Anindita Majumdar: Empowering women by also working with men

Anindita Majumdar (1976) was born and lives in the city of Calcutta, in the Bengal region, India.

She is the youngest daughter of a family that was part of the first generation of refugees from East Pakistan, now known as Bangladesh.

Her father arrived in Calcutta at the age of 14 with her family just after India's independence in 1947. They chose to follow the Hindu religion, which forced them to leave all their assets in present-day Bangladesh and start from scratch. .

Majumdar enjoys talking about politics with his friends and until his puberty, he wanted to be a boy.

“I ended up finding myself comfortable as a woman, but in Hindu culture, male children are preferred.

They can be more independent, choose their destinations, and even gain international projection.

“Job opportunities for women are local and limited, such as teachers or caregivers, so they can be around and have time to care for the family.”

Although the Majumdar family arranged a marriage for him against her will, he reluctantly agreed to let her reject him and instead choose her partner and study.

Majumdar has a master's degree in Science Policy and another in Philosophy of Women's Studies.

She emphasizes: “I am fortunate to have had access to education, a real challenge for women in Hindu culture.”

The doors to her current life, full of inspiration and purpose, opened through her thesis, when she began working with imprisoned women in Bengal.

This scenario marked the beginning of 12 years of work in an NGO.

She was able to build bridges to the opportunity to create her own project in 2016, Equidiversity Foundation, an organization that promotes gender equity and diversity.

Additionally, Anindita joined

Partnership Brokers Association

, an international NGO based in London.

In the months of May and November, Indian law establishes annual meetings between local governments and society to negotiate governance plans.

These meetings, called

gram sansad sabhas

(meetings of village voters), include remote communities in situations of social exclusion.

They would not occur—or would be biased—if it were not for the Women's Empowerment Committees (Nari Jaragan).

And often, when they participate, both the communities and the peasant women do not know what to demand or how to negotiate it.

“In the specific case of the last meeting, we worked with the committees preparing women to negotiate about street lighting and avoid violations,” Majumdar details.

“Also about the construction of nurseries and parks for girls and boys with special needs so that women have more time for themselves.

In these processes, international projects from other countries in the global South also empower us to empower.”

Majumdar, at a workshop in collaboration with political leaders in August 2023.Prithwish Tripathy

“We seek to avoid biased agendas and understand people's real life stories to promote deeper self-knowledge than traditional education does.

We understand that women's empowerment works if we also work with men.

By empowering women, they lose power.”

For Anindita Majumdar, negative, conflictive and polarizing narratives do not help.

He considers it essential that women and men work together on issues such as self-transformation, collaboration and also learning to identify emotions and feelings to share them with the family, since "men are educated, also by women, to the opposite."

Majumdar works in the following way: “In general, we first build the trust necessary to enable collaboration between members of communities, such as families, youth, leaders, minority majorities in situations of exclusion.

We then carry out a diagnosis to design training tailored to local idiosyncrasies.

Subsequently, we provide training in participation and alliances for sustainability.

Then we connect the communities so that they negotiate their agendas directly with the forces that most influence our systems: public administrations, political parties or companies, among others.”

Majumdar is a special and inspiring leader, who still practices on the ground with rigorous knowledge.

She is well aware of the systemic process of sharing power and, therefore, the need for comprehensive, rather than polarizing, approaches and narratives so that we find common ground.

When asked about his personal dreams, he does not hesitate: “Empowering communities, traveling through the tribal villages of Madhya Pradesh, India, and Africa.”

Leonardo Martins Dias

carries out sustainability projects with a focus on education.

The author has collaborated with Anindita Majumdar on different projects in the global South.

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