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About Srilatha Batliwala

Srilatha Batliwala is Director Knowledge Building and Feminist Leadership at CREA (Creating Resources for Empowerment in Action). She is a feminist activist, scholar, and writer with four decades of experience that ranges from grassroots activism and movement building with some of the poorest women in India, to research and building theory from practice in premier international academic institutions and feminist organizations.

Articles by Srilatha Batliwala

This week’s front page editor

Rosemary Bechler is a mainsite editor of openDemocracy

European integration

Six countries. Six different paths to EU integration.

No to TTIP

The secretive EU-US trade deal explained

Feminists and feminisms come in many forms: Suspend judgment!

Nafisa Ferdous, Geetanjali Misra, and Srilatha Batliwala 10 October 2016

The responses of feminist activists to the Suspend Judgement! campaign reveal the hidden hierarchies of power and exclusion we must confront. Part 2. Part 1.

To build feminist futures, suspend judgment!

Srilatha Batliwala, Geetanjali Misra, and Nafisa Ferdous 3 October 2016

As feminist thinkers and activists, we must tackle not only the systemic discrimination embedded in the world outside, but the often unconscious or invisible biases that we ourselves have internalized. Part 1. Part 2.

A transformative strategy: the true value of investing in women’s rights

Srilatha Batliwala 25 February 2013

What happened to the largest pot of money ever made available for advancing gender equality and human rights? Srilatha Batliwala reports on the results of AWID's aggregate analysis of the impact of the MDG 3 Fund.

Beyond individual stories: women have moved mountains

Srilatha Batliwala 18 February 2013

Among all the social movements of the past century, the struggle for women’s rights and gender equality has been the most transformative in terms of the deep tectonic shifts it has created in the social terrain, yet skepticism about the value of funding women's rights work persists

What does transforming economic power mean?

Srilatha Batliwala 18 April 2012

Today's targeting of women in processes of realigning economic controls is perhaps quite unique. In order to unpack and understand economic power, we must revisit the different realms in which power operates, and the various forms that it takes - visible, hidden and invisible.

Politics outside politics: how women redefine democracy

Srilatha Batliwala 10 May 2009

A conference on women redefining democracy can do no better than start with Mary Parker Follett, the unsung, unacknowledged 'mother' of modern organizational theory and management studies, and feminist political philosopher. In her book, The New State, she defined democracy in a particularly feminist way - a definition unlike that of any male philosopher, from the Greeks, to Rousseauvians, to Marxists and neo-liberals

Putting power back into empowerment

Srilatha Batliwala 30 July 2007

The political claim advanced by women in India via the idea of "empowerment" has been appropriated by their adversaries and false friends. It needs to be rewon for a fresh vision grounded in the experiences of poor women, says Srilatha Batliwala.

Women transforming power?

Srilatha Batliwala 6 October 2005

Women must reassess their political progress and achievements if they are to transform mainstream politics. Srilatha Batliwala sizes up the challenge.