S6E10: Women in Revolutions

Harjit: I just did laundry. Do you like doing laundry?

Lina: So it depends on the mood.

Harjit: I was thinking about how we have so many daily chores that need to get done. And I'm like, "This is why it's fun to be a child and not an adult."

Lina: I know. I've been spending the last week back with my family, and it's been amazing. My mom has been cooking all my favorite meals, and doing all this stuff for me, and I'm just like, "Bless, I need this right now."

Harjit: Yeah. I will say that does sound nice, just someone taking care of you. I know my parents are in India, so I'm currently cooking, cleaning, doing my own laundry. My parents didn't do my laundry, but I just like to say I'm doing everything by myself.

Okay. Let's jump into the episode.

Lina: Yeah.

Harjit: Hi, everyone. This is Harjit, with the "Bundle of Hers." And today we are in the virtual studio. And I am with Lina. Hi, Lina.

Lina: Hello.

Harjit: Yay. This is exciting. I think this is the first time just the two of us are talking.

Lina: I know. I'm so excited.

Harjit: Yeah. I'm really excited. So it's women's history month in March, and we thought it would be great if we did a topic surrounding our identities as women. Both me and Lina identify as women, and we also identify as rebellious women. I thought what better but to talk about a topic about women in revolutionary settings.

Women in revolution, what does that mean to us? I think a lot of times we think of men when we think of revolution. And I want to pull that a little bit back and understand why don't we think about women? Because I think they are really the pillar of revolutionary movements.

I identify as a Sikh Punjabi woman, and Lina identifies as a Palestinian woman, and I think we talk about what revolutions mean a lot. I thought this would be a perfect topic for us. So I'm really excited.

Lina: Yes. Definitely, to what you already started saying, but a lot of the times when we think about revolutions, or movements, or just even resistance, this is things that stem from both our cultures and our history heavily.

It's not per se saying we only think about the men, but usually, people don't really think about the women first, or people don't really think about what women have put a hand in for all that stuff, right?

Harjit: Right.

Lina: It's not something that's as talked about. I love my women revolutionaries. I think we both are revolutionaries in just how we approach life, and medicine, and everything. It is something that needs to be emphasized more, and needs to be talked about more.

Harjit: Yeah. So one of my favorite words is actually in Punjabi. It's called Inakalāba, and it means revolution.

Lina: It's also an Arabic word by the way, but okay.

Harjit: Oh, yeah. Yes, it is.

Lina: Yes. We talked about this.

Harjit: We did talk about this. And I'm really excited about that commonality too. I was going to say that the definition that I found that I felt really lent well to what a revolution meant, it's a radical change in the established order. Usually, the established government, or social institutions, or any other thing of that sort.

I particularly wanted us to get back to an episode . . . actually, a couple of episodes where we discussed what it means to be radical in Season 4, Episodes 2, 3, and 4. And just as a reminder, at that time we had given the definition of Paulo Freire. "The radical, committed to human liberation, does not become a prisoner of a circle of certainty within which reality is also imprisoned."

And basically, what that means is imagining new worlds. That's what I take away from that. And revolutionaries are the people who lead that, or who lead that movement of imagining new worlds.

While thinking about that definition, I thought a lot about my own story and how growing up as a woman, a person who presents as a woman, I've had to get creative with the way that I acted so I could get what I wanted.

Imagine a world that wasn't possible for me, whether it be in education, or in my romantic life, or in my personal life. These are all the ways that I feel like I make small movements of revolution.

Lina: Society puts this box around what we can do, especially as women. We go in our life, and in our culture, and around our families, and our communities, and these guidelines that this is basically what you can amount to. This is how much you can do. Remember, you need to get married, and you're supposed to have kids, and raise these kids, and all of that. Even when choosing a specialty, it was like, "Oh, think about a specialty that might be easier to have a family with," right?

Harjit: Yes.

Lina: "How are you going to live life and raise your kids in a specialty where . . . in a sub-surgical specialty?" Like me choosing OB-GYN. There's always something, there's always a limit, and it always has to do with me being a woman and these expectations that are put on us, right? What you're saying comes in as we are living our life with even just mini-revolutions every day.

Harjit: Every day.

Lina: Yeah. We're choosing to go beyond those limits that society puts for us, and go beyond the box that we're put in. It is hard, and it is something that you have to mentally go through every day. And not just within your family or friends, but even just what we combat in medicine, like your peers, your coworkers, your attendings, and even your patients. At the end of the day, there is something different of what we're doing. Women are a pillar of a lot of changes.

