sempozyum_bildiri_kitabi

“TO WRITE A BIOGRAPHICAL BOOK ON WOMEN AND SELL IT TOO!”
- RESEARCHING, WRITING AND PUBLISHING ABOUT WOMEN’S
LIVES
Sangeeta GOEL *
Introduction and Background
Writing a book on women centric themes is a challenging task in the societies which despite their
claims to gender equality, still remain male dominated. Especially, in a patriarchy driven society like
India, from choosing a subject to conceptualizing and writing and thereafter advertising and
marketing; one has to face stumbling psychological, social and cultural blocks. At every stage of the
creative process, one has to deal with a huge load of overwhelming emotional experience which
could be nerve‐wracking and leave one emotionally drained out, at times. Despite having born and
brought up in a democratic society, one is left wondering, ‘Is one really free enough to express views
honestly and candidly?’ ‘Why does one have to be politically correct, all the time?’ ‘Why one needs
to constantly worry about what ‘they (women included)’ will say.’ ‘Why do they suggest making it
‘spicy’ and ‘juicy’?’ ‘Does life of women sans ‘juice’ and ‘spice’ means, nothing!? In other words, one
faces an endless volley of unnerving questions that ‘forget about holding pen, holding one’s nerve
itself becomes a challenging task’. The current paper is based on the author’s experiences of writing
a biographical novel ‘SHE: A Woman from India’ tracing life histories of three generation of women
in India, the conservative Grandma, the educated but traditional mother and the liberated
intellectual daughter.
The core theme of this paper is to present the pros and cons of various aspects involved in writing
a book on lives of women in societies which are marked by strong patriarchal norms and values.
Incidentally these societies are the ones which still figure at the bottom of Gender Development
Indexes of the world and where gender based discrimination starts from the womb itself.
1. My approach to the subject : Adopting the ‘critical realist’ approach, the paper follows
qualitative research methodology where each subtheme is explored in the light of the author’s own
lived experiences supplemented with intensive research of scholarly peer reviewed literature on
each topic . While doing so, I embrace the following research paradigm –
My paradigm
Paradigm
1 Ontology Post positivist (Critical Realism)
2 Epistemology Subjective meanings of reality and social
phenomena ‐ Focus upon the details of situation,
the reality behind these details, subjective
meanings and motivating actions.
3 Axiology Value‐bond and etic‐emic stance as a researcher
4 Research
methodology
Qualitative
Adopted from Saunders et al.(2009, p.119),Guba and Lincoln (2005);
and Hallebone and Priest (2009)
*
Management Development Institute , Gurgaon , India