By Sanjana Ravi

Everystory Sri Lanka presents the first thirty stories from our ongoing work to create a compendium of Sri Lankan women’s stories — featuring those whose lives, work, and experiences have shaped and are shaped by Sri Lanka’s social, political, and cultural contexts.

From the Stories of Sri Lankan Women Archive — Dr Harini Amarasuriya

Illustration by Danushri Welikala- danushri.welikala@gmail.com

A name well-known in the field of academia is now seated in Parliament as a breath of fresh feminist air, and raising a voice for Sri Lankan women. Dr Harini Amarasuriya, a former Senior Lecturer of the Department of Social Studies of the Open University of Sri Lanka, made a decision to switch careers and engage in a role that is more in the public eye. This decision, which she refers to as a “leap,” is not one that was made lightly, nor was it one that she foresaw. It eventually led her to become a Member of Parliament upon accepting the Jathika Jana Balawegaya’s National Seat nomination to enter the 16th Parliament of Sri Lanka in August 2020.

Born into a middle-class family, Dr Harini recalls “feeling incredibly lucky and privileged to have had a wonderful childhood.” Dr Harini went to a private school in Colombo and then received scholarships to study firstly in India for her undergraduate education and then in Edinburgh for her doctoral studies. These experiences influenced her strong commitment to the need for access to quality education for all and the importance of a strong public education system.

Growing up as a child with what she describes as “ordinary dreams” for the time, Dr Harini has challenged and resisted the system in more ways than she could ever imagine. Through her activism, she began creating ripples as early as 2011 when she and colleagues from the Federation of University Teachers Association launched a trade action union, which drew national attention. The protest that was launched to demand higher salaries and retain the best minds in the country grew into a broader struggle on education reform.

Their campaign slogan “6% Save Education” reflected UNESCO’s standard criteria on what a government must spend on education. The following year, they began a 100-day strike — the longest strike in Sri Lanka at that time — that developed into a collective struggle joined by other trade unions and civil society. Their collective struggle mobilized a space where people could express some form of resistance, especially amidst a political climate where many people were afraid to speak their minds. A community of people came alongside 4000 academics, who marched for five days from Galle to Colombo in their symbolic orange t-shirt bearing their slogan to create a significant change in the education system. This movement went on to set a precedent for other protests and movements that would eventually take place over the next decade.

Dr Harini doesn’t think of her career change as a leap from activism to politics, as she believes that her activism was political. She also believes that politics isn’t about being aligned with a party, but about resisting power. To her, resistance is about holding those in power accountable and challenging something that is not right.

Her motivation to enter the formal political space was done as an act of solidarity and she describes resistance and politics as a space of great intimacy. Over the years, Dr. Harini has built a great network of allies who have been on a unique journey with her and thus have formed unique relationships. She has held steadfast to the belief of standing together during the good and the bad, and, when the time came for her to act on her belief with regards to women’s participation and representation in politics, she did what she felt was right.

While issues faced by Sri Lankan women were not a popular topic to be raised in Parliament, Dr Harini took the stage to voice for the voiceless. In her maiden speech in Parliament, she left an impact by raising issues concerning women’s economic contribution to the economy, specifically the “unpaid care economy,” referring to women’s contribution in the household. Dr. Harini has also been one of the few Members of Parliament, who have been advocating on the frontlines to demand justice for Sri Lankan migrant workers impacted by the COVID-19 crisis.

Dr Harini currently is serving as a Member of Parliament and continues to advocate for reforms in education, gender and development.

(Sanjana Ravi is a feminist and Women and Gender Rights advocate. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics, International Studies and Women & Gender Studies from Iowa State University, USA. She is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Law through the University of London and aims to pursue a legal career to strengthen her advocacy for women and children.)

Reference Links and Further Reading

1. Maiden Parliament Speech NPP MP Dr. Harini, Newswire, 11th September 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr6dQpaUaQ4&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=NEWSWIRE

2. Interview — Harini Amarasuriya, E-International Relations, 25th June 2020, https://www.e-ir.info/2020/06/25/interview-harini-amarasuriya/

3. Harini Amarasuriya, ResearchGate (Profile), https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Harini-Amarasuriya

4. “Women in Sri Lanka need to change the Masculine, Toxic political space”: Dr. Harini Amarasuriya, BehanBox, 4th August 2020, https://behanbox.com/2020/08/04/women-in-sri-lanka-need-to-change-the-masculine-toxic-political-space-dr-harini-amarasuriya/

5. The story of the “6% t-shirt”: The hundred day struggle of the Federation of University Teachers’ Association, Sri Lanka, Dileepa Witharana, Core, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/162675403.pdf

Notes

This article is pending support to be translated into Sinhala and Tamil. Please email storiesofslwomen@everystorysl.org if you would like to support us with translations or if you have any questions.

