Kirthi Jayakumar

Biography

Kirthi was born as Kirthi Jayakumar in Bangalore, India, to Hindu parents. Her father is an advocate at the Madras High Court and the Supreme Court of India. Her mother is an alternative healer and fitness expert. Kirthi has a brother named Karthik Jayakumar, who is also a lawyer. Kirthi studied Law at The School of Excellence in Law, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. She received her MA in Sustainable Peace in a Contemporary World from UPeace, Costa Rica. Despite having majored in law, she never practiced in a court of law. She has worked as a UN Online Volunteer, a freelance journalist and a writer of ad hoc features. She has held multiple positions at various grassroot organisations that include Delta Women, Channel Initiative and Femin Ijtihad in voluntary capacities.

Artist

Kirthi is an artist, working on pen and ink to curate "Zen doodles." She uses doodling as a means to express her activism for gender equality and peace education. She runs an Instagram based project called "Femcyclopaedia"[1] where she doodles portraits of inspiring women through the ages and from across the world and curates their stories under these portraits. The story of Femcyclopaedia won a Story Award from World Pulse in February 2017. Kirthi curated an exhibit for International Women's Day and Women's History Month at the US Consulate General in Chennai as part of Femcyclopaedia.

Writer

"Stories of Hope" is Kirthi’s first solo book, comprising a collection of short stories. She also co-authored a book titled Love Me Mama: The Unfavoured Child, along with Elsie Ijorogu-Reed, the founder of Delta Women NGO. She is also the author of The Dove's Lament, published by Readomania. The book was nominated for the Muse India Young Author's Award in 2015. In addition, Kirthi has published a series of ebooks centered around Peace and Conflict.

Activist

Kirthi is an activist on women’s rights issues and peace and conflict. She runs The Red Elephant Foundation She has worked in voluntary capacities with several grassroot organisations such as Delta Women, Association for African Entrepreneurs, Centre for African Affairs and Global Peace, PAAJAF Foundation, Channel Initiative, Women in War Zones, Femin Ijtihad. Kirthi has been outspoken on denouncing violence against women in any and every form. She is a columnist for the Deccan Chronicle / Asian Age.

In 2013, with the experience she gained from her voluntary work, Kirthi founded her own initiative, The Red Elephant Foundation. Kirthi defines the empowerment of women as: "A woman is empowered if she is educated AND has the freedom to decide what is best for her. An empowered woman is sovereign over her body and mind." She was instrumental in bringing out two e-Books on entrepreneurship in Africa with the AAE and was also one of the key driving forces behind the opening of the first ever school in Okoijorogu, Nigeria, a village that had never had a school for its children until 2013.

In October 2016, Kirthi delivered a TEDx Talk at TEDxChennai, addressing her work around peace education as a solution to end bullying. In November 2016, she delivered a talk at the National Edu-Start Up Conference in Pune, talking about Peace Education as a sustainable solution to create well rounded citizens.

Awards and Recognition

Kirthi is the recipient of the United States Presidential Service Award from President Barack Obama in 2011-2012. She won the Gold, Silver and Bronze awards. She is also the recipient of two United Nations Online Volunteering Awards in 2012 and 2013 for her work with Delta Women and the Association for African Entrepreneurs.

In 2015, Kirthi was nominated for the Digital Women Awards 2015, presented by She The People TV. In March 2016, she was on of the EU top 200 Women in the World of Development Wall of Fame. She was also one of the nominated changemakers for the United State of Women 2016. She is a two-time story award winner with World Pulse, and her work has been picked up and published by TIME Magazine. Kirthi has been acknowledged by India Today as one of the "Game changers" in the city of Chennai, "who are transforming the city with inspiring thought and hard work." She was the youngest speaker to address a gathering at FICCI FLO, Chennai.

In September 2016, Kirthi was one of the women shortlisted for the Rising Stars Award 2016 by We are the City India, which she went onto win. In October 2016, she was recognized as one of the "52 Feminists" by 52Feminists.com. In October 2016, Kirthi was recognized as a Burgundy Achiever at the Digital Women Awards 2016, presented by She The People TV.

