The current depiction of and discourse around sexual violence and violence against women in Southasia continues to reinforce stigma, helplessness, shame, and victim-blaming. This project addresses issues of nationality, caste, and class in an attempt to investigate structural roots of sexual violence against all such communities of women across four countries – Nepal, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh – through multi-media presentations and research. Sexual violence on women in various conflict zones in the Southasian region continues to be so routinized that it is only the horrific cases that attract media attention and public sympathy. Currently in the news media – print, online and electronic – images drawn by in-house illustrators as well as from online stock picture libraries include terrified and hapless women victims. Photographs, video, film graphics, and illustrations tend to show women as lacking in agency and as cowering in fright against dominant and powerful male perpetrators.

Challenging Visual Depiction of Women and Sexual Violence in Southasia is a project, funded by the Ford Foundation, that aims to challenge gender insensitive visual and aural depiction of sexual violence against women in Southasia. The project, in partnership with Film Southasia, engaged filmmakers, photographers, graphic artists, illustrators, researchers, journalists, and activists to produce five research papers and six innovative multi-media presentations to challenge and rethink the structural roots of violence against women.