Stepping out of the frame of childhood and into girlhood is a fascinating and momentous time for adolescent girls as they begin to develop their own independent ideas and a sense of the world; it is also when they first begin to experience how injustice and patriarchy have a direct impact on their lives. From the sudden sexualizing of their bodies, and restrictions placed on how they occupy space and behave to the interests and opinions they express, the systems of power that perpetuate injustice and inequality make themselves more visible in these years. However, amidst all this, there is also all the growing up girls have to still go through — the emotional and physical, the joyous and traumatic, navigating all this with fear and anxiety but also curiosity and wonder.

The excitement, drama, pain, and messiness of girlhood is complex and layered, and the vast volumes of writing, art, poetry and more are a testament to this. The stories we refer to here on the lives led by adolescent girls around the world tell us so much about the historical, social, and political contexts they are growing up in, and help us peel back the layered realities that girls occupy across space and time in experiences that are both unique and universal.

“My Star”, Ilustration by Song huaaa, Image Source

Two of our favourite books which capture this exploration in fiction are Little Women and Anne of Green Gables. As distant as the contexts that these books are set in may be, there is a universality to the way each of these characters are growing in their own identities that feels timeless. The Malory Towers and St Clare’s series by Enid Blyton are a rare example of girls being focused on completely for themselves without the involvement of boys, and for portraying how messy adolescence can be as girls learn to navigate relationships of all kinds, especially with other girls and women, and begin to take the form of their adult selves.

Stay, Daughter, A Memoir of a Muslim Girlhood by Yasmin Azad, Image Source

From Sri Lankan authors we recommend Stay Daughter by Yasmin Azaad, a coming-of-age memoir about a young Muslim girl growing up in the Galle Fort and facing the challenge between “balancing the rules of orthodox Islam with the freedom and innovations of the modern world”, and the classic novel The Sweet and Simple Kind by Yasmin Gooneratne in which the parallel lives of two girls growing up together in Ceylon transitioning to Sri Lanka, offers insight into the dynamic between class and modernity, and how it shaped the lives of Sri Lankan women. A Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan, as described on the website of the Women’s Prize for Fiction (which she won for 2024!): ‘vividly and compassionately centres itself around erased and marginalised stories — Tamil women, students, teachers, ordinary civilians — exploring the moral nuances of violence and terrorism against a backdrop of oppression and exile’. 16 year old Sashi is the conduit through which we are reminded of the realities of war, especially as experienced by girls and women.

The much-celebrated TV show Derry Girls, set during the 90’s Troubles in Northern Ireland is a poignant capture of what it means to grow up in the midst of a civil war, which those of us in our 30’s and late 20’s in Sri Lanka can relate to all too well. While tensions rage on, the girls work their way through puberty, identity crises, and grief.

For more in film and television — Anne with an E is the Netflix adaptation that did the impossible of being faithful to the core of the source while taking it to places it had not gone before. Little Women has seen seven adaptations, and we must confess the 1994 version holds a special place for us, but the 2019 version is dazzlingly fresh and brilliant for the way it portrayed sisterhood in all its turbulent messiness, as the girls tumble through loving and tormenting each other, and testing out the best and worst parts of themselves with one another. Never Have I Ever (despite its problems) still has a lot to offer about the adolescent exploration of sexuality, identity and navigating growing up, as well as Big Girls Don’t Cry (it’s Malory Towers with more drama, set in an all-girls boarding school in India, with the internet thrown into complicate matters). For more on queer girls as depicted on screen, the book Queer Girls, Temporality and Screen Media: Not ‘Just a Phase’ by Whitney Monaghan is a good start.

