Jasodhara Bagchi - A Lifestory

A leading person in feminist studies and a well known teacher in India is remembered as someone special. She gave her life to learning and teaching, making a big impact on women's studies. She was born in 1937, a long time before movies about women like "9 to 5" came out in 1980, but her work had the same idea of giving power and equal rights to women. She was a Professor of English at Jadavpur University, where she helped start the School of Women's Studies in 1988. This was a very important thing to do, because it made a place to talk about gender issues in higher learning. People who worked with her remember her as someone who helped others, always ready to lead students and other teachers. A professor once said, "Her ideas were very helpful; she could make hard ideas easy to understand." Her work went past the classroom. She wrote a lot and was active in fighting for social justice and equal rights for women in different places. She also took part in movements that helped women's rights, like the things that happened around the Beijing Conference in 1995. Her work in education and feminist thinking keeps inspiring learners and activists, making her remembered as a true first of her kind. She died in 2015.