Performing Gender, Doing Politics: Social Media and Women Election Workers in Kerala and Tamil Nadu Drupa Dinnie Charles∗† Azhagu Meena SP∗ Simiran Lalvani†
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Microsoft Research India Microsoft Research India Microsoft Research India Bangalore, India Bangalore, India Bangalore, India Syeda Zainab Akbar Divya Siddharth Joyojeet Pal
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Microsoft Research India Microsoft Research India Microsoft Research India Bangalore, India Bangalore, India Bangalore, India ABSTRACT 1 INTRODUCTION Women political workers adopt a range of tactics to navigate the Election outreach is a difficult, involved process that requires ground hyper-masculine space of electoral politics in South India,both of- workers to persuade voters through a range of formal and informal fline and, increasingly, online. Using interviews and observations means. In India, this outreach process is aimed at voters across over three months of election campaigning, we examine women’s the wide spectrum of urban and rural voters, across lines of re- outreach work in online and offline adversarial spaces through the ligion, caste, class, and gender. India has had universal suffrage lens of Michel de Certeau’s, The Practice of Everyday Life, which since its first post-colonial general election in 1950, and tradition- examines the "tactics" through which people negotiate change and ally, women election workers have been a small, but integral part everyday challenges in daily situations. We find that the every- of the campaign process, despite their relatively low presence in day logistics of election work have changed significantly, and that the leadership [38].