Growing Pains

Anna Karenina’s eerie, Lynch-obsessed portrayals of girlhood, Image Source

Many of the fictional books and screen portrayals we have referenced so far touch on one of the most significant milestones of girlhood — menstruation and puberty. Described in Sri Lanka with the euphemisms of “growing up” or “becoming a big girl” it marks the sharp and instant departure from childhood to effectively becoming a viable womb that is put on display often via “big girl” ceremonies and parties. In her article “When Traditions Need To Change: Period Parties In Sri Lanka” 19-year-old Charuni Nayanathara describes her experience with the Kotahalu Magula as:

“… a ceremonious celebration that takes place when a girl hits puberty. The word itself is significant. According to my grandmother, in Sinhala kota means short, halu or sallu means clothes while Magula means wedding or celebration, so combined it means ‘short clothes celebration.’ Here ‘short clothes’ represent a girl’s younger, childhood days when she was allowed to wear short clothes but as she grows older, she is expected to wear longer clothes”¹

Nayanathara asks “[T]hese customs may have been carried on for a long time but is it worth it for girls?”. The 1975 film Eya Dan Loku Lamayek (directly translated as “She is a Big Girl Now”, or the English title of the film “How to Be an Adult”) directed by Dharmasena Pathiraja narrates the story of a girl who has her first menses, which when announced to the whole village, draws unwelcome attention to her with troubling consequences. Additionally, “Puberty Rituals In Sri Lanka: A Tale Of Blood, Demons, And Flower-Baths” by Roar Media chronicles the various rituals and ceremonies practised by different communities in Sri Lanka.

Puberty Rituals In Sri Lanka: A Tale Of Blood, Demons, And Flower-Baths by Roar Media, Image Source

Finding friendship, belonging and community

Navigating the changing tides that girlhood brings about also necessitates finding a community and connecting with other girls to share friendship, solidarity, and support during difficult times or times of transition. Whether it is passing along a pad in a time of need, checking your back to see if you have leaked during your period, commiserating during heartbreak, and finding a shared connection in experiences — this time brings about a realisation that you are not alone in your journey.

Natalie Ng describes how “teenage female friendships are special because of the intensity that stems from the heightened state of emotions of being a teenager” in this article which shares a selection of media that explores teenage girls in all their complexities. The 2014 film When Marnie Was There has a beautiful portrayal of the developing friendship between two young girls that reminds us that adolescence is an emotionally difficult period of time for girls involving low self-esteem and loneliness, but the female friendships we find during this time can often be emotionally uplifting, as seen by how Anna and Marnie inspire and accompany each other through their loneliness and angst. Similarly, teenage friendships cutting through race and class barriers is also portrayed in the 2002 British Asian film Anita and Me, alongside a deeply powerful portrayal of diasporic girlhood turbulence. Additionally, this study makes an interesting observation how friendships with boys can be a form of everyday resistance for girls.

Teenage Girlhood in Asia: Our Huff and Puff Journey & What’s in the Darkness, Image Source

Swifties and their passion for Taylor Swift is also a fantastic example of finding community and solidarity, with her music verbalising what we don’t yet have the tools to verbalise and how we lean into pop culture, especially music, to make sense of our world and experiences.² This podcast episode from NPR’s Code Switch explores this idea, discussing if Swift’s music is indeed able to “free women to celebrate their girlhood” while also considering the mainstream narratives about girlhood through a more race-critical lens: “[f]or everyone who’s perceived as a sweet, innocent, girl-like person worthy of protection, there are people on the flip side of that who are considered not worth protecting, not legitimate, not trustworthy, inherently sexual”.

The reduction in public spaces due to increased gentrification and “development” has made finding “third spaces”, the spaces between school and home (or work and home for adults) where adolescents have physical places for play, leisure, and community, increasingly rare if non-existent. The internet however, offers this third space in many ways.³ Adolescents are finding friendship, community, and solidarity even when their immediate environments at home or school don’t offer this. [A] tumblr book: platform and cultures, is fascinating as a whole, but we especially recommend the discussion in Chapter 26 on “Tumblr as a Space of Learning, Connecting, and Identity Formation for LGBTIQ+ Young People”. If you are interested in what gaming spaces in particular mean to girls at a more individual level, this article offers some interesting insight collating various studies on the effect of gaming on girls’ psychology, neurology, and how it converts to girls enrolling in STEM subjects.

Duality of girlhood

There is a duality within girlhood adolescents girls often have to grapple with. On the one hand, they are only seen as children and not ready to make decisions about their lives when it comes to expressing their opinion, choices, or mobility. On the other hand, girls are forced to mature more quickly than boys and pushed into circumstances that effectively stunts their childhood. All over the world, including in our own country, girls are pushed into adult roles of caregiving, marriage, and pregnancy. The roles which serve the patriarchy are deemed necessary or socially-appropriate, while they are considered too immature or uninformed to exercise agency about their own lives.

