As discussed earlier in the EI section, the experts were selected on the basis of their experience and educational qualification. The following subsection discusses the demographic profile of the respondents and each respondent of the EI is introduced using a phrase, which is also a rationale for selecting expert for the current study.
• Victim and impact on mental health: - Kangana:- is one of the pre-study respondents. She has a post-graduate degree in Medical Psychiatry from University of Pune. She joined an NGO called ASHA (Action for Self-reliance, Hope and Awareness) as a psychiatrist. Her job profile includes counselling and awareness trainer to ASHA’s caseworkers to identify mental illness among victims. The interview lasted for an hour with medium of interaction as English.
Kangana is a first female respondent of the pre-study field work. The rationale for the selection is not only just an educational degree in Psychiatry but experience with different forms of violence and their impact on the well-being of a woman. She shared various experiences with victims and violence on her female colleagues in the Psychiatry department.
She discussed, from a Psychiatric standpoint, how various social norms and stereotypes hamper a woman’s mental health, how a woman understands violence and how the society compels her to confirm various social norms and subjugation. Kangana revealed how a psychiatrist understands mental illness of a woman on the basis of social norms. The discussion with the expert was later used to understand the cognitive concept called ‘shared social theories’ (Seng et al. 2010) by the researcher.
• Counsellor to a victim of violence: Kirti: - is one of the pre-study respondents. She has a post graduate degree in social work from Karve Institute of social work, Pune. She is working as a counsellor for fifteen years. Presently, she is working in a project called Muskan (smile) designed for child sexual awareness. The interview was conducted in English in two sessions for two and half hours.
Kirti’s interview demonstrated her journey from a victim to a survivor. The social work education helped her to introspect her assumption of being a woman, society’s expectation and the causes of violence on women. The journey from a victim to a survivor of violence manifested impact of education on women’s ability to deal with violence, such as she said ‘If
I have not been educated in social work, I have not been survived from the violence’ helped the researcher to analyse the perspective of an educated woman.
• Law then and now to women then and now: Lata: - is one of the respondents from the pre-study data collection. She is a practicing lawyer and an activist. She got involved in Nari Samta Manch, an autonomous group of women, working on the issues of gender inequality. The interview was conducted in Marathi and lasted for fifty minutes.
Lata is a female respondent. The respondent was particularly interesting to the researcher because of the respondent’s comparative analysis of how law catered social change and how education paved the way for women’s empowerment now. Though the respondent is critical of working women, it is interesting for the researcher to know how and why she viewed a family-oriented woman as an empowered woman. Her interview provided the researcher different views on women’s empowerment which later helped the researcher with the emergence of the substantive grounded theory.
• Female centric work with men: - Milan: - Milan is active in the field of gender-based violence for 21 years. He worked in CRDD, Centre for Research Development, a documentation centre, later joined MASUM, (Mahila Sarvangeen Utkarsh Mandal Women’s Holisitc Development organization) under a project called “Working with Men to Reduce Violence against Women”. The interview was conducted in Marathi in one session which lasted for one and half hours.
Milan was the first male respondent of the pre-study field work. Apart from being a male’s perspective to empowerment, Milan’s interview revealed obstacles in achieving gender equality. How a man who understands and practices gender equality faces criticism from the society and strong collective consciousness are discussed by the expert.
• Man, masculinity and men: Swanand: - He has a Post graduate degree in Social Work.
Swanand started his own NGO, which is registered as a Communication and Resource
Centre on gender, masculinity, health, and development. The NGO works to promote gender equity and justice, human rights of all individuals. The interview was concluded in two sessions for one and half in hour each in Marathi and English.
He is another male interviewee of the field work. He discussed his journey from a masculine man to an expert working with men to make them understand their masculinity. He is selected as a respondent due to this transformation from a violent man to the expert practising gender equality and his experience working on the masculinity of Indian men.
• Forms now and then, methods now and then: Sudha:-She is working as a chief Executive for an NGO. She is a senior social worker and a founding member of an NGO working towards gender equality. The interview session was conducted in Hindi and Marathi language for two hours.
A female respondent talked about changes in counselling methods now and forms of violence two decades prior and now. Sudha’s interview was compared with Lata’s interview where both experts shared their experience working with two generations. Sudha perceived young women as more consumerist and individualistic than older generations.
The pre-study field work laid a strong foundation for the main-study field work but with some modification. The following section discusses important factors of the pre-study data analysis and modification made for the main study field work. The detailed analysis of the pre-study field work is discussed in the finding chapter of the current thesis.
Section: III: The Main Study