Listening to Survivors: The Untapped Expertise in Addressing Violence
“You ask why a woman hides her pain even after being beaten many times? It’s because she feels that there is no other way for her,” says Meena, Founder of Sahjani Shiksha Kendra, a Dalit women-led organization fighting for gender equity in rural Uttar Pradesh.
In India, 50 percent are estimated to face violence from their partners. Women and girls from marginalized, rural communities are disproportionately vulnerable: ten Dalit women and girls are raped everyday.
We are over a billion survivors of gender-based violence worldwide. We know how to end the cycle, but the systems ignore us. This can change if we unite.
I have taken a step in that direction by starting Parity Lab - a survivor-led ecosystem to prevent gender-based violence.
Parity Lab is a pioneering feminist accelerator for rural survivor-led organizations tackling gender-based violence. We identify women leaders from marginalized rural communities with a proven track record and a vision for change. Parity Lab then provides them with a year of mental wellness support and capacity-building tools, with ongoing support as alumni.
Neelam and Meena were two leaders I was privileged to work with.
Neelam Besra, Founder of Jharkhand Mahila Uthan, an Indigenous women-led organization, recognized the need for greater representation of women in local bodies, viewing it as a means to prevent violence in her community.
The first time I visited her in Hazaribagh district of Jharkhand, I was struck by its greenery and its isolation, shrouded by heavily forested areas and a 4 hour drive from Ranchi. Neelam excitedly introduced me to the women she helped campaign for local elections, boasting a 40% re-election success rate. These women, often without high school education, biked tirelessly from home to home, advocating for their rights and taking control of the narrative through political action.
Neelam's resilience coupled with 200+ hours of Parity Lab’s in-person and virtual program amplified her work: her funding grew 3x, scale 5x and she has begun to access national funding opportunities and platforms, for the first time. As Neelam describes her leadership journey, “[It] taught us how to find answers ourselves. It gave us strength to believe in ourselves and our creativity”
Neelam’s work shows that gender-based violence is complex and extends beyond intimate partner violence. They also face a triple burden of violence: caste-based violence, patriarchal constraints, and geographical isolation. Rooted in the socio-economic-political context of each community, practical solutions must be locally grounded and involve active engagement with men and boys.
I also had the privilege of meeting Meena from the Dalit community in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh. A former child bride herself before the age of ten, Meena and her team have mobilized 15,000+ members of their community against child and forced marriage in the last twenty years. Entirely survivor-led and run, the organization often acts as a safe haven for women who have no place to go.
India has thousands of incredible entrepreneurial leaders like Neelam and Meena, who need supportive ecosystems. They live in small towns, don’t speak English, and face complex norms and legal barriers to funding. Due to the nature of their work, they face added risk factors: trauma from personal violence, distress from power imbalances in seeking justice, and secondary trauma from witnessing the suffering of those they help.
Through the Parity Lab program, Meena and her team launched a mental health awareness program in their community and secured funding from India’s largest mental health funder. Meena shares, “I applied the mental health lessons in my interactions with survivors. For instance, a survivor always attended our meetings but never spoke. I was able to help her open up and understand her issue.”
Such formidable frontline activists like Meena were burnt out without support during the pandemic, and evils like child marriage of girls increased by nearly 70%. Thus it was at the time of the pandemic, when gender-based violence was declared a shadow pandemic by the UN, that my own journey through Parity Lab began.
In the three years since our launch, we have accelerated ~10 organizations and indirectly reached 70,000+ families. We are ambitious: We will convene and support 100+ organizations, preventing and responding to gender-based violence for 1 million+ families by 2035.
To learn more about our work, join us for an insightful online event where we'll be sharing our 3-year impact report. Engage with our team and some of our incredible fellows in a discussion about our work and the impact of our program. Register now.
Join our mission for a gender-equal India.
About the Author
Mathangi Swaminathan is the founder of Parity Lab, a first-of-its-kind feminist accelerator for survivor-led-organizations fighting against gender-based violence. She is an Echoing Green Fellow, an Acumen India Fellow, a World Economic Forum Global Shaper, and an alumna of the Harvard Kennedy School. She can be reached at mathangi@paritylab.org.
