A book featuring stories of 50 South Asian women from countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka aims to break stereotypes around women in Asian culture.
The book authored by Raj Kaur Khaira features the famous British Muslim spy Noor Inayat Khan, fearless activist Jayaben Desai, award-winning comedian Mindy Kaling and Facebook’s first female engineer Ruchi Sanghvi. A lawyer and a business operations specialist, Raj is also the Founder of the Pink Ladoo Project.
“I put together this collection for the young South Asian women so that they are aware that we descend from a legion of strong and powerful women and much more than how the mainstream media usually represents and portrays us,” says Raj.
In her attempt of breaking taboos and starting conversations around women empowerment, Stories for South Asian Supergirls has collated contributions of remarkable women including household names and relatively unknown figures. It includes business leaders, authors, actors and TV personalities, and seeks to redress the imbalance for young girls of colour by empowering them to break the existing glass ceilings and to inspire others in the process. The book also charts the journey of Cornelia Sorabji, the first woman to study law at Oxford University and the first female to practise law in India and Britain. Talking about the lack of representation of women in law she says,
“We live in white imperialist, capitalist, hetero-patriarchy and the establishment is run by white men. The current system and structure preserve their dominance in law. Therefore, why would they change the status quo?”
The author's passion and commitment towards gender issues has resulted in the foundation of the the Pink Ladoo Project in 2015. This initiative encourages the equal treatment of new born girls in South Asian families, in communities across the UK, Canada, the US and Australia. Today, it has become one of the most prominent feminist movements for South Asian women globally, and propelled Raj to becoming an influential leader. Addressing contemporary issues around consumption of birth control pills, and live-in relationships to name a few, Raj believes that the concept of living in an “honour-based” society can lead to several other problems. Her Pink Ladoo Project is a pro bono campaign which celebrates the birth of a girl child in South Asian families by distributing pink ladoos as compared to the golden sweets distributed during the birth of a male child.
“There are perhaps, no stories of female infanticide in the UK but that does not mean we have achieved gender equality to its fullest. Even the English culture is sexist to a certain degree and South Asian families have not completely managed to eliminate sexism in our culture.”
100% of author's proceeds from sales of this book will be donated to three charities supporting women and children – The Flying Seagull Project, Child Poverty Action Group UK and The Canadian Women's Foundation.