Source: peachlii.tumblr.com

In Sri Lanka, organisations like MPLRAG are fighting to amend the personal laws which are affecting muslim women and girls, one of which is to raise the minimum age of marriage to 18 years. Under Section 23 of the Muslim Marriages and Divorce Act (MMDA), the marriage of a girl below the age of 12 can be registered with the consent of the Quazi. However, solemnisation of a marriage without authorisation is still considered a valid marriage, which effectively means there is no minimum age for marriage for Muslim Girls in Sri Lanka. MPLRAG Shadow Report to Child Rights Committee explains the serious implications of this, as girls are left susceptible to financial difficulties and danger because of curtailed education, reduced access to economic activity, polyamory, divorce, abandonment or death of the husband.

The universal image of girlhood is that of carefree young teenagers, however, as reported in The State of the World’s Girls 2023 by Plan International, Barriers To Vulnerable Adolescent Girls’ Access To Sexual And Reproductive Health in the BMC Public Health Journal, and ICRW’s publications on the struggles facing girls from access to SRHR services, the reality is a lot more bitter and reveals the lack of attention the world gives to these issues.

Existing within (and despite) these harrowing realities are also the stories of girls resisting injustice. History shows us that girls are not new to resisting and standing up against injustice, (such as France’s Joan of Arc, and Afghanistan’s Malalai of Maiwand), but there are also the everyday ways in which girls resist to negotiate more opportunities for themselves and challenge stereotypes and narratives about themselves. These two studies discuss the narrow framing of girlhood and girls resistance in social media activism, and what resistance looks like beyond simplified narratives of ‘girl-power’. Additionally, The Stories of Girls Resistance (where the South Asia section was led and curated by us!), ‘the largest ever collection of oral and narrative history of adolescent girls activism’, aims to offer ‘a window into girls’ lives and their resistance in all of its messiness, pain, and power’ by going beyond mainstream narratives. We can’t pick favourites from the South Asia section because all of them are fascinating and unique, so we hope you can spend some time exploring the 16 animated stories from South Asia on the website.

Stories of Girls Resistance, Image Source

We wanted to tell the stories of South Asian girls leading change — in their own lives, their communities and the world — and explore resistance in all its shapes and forms. We needed to tell these stories because girls have a fundamental, indelible right to narrate their own lives, in all their complexity and messiness, to see accurate images of themselves in the world and to engage in dialogue about their realities. Girlhood is magical, messy, marvellous, and memorable. And it is worth every inch of space it should and can take up in this world.

…

¹ Note: A further discussion on the origin of the term and description of the ritual can be found on page 6 of this paper: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/58757248.pdf

² Thank you to Dulandi Gunasekera for this insight. Many of the ideas explored here came from reflections we had with Dulandi who also helped develop the structure of this narrative list.

³Thank you to Dr. H Miller-Bakewell for this observation, and for sharing the additional resources cited below discussing digital third spaces particularly with respect to queer youth.

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Additional resources:Fiction, Films and TV series and related resources

Stay Daughter by Yasmin Azad — Author’s site featuring interviews and discussions on the book. Link: https://staydaughter.com/Full text of

The Sweet and Simple Kind by Yasmine Gooneratne (2009 edition) Link: https://archive.org/details/sweetsimplekind0000goon

Book review of The Sweet and Simple Kind by Dr Sharanya Jayawickrama. Polity Vol 4. No 3. Link: https://polity.lk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/the-sweet-and-simple-kind.pdf

More on Derry Girls: Screen Queens’ review “Derry Girls looks towards the Strong and Amazing Women of the Troubles to produce channel 4’s biggest comedy hit since 2014” and “Derry Girls and the absurdity of adulthood”.Queer Girls, Temporality and Screen Media: Not ‘Just a Phase’ by Whitney Monaghan. Link: https://queercinema.net/modules/unit%202:%20drama/Day%202%20Reading%20-%20Monaghan.pdf

A reading guide to A Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan https://womensprize.com/app/uploads/2024/05/Brotherless-Night_reading_guide.pdf

On menstruation and puberty

Period parties must end by Zinara Ratnayake. Link: https://www.lacunavoices.com/explore-world-with-lacuna-voices/period-parties-must-end

The Dreaded Samathiya Veedu by Soodesh Chocken [blog article] Link: https://tamilculture.com/the-dreaded-samathiya-veedu

An Interview with Tissa Kariyawasam on Aspects of Culture in Sri Lanka by Le Roy Robinson (1991) Link: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/58757248.pdf

