We are a team of researchers conducting an exploratory study on experiences of discrimination among non-normative genders and sexualities––including but not limited to those who identify as transgender, hijra, intersex, asexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual and also others who are perceived to be different from society’s norms. The study is exploring how discrimination is experienced in different areas like healthcare, education, public spaces, housing etc.
One of the Bangalore teams is looking at the healthcare sector and collecting experiences of discrimination around the five states across South India.
While we use terms like “healthcare” and “discrimination” we are not restricted by the definitions of these terms. We do believe that there are many kinds of healthcare services (whether it’s allopathy, homoeopathy, ayurveda, religious therapy and many more) accessed by different communities and many forms of discrimination. We want you to be able to share with us your experiences based on how you were treated in such healthcare or healthcare-like situations because of your real or perceived gender and/or sexuality status.
We also believe that such experiences of discrimination do not occur entirely in a vacuum and so we are not attempting to simply collect ‘incident reports’. We want to be able to record your life-journeys, if you are willing, and thereby link personal journeys with these public or private experiences of discrimination.
We hope to conduct audio-recorded in-depth interviews of around 90 minutes or more depending on your time and interest. All identifying details will be removed and confidentiality will be strictly maintained.
The findings of the study will be disseminated using multiple formats and these will be used to inform and hopefully influence how healthcare facilities are provided in India for people who have different gender and sexuality identities.
This project is being coordinated by the Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies, Tata Institute of Social Science, Mumbai.
Please share you contact with us via this Google Form. We hope to be able to travel to all five South Indian states between June and December 2017 for this study.
Contact Vinay Chandran or Anurag P Nair if you are interested on (Office) 080-22230959 or (Mobile) 9481247584. You can also email us on swabhavatrust@gmail.com.
