Voicing Women’s Rights: Being and Becoming a Women’s Rights Activist in Assam, India

Abstract: This thesis is based on a minor field study (MFS) with the aim of investigating what habitus and forms of capital facilitate women’s rights activism in Assam, India – a state described as highly patriarchal but also a place where women enjoy higher status than elsewhere in the country. Using the concepts of capital and habitus and elements from social movement- and feminist theory, I analyze interviews with eight Assamese women’s rights activists. I conclude that the habitus of social engagement has been embodied early in most participants and that they all possess strong cultural and social capital that enable them to act. The identity of being independent is an integrated part of the participants and it is also what they strive to implement in the communities of women they work with.