In our fourth episode of the JUST THREE podcast, and our first episode of 2021, host Catherine LaSota talks with activist Deepthi Sukumar, who contributed a chapter entitled Caste is My Period to the Palgrave Handbook of Critical Menstruation Studies, which was developed by the Menstrual Health and Gender Justice working group at the Center for the Study of Social Difference.
In this conversation, Deepthi talks about her decades-long work with the Safai Karmachari Andolan organization, a movement for the elimination of manual scavenging. Manual scavening is the illegal practice of cleaning, carrying and disposing of human excreta from dry latrines or sewers, often done by people who fall lowest in the caste hierarchy of India. Deepthi discusses her work to empower women who are manual scavengers to stand up for their rights, and she offers some powerful examples of social transformation.
Deepthi Sukumar is a Dalit woman and an activist. She has been working for the liberation and rehabilitation of women engaged in manual scavenging for more than two decades. Her parents migrated to the city of Chennai from a remote area in Andhra Pradesh for education and employment. She travels widely to villages and small towns to meet Dalit women living in diffcult circumstances and who have become victims of human rights violations.
Learn more about the Safai Karmachari Andolan organziation here.
Learn more about the Menstrual Health and Gender Justice working group here, and find the open access Palgrave Handbook of Critical Menstruation Studies, for which Deepthi Sukumar contributed a personal narrative, here.
Website of the Center for the Study of Social Difference: https://www.socialdifference.columbia.edu/
Music in our podcasts is by Blue Dot Sessions, and episodes are mixed by Craig Eley.
Catherine LaSota, host of the JUST THREE podcast, is Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia University.

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