Introduction to Instructor & What's In It For Me

Welcome to the course, ‘From Patriarchy to Equality—Be the Change!’ I am Kamla Bhasin, your instructor for this course.

I have been a permanent student of gender, patriarchy, equality, and human rights. I have worked on these issues at the grassroots, national and international levels, through NGOs and the United Nations. Presently I work with Sangat – A Feminist Network in South Asia and other countries. I am involved with several campaigns against violence, denial of human rights, and for justice, human rights, and peace. I have enjoyed writing simple books for activists and for children, and I have also been writing songs, poems, and slogans for women’s movement and for other movements. I love what I have been doing.

Over the years, I have facilitated a very large number of gender workshops, human rights workshops with women and men from different countries, cultures, and backgrounds. These workshops have been empowering for me as they have been for the participants. This sense of empowerment and energy I get from these workshops has kept me going and today, I am really happy to be able to reach out to you through this digital medium.

This course is for everyone, it is actually a life skill course. It is my belief that what I am going to discuss in the next few hours, if combined with an open and inquisitive mind on your part, can change the world – your micro world of numerous relationships within the home and outside, and the larger world of states, governments, policies, frameworks, and laws.

I know that change is difficult because hundreds and thousands of years of conditioning cannot vanish overnight. But I will be happy if this course plants a seed or nurtures existing seeds of new thoughts within you.

This course is divided into five modules. In each module, I give you numerous examples and ask you questions to help you connect your real-life daily experiences to concepts, theories, and principles. I recommend that you keep a notepad handy where you can jot down your responses and answers. If you have any questions, please make a note of them as well. You can get all your doubts cleared in the discussion forum of this course.

Come, join me, and I promise this will be an exciting journey of churning, of exploration. There is only one pre-requisites for this course: Keep an open mind.

So, let's begin.

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