Sheroes Hangout is a café run by acid attack survivors and spearheaded by the Stop Acid Attacks campaign. The café serves food and drinks all day, hosts various events and parties, and has a wall of fully stocked bookshelves for visitors to read. Everyone ordered warm drinks and we got a couple of orders of masala fries for the table. While we waited we passed around some of the articles on the table and learned more about the café we’d walked into and the organization behind it. For more information visit their website at https://www.sheroeshangout.com/agra
Once our drinks came our waitress told us a little more about herself and the café and put on an informational video for us. We learned about the lack of laws set up to protect survivors and prosecute perpetrators of acid attacks and the lack of regulation surrounding sale of acid. Our waitress told us a main reason behind acid attacks is when a woman rejects a man. We heard interviews from various survivors in the video and learned the reasons given for their attacks: in one case a woman’s in-laws urged her husband to throw acid at her because she hadn’t had any sons. Another woman was at work when she was attacked by a customer.
Through watching the video we learned more about the Stop Acid Attacks campaign and how they work to bring more attention and regulation to this issue and empower women who are survivors. They help survivors rebuild their lives after their attacks and try to help them financially through the long process of healing and the multiple surgeries that usually entails. They also work with these women to help them build skills and secure employment. In many cases survivors isolate themselves and many are ostracized from their families because of the reaction in the wider community. This is where Sheroes Hangout comes in. The café employs many women as waitresses and cooks and also serves as a space for women to promote the trades they work on. One girl in the video told about how she was able to pursue her passion of fashion design and opened up a small boutique in the sheroes hangout to sell the dresses she designs. The language used by the women in the café emphasized the point that they were not victims, they were survivors, and they were stepping up to make good of a bad situation.
Sheroes Hangout was very unique among our experience in India for several reasons. One thing that stood out about Sheroes was the fact that this is the only restaurant we ever saw female waitstaff. Throughout India we always had waiters and never waitresses. I think this is because young men who were from more rural backgrounds or had less schooling were able to go for these kinds of jobs when it might not be considered respectable for a young woman. We met many female students at the undergraduate level and graduate level universities we visited, and high-skill jobs for both genders exist in the fields they were pursuing, but at lower skill levels there is a big gender disparity in the work force. The Stop Acid Attacks campaign works with Sheroes Hangout to provide these occupational opportunities to survivors while creating a safe work environment for them. Throughout this study abroad program we were shown the very best of what India had to offer in its beautiful monuments and scenery and the technological advances we were told about at the various farms, universities, and institutes. Our perspective was made richer by learning from the women at Sheroes about this widespread issue.
*feature image borrowed from culturetrip.com*