Kirthi received the Peace Award from the Global Peace Initiative in November 2016. She was also selected as an Impact Leader at World Pulse in November 2016. Kirthi won the Orange Flower Award for Video Blogging, awarded by Women's Web. Kirthi was featured on Google's WomenWill Landing page on International Women's Day, 2017, as part of a five-women-stories feature by World Pulse.

List of awards received

Intersectional Feminism: Caste and Gender

Though intersectionality started with race and gender, the race dialogue has been distinct from the element of caste as it plays out in India. In 2016, Kirthi Jayakumar noted the impact of caste in the gendered oppression of women in India in Choice, Circumstance and Consequence, through the example of a Dalit Woman:

"....As a community of people, they have faced years and years of oppression and marginalization, and are placed vulnerably at the bottom of the hierarchical ladders of India’s caste system, class segregations and gender identities. If feminism was not intersectional and looked at her from a choice-consequence dimension, it would view the Dalit Woman as one identifying as a Woman; as one who is vulnerable to violence; as one who is, well, like other women. Intersectional feminism, however, would see her differently. Vulnerable as a woman, disenfranchised as a caste, marginalized as a caste, isolated and oppressed in society and therefore, even more vulnerable than most other women. And there are numbers, facts, stories and truths to back this correct understanding of a Dalit Woman’s position. There is enough and more in the form of evidence to show you exactly how Dalit Women are exploited, oppressed, discriminated against, isolated and vulnerable to violence. In a nutshell, not only are they dominated over by men in the power relations of a patriarchal social order, but are also fighting against a toxic hegemonic pillar of power in the form of caste, and coping with the poverty that comes in with a progressively divisive class system. This establishes the circumstance.

Let’s say a Dalit Woman and a woman from a caste and class that are higher up (let’s call her privileged woman) in the hierarchy are brought into the mix. Let’s just say that the both of them have aspirations for their lives ahead, and let’s say that they aspire to pursue a course that would make them Mechanical Engineers. (If you raised an eyebrow, check your privilege and break those limiting stereotypes inside your head). The Dalit Woman is encumbered by the burden of a system that started with her exclusion: she had no access to education that would suitably enable her to attempt the entrance exam, which, by the way, is administered in English. But the privileged woman has had the benefit of school, extra classes and access to resources online. They take the test. The privileged woman makes it, but the Dalit Woman doesn’t. Strike one. She still harbours some hope, that she will make it in the quotas that have been reserved for a range of castes and classes. But no, she is among the last few in the pecking order, and therefore, waits, and waits, and waits. Strike two. Almost like an afterthought, she is sent an admission letter – a rarity, for many of her caste are left at the bottom of the pot. But the fee she is expected to pay is the next new hurdle in her path. Where can she afford to pay a year’s tuition if her family can’t scrape enough to afford a square meal? Strike three. This shows you how constrained choice truly is.

These “choices” are not choices. And so, even without the right to make a choice, she has to bear consequences."

Sexual Violence as a phenomenon across the Peacetime-Wartime Continuum

Kirthi Jayakumar developed a conceptual model of a ‘wartime-peacetime sexual violence continuum’, in which pre-existing rigid gender roles and ‘peacetime’ gender violence lays the foundations for wartime rape. In ethnic conflicts wartime sexual violence can draw upon ‘peacetime’ conceptions of ‘good women’ and ‘bad women’, the classic patriarchal virgin/whore dichotomy, whilst imbuing it with racist overtones in which, for instance, the women of the ‘enemy’ side are ‘dirty’ or subhuman; similarly, patriarchal restrictions on male behaviour are both drawn upon to humiliate the ‘enemy’ and create specific stigmas for male sexual assault survivors in the aftermath of their assault.

In other words, a comprehensive approach to addressing wartime sexual violence would have to address sexual violence as a whole, whilst recognising the specific militarised dynamics of sexual violence when it occurs in war.

A new version of the Bechdel Test

Kirthi developed a version of the Bechdel Test in order to evaluate Indian cinema. Given that the Indian Film Industry is significantly influential and that there have been many issues emerging from the impact on the occurrence of violence against women, the Bechdel Test inspired the creation of the "Kirthi Test." The test is built on the value of intersectionality in gender equality. It involves a series of questions that must be asked and answered about a work of fiction for it to be acceptable as a piece of work that is not discriminatory:

Fiction

Non-Fiction