Menstrupedia educates girls on menstruation using comic books and creative resources. Link: https://www.menstrupedia.com/?srsltid=AfmBOopldKPxYWpreQgK8h1QV-UZ7Nc1qqr0s4mAhzlbYeWgP6UP__Cu

More on belonging and community

Loveday, Lilli, Jenny Rivett, and Rosie Walters. 2021. “Understanding Girls’ Everyday Acts of Resistance: Evidence from a Longitudinal Study in Nine Countries.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 25 (2): 244–65. doi:10.1080/14616742.2021.1996258. Link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616742.2021.1996258#d1e179

Taylor Swift and the Unbearable Whiteness of Girlhood” (podcast episode) on NPR’s “Code Switch: Perspectives”. Link: Taylor Swift and the unbearable whiteness of girlhood

Teenage girlhood in Asia: our huff and puff journey and what’s in the darkness by Natalie Ng (2016) Link: https://www.filmedinether.com/features/teenage-girlhood-asia-whats-in-the-darkness-our-huff-and-puff-journey/

Looking at “safe” spaces online, how it actually works day to day, and what role it plays in the lives of the girls who access it. Rosemary Clark-Parsons, (2018). Building a digital Girl Army: The cultivation of feminist safe spaces online. New Media & Society, 20(6), 2125–2144. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817731919 Link: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1461444817731919

McCracken,A., Cho, A., Stein, L., Neill Hoch, I. (eds) (2020) a tumblr book: platform and cultures (2020) edited by Allison McCracken, Alexander Cho, Louisa Stein, and Indira Neill Hoch. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11537055 Link: https://researchdirect.westernsydney.edu.au/islandora/object/uws:58713/datastream/PDF/view

Verheijen, Geert & Stoltz, S.E.M.J. & Van den Berg, Yvonne & Cillessen, Antonius. (2018). The Influence of Competitive and Cooperative Video Games on Behavior During Play and Friendship Quality in Adolescence. Computers in Human Behavior. 91. 10.1016/j.chb.2018.10.023. Link: https://typeset.io/pdf/the-influence-of-competitive-and-cooperative-video-games-on-41a8s98rwp.pdf

Ferguson, C. J., Trigani, B., Pilato, S., Miller, S., Foley, K., Barr, H. (2015). Violent Video Games Don’t Increase Hostility in Teens, but They Do Stress Girls Out. Psychiatric Quarterly 87(1), 49–56.Kaye, L. K., Pennington, C. R., & McCann, J. J. (2018). Do casual gaming environments evoke stereotype threat? Examining the effects of explicit priming and avatar gender. Computers in Human Behavior 78, 142–150.For more resources on women and gaming: https://www.womeningames.org/resources/

On resistance and resilience of girls

For more information on the MMDA and its impact on Sri Lankan muslim girls and women https://www.mmdasrilanka.org/Shadow Report by MPLRAG the Muslim Personal Law Reforms Action Group, published by CRC — UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. Link: https://www.ecoi.net/en/document/1422827.html

Gonick, M., Renold, E., Ringrose, J., and Weems, L. (2009) Rethinking Agency and Resistance: What Comes After Girl Power? Girlhood Studies 2, 2 (2009): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2009.020202 Link: ://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/girlhood-studies/2/2/ghs020202.xml

Berents, H (2016). Hashtagging Girlhood: #IAmMalala, #BringBackOurGirls and Gendering Representations of Global Politics. International Feminist Journal of Politics 18 (4): 513–27. doi: 10.1080/14616742.2016.1207463. Link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616742.2016.1207463?scroll=top&needAccess=true#abstract

Purposeful’s exploration of girls organizing in Seri Leone, Ukraine and how they build girls power through their work. https://wearepurposeful.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/building-girls-power.pdf

An amazing report by FRIDA-The Young Feminist Fund (and our wonderful funder and supporter from day 1) and AWID Brave, Creative, Resilient: The Global State of Young Feminist Organizing

Report on Girls’ activism and leadership for climate justice in Asia and the Pacific by Plan InternationalState of the World’s Girls 2023. PLAN International’s report: https://reliefweb.int/report/world/state-worlds-girls-2023-turning-world-around-girl-and-young-women-activists-leading-fight-equality

UN Women’s list of Girls to Know.Reports on how feminist funds and organizations resource and support the work of girls: Resourcing Girls to Thrive: Research and Recommendations , Weathering the Storm: Resourcing Girls and Young Activists Through a Pandemic, and Girls to the Front: A snapshot of Girl-led Organizing.