Camellia was part of the panel on "Community-Led and Survivor-Centred Approaches", which spotlighted how women’s collectives are building local accountability against gender-based violence. 

Backlash and Belonging: Women’s Leadership and Everyday Violence in Rural India – Camellia Reja (ISST)

Part of the SuPWR project, this presentation examined the persistent, systemic backlash faced by Adivasi women leaders in rural Rajasthan, focusing on the Kotra Adivasi Vikas Manch (KAVM). It showed how gendered and caste hierarchies fuel stigma, surveillance, violence, and exclusion, while highlighting KAVM women’s strategic resistance and leadership innovations.

Key Concepts, Arguments and Discussion Highlights

Backlash against women’s leadership is systemic and deeply embedded across institutions such as families, communities, political parties, markets, and the state, manifesting through surveillance, gossip, respectability politics, and delegitimization, often escalating to violence. It begins at home, where women’s public engagement is framed as neglect, triggering suspicion and restrictions. In communities, women, especially Adivasi leaders, face intensified stigma, public shaming, and exclusion. Political structures sabotage women’s agency through co-optation, proxy male leaders, and targeted threats, particularly during elections. Civil society and markets also contribute to undermining independent leadership. These intersecting forces compel women to constantly prove their legitimacy while navigating real risks of physical violence and displacement. In response, KAVM women are reclaiming power by reviving Gaon Sabhas as inclusive, feminist spaces and building leadership through collective consciousness and sustained capacity-building.

Strategies for Resistance and Transformation

Reviving Gaon Sabhas as inclusive, women-led forums has created space for local decision-making rooted in collective experience. Residential, women-only spaces have supported capacity-building in governance and legal rights, while also fostering a shared feminist consciousness that challenges stigma. These efforts have strengthened engagement with the state through rights advocacy, resistance to political co-optation, and participation in protests and campaigns.