Event Description

Chandraprabha Saikiani Centre for Women Studies, Tezpur University organised a memorial lecture on the Birth and Death anniversary of Chandraprabha Saikiani on 16th March 2021. The number of participants were 60 including students,research schoars,faculty,staff. Before the talk, Vice Chancellor(Tezpur University),Prof.Vinod Kumar Jain inaugurated the pragramme.Jennifer Liang, founder of ANT (The Action Northeast Trust) was invited as the speaker for the occasion. Jennifer Liang talked on Women and Leadership in Contemporary Times. Jennifer Liang, as a woman chose to challenge. She gave a ppt presentation showing images of women taking up challenges fighting against the stereotype norms of the society. The speaker herself being Indian Chinese gave her own life story describing about her fight to participate the Lion dance of China which is performed only by men. As girls are not allowed to participate in that dance, she took that challenge and gathered girls to perform that dance. They practised the Lion dance and first tried in the year 2000 and broke the stereotype. They do that dance door to door to get blessings. Some slammed their doors and did not wanted their dance. Gradually the Lion Dance performed by women was accepted by the society.

Having been achieving their first challenge, Jennifer Liang Co-founded The ANT an NGO, working for rural development in Chirang district in Assam. The organisation first took up the challenge to teach rural women to ride bicycle in order to make their lives easier. In Bengali Muslim family women were not allowed to do that but gradually they too came out to learn bicycle. Jennifer presented on rural women participating different sports by wearing their traditional dress. At first the men opposed their participation, but later women were allowed to play. The women were later given uniforms to play footballs and Kabbadi games. Men organised tournament for women gradually.

In Bodo community girls dance and boys play the musical instruments. The organisation took up the challenge to train girls to play instruments. Girls like Bijuli and Daisy mastered in flute and Kham(drum). Gradually girls even started training boys to play musical instruments. The organisation also took up the challenge to train women as driver. They were successful in getting one lady, Ulopi as the driver for the organisation. The ANT, encouraged women workers and trained them to ride motor cycle. Women could work harder, move around in the interior areas easily by riding motorcycles and became team leaders. The speaker just wanted to present that women should take up all the challenges, break the stereotype and be a leader. According to her Leadership is a challenge and women can very much achieve that. There was an interesting interactive session.

Target: Students, research scholars, staff, faculty.

Aid:PPT presentation, images, Floral Tribute to Chandraprabha Saikiani, Birth and Death anniversary, paying homage to Late Niruma Subba who was a grassroot leader, leading the community women for the development of the society and who constantly worked with Tezpur University in various community pragrammes.

Impact: The talk enabled the participants to understand what leadership mean and how women can be leaders in the contemporary times taking up the challenges.