Jana Vogl presents a paper on "The fragile reputation of women: Women, sexuality, conflicts"

In this paper, I present the first half of a chapter of my PhD thesis, where I ask how women intervene in a case of (severe) sexualized violence in a slum in Chennai, South India. Whereas the second half of the chapter asks how women interact with the police and “the law”, the first half – which I present today – concentrates on understanding how women frame the incident of sexualized violence in their narrations. I argue that the way they narrate the incident – as having happened to a woman who was “good” although she had (an) affair(s) and as having transcended the legitimate amount of suffering every woman faces commonly in her live – the incident is rendered a matter worth of public intervention (by the common people, potu makkaḷ, ūr makkaḷ) as opposed to a “family matter”. This way of framing the incident, however, is not without contention, especially among male inhabitants. Thus, I argue more specifically that the incident is made a “women's issue” by transformation of the common narrative form of the female lament (Kalpana Ram) into a source of solidarity amongst women.