerialism in a women‐only café in India

“…They were legitimized through claims of empowerment, as dominance and control are assumed and made acceptable as a necessity to effect the desirable disciplining that is inscribed in the hierarchized path of empowerment. The implied unspoken “urban hegemonic masculine ideal” (Govinda, 2020) thus works not by (re)constituting the rural as the deviant and urban as the norm, as often argued, but gradually and spatially conditioning the village‐originating bodies to self‐identify with the othered rural in the unspecified spectrum of rural‐urban binarization (Stenbacka, 2011).…”

Empowered but endangered? An analysis of hegemonic womanhood in Indian gender advocacy campaigns

“…Similarly, the working-class background of the harasser is explicated through darker skin, shabby clothes, untidy appearance and occupation as a driver (06:12). Drivers typically comprise of men, often rural migrants who move to cities for work (Govinda, 2020). Hindi is the main language used in the video, presumed to be the language of the working classes.…”

The Weight of Waiting: Suspended Mobility and Deferred Aspirations Amongst Cab Drivers in Hyderabad

“…The suspense was less about what is to come and more about when they could go back to being big city drivers. As migrants, the return to their place of origin ‘without’ fulfilling the aspirations they had set out with was itself a source of tension (Govinda, 2020; Gray, 2011). Would they return to the city?…”