Girls & Girlhoods at the Threshold of Youth and Gender edited by Vibhuti Patel

This volume is an outcome of three decades of deliberations on girls and girlhoods by the women’s rights organizations in India.

Vacha is a women's group involved in social research and action. Vacha started with a women's library and since has developed several programmes dealing with research and training, a children's centre, and a cultural centre. The library maintains a collection on women's issues. Since most available written material on women's issues is in English, Vacha also collects, creates, and disseminates cultural resources such as songs, skits, audio and video material concerning women's rights. Vacha decided to hold a symposium on “Girls and Girlhoods at Threshold of Youth & Gender” in November, 08 in collaboration with SNDT women’s University.

The symposium aimed to focus on girlhoods, generate information about them and create a platform for groups and individuals concerned abut the issues. It naturally included girls themselves. Girls from different locations were invited, together with scholars and practitioners, to make presentations and to celebrate girlhood. Girls are strong survivors in our society. The symposium celebrated their power, strength and creativity in foyer and quadrangle events and during debates on declining child sex ratio and other crucial concerns of girls such as health & education, child labour, trafficking, disability, media portrayal (In advertisements, television and cinema, violence, institutionalization of “problem” girls, mobilization of girls, social security for empowerment of girls by the state and NGOs and legal provisions. Important papers presented followed by and discussion at the symposium are included in this volume.