The United Nations defines ‘violence against women‘ as

Any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.

In a recently concluded 3 day training workshop on ‘how to make issue based comic strips’ with its Rights Advocates groups in Lucknow, we saw our Rights Advocates narrating stories of violence manifested in the simplest of forms. Situations that would appear fairly normal in a strictly patriarchal society, were highlighted as ‘violent’ by the young participants when we asked them to script a story on the theme of gender based violence for a 4 panel comic strip.

The comic workshop was initiated as a part of Breakthrough’s Rights Advocates – Leadership Program under which various capacity building trainings are given to youth groups. The participants were mostly students of Lucknow University belonging to semi urban, middle to lower middle class. It was a mixed group of both male and females and Hindu and Muslim.

The outcome of the workshop was an eye opener of sorts on questions like, “What are the most pertinent issues that affects the youth? How do they articulate the issues and what solutions do they suggest?

Three main issues came out when we asked them to think of a story around gender based violence (1) Right to education for a girl child (2) Husbands practicing Bigamy (3) Physical abuse.

Some participants also brought up issues like ‘a girl’s right to chose a life partner, girl’s right to work etc and denial of these rights is seen as violence. Featured below are some of the interesting strips made by the rights advocates who took the training.

“Beta Kehta Hai”

This comic strip begins with a depiction of the mother favoring the male child. In the 2nd panel the girl child is seen expressing her desire to go to school just like her brother does. In the 3rd panel both her parents refuse to send her to school.

What happens in the 4th panel is where our Rights Advocates training reflects a chaged mindset. The son is seen walking up to his father and ask him “Father, if I can go to school why can’t my sister go? Why the difference?”

Thus in this story and many others the men have been shown as a change agent, as a role model who talk about gender equality and women empowerment.

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‘Hum Kisi Se Kam Nahi’

In this story the pressure that girls face to be beautiful and conform to the traditional notion of being an object at display has been raised. In the first panel a mother is shown discriminating against one of her daughter because she is ugly. (It is to be noted that even though discrimination is done by a woman she merely acts as an agent of patriarchy. In another story it was shown that the decisions were being taken by the father and merely delivered by mother)

In the 2nd panel of the story a neighbor visits their house and hears the daughter singing to herself and realizes that she has a very good singing voice.

In the 3rd panel that neighbor introduces her to somebody influential from the music industry who confirms that she has a great voice and motivates her by predicting that one day she will become a big singer and make her parents proud.

In the 4th panel the same girl is shown to have won a music competition, which is perhaps a version of the very popular Indian Idol competition.

The story reflects a girl’s aspirations to be recognized for her worth, to be loved and praised and also shows the role of popular culture in enabling a woman to realize her dreams, or even articulate her dream for that matter.

For the whole collection of comics please visit the Flickr Set.