Harjit: Yes. And Lina, going off they're pillars of these movements, I'm thinking of things that we've had to deal with or heard of recently. There was this resurgence of "Black Lives Matter." And from there also came "SayHerName" when talking particularly about black women who get impacted by violence. We also have the "#MeToo" movement, which was probably co-opted by a lot of different organizations and groups, but it was started by women.

We also think about environmental justice, and how . . . There's "Land Back," or the water protestors, and these are indigenous women who lead these revolutions. And also the "Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women" movements, those are also led by women.

And these strong movements were all created and started by women. Later, you'll see other people who are allies take over, in a sense, and that's where we can go in the details of what it means to be an ally. How to live a radical life is really difficult, but all these movements, women were the pillars.

So I wanted us both to explore a little bit of our stories, and our identities, and how revolution has become synonymous with our identity as a woman, especially in our cultural, and political, and ethnic backgrounds as well.

I just wanted to shout out a thought that I had. I think it's really interesting because matriarchs were pivotal in a lot of indigenous cultures, where the woman is where the wisdom comes from. There's a lot of importance held for matriarchs, but we live in a patriarchal society. So I think it's interesting, but women have always been these revolutionaries that have led this change.

And I think, like you said, Lina, they've always existed, we always knew their name, but today when I was putting this list of women that really inspired me from my own community and culture, I realized, "Wow. These people are so integral to our histories," but it's something that you don't see until you see it all the way together.

Lina: Yeah. It's so integral to our history. And we all know these names, but yet somehow it's not, because the forefront is the patriarchy, right?

Harjit: Yeah.

Lina: And even though we know that these women did a lot of stuff and changed a lot of things in our world, they're still not the first thing we think about, right?

Harjit: No, they aren't. Thinking a lot about how being a revolutionary is really a part of my being and in my history. I identify as a Sikh Punjabi woman. So Sikh is my religious and political identity, and Punjabi is my ethnic and racial identity. I felt like there have been integral women who have really shaped that.

So the first person that I'm thinking about is Mata Khivi. So she really was a core pillar of langar. So langar is a community service where people from all walks of life, whether they're rich or poor, they come eat the same thing, sit on the floor. And back in the day, the kings would sit on chairs and beggars would sit on the floor. People from different castes wouldn't eat together. So this is really to eliminate the oppression, and also to hold a core tenet of equality.

And to this day, at every gurudwara on Sunday, I have langar every single time. This is something that was put in me by Mata Khivi. And it really pushed me for that social justice lens.

And when I say that being Sikh is also my political identity, there's another really strong woman called Mai Bhago, and she was a woman leader. And she learned and trained in the martial arts so she could be there to fight for those that are oppressed when that was the only means to get what they needed.

And all these women really impact me, and have really put that revolutionary spirit in me, that social justice spirit in me, that everyone deserves to be happy and to live in their identities.

In more recent times, I think of . . . Like I said, when the British had taken over India, there were a lot of freedom fighters that were Punjabi. And I usually only heard about the men, but one person that I really think about is Gulab Kaur, who was a freedom fighter. And she was a part of the Ghadar Party, which is basically this revolutionary party for freedom fighters. And they helped liberate India.

And she used really interesting techniques to help for the liberation. It wasn't what you would think is the first thing, like speaking out, saying things, but it's actually collecting community.

And then when I was thinking about her, I thought about how a lot of women revolutionaries used their skills that weren't the direct skill to use to fight for freedom, but they were very smart and wisdom-filled ways to actually create change.

So these people have really taught me how to be a revolutionary, and have allowed me to be grounded in my identity, my political, religious, ethnic-racial identity, and more importantly my identity as a woman, to really think about how I can create small revolutions, which can, in turn, turn into big revolutions.

Lina: Even just looking up all these women, it's just so incredible and so amazing. I wanted to read all their history and broadcast it all the time. And obviously, there are more women than we could ever share on.

But I tried to relate it even to some daily things, like you just did, of our everyday life and how they started as women's movements. And I think about Palestinian women and how we are very strong-headed about our education, obtaining high levels of education, and knowing that education for us is basically a sword in your life to get through society, and help your family, and help your community.

And there were two women that I read about. Hind al-Husseini who basically, in 1948, around the time that Palestinians were being ethnically cleansed from their villages and towns, she came across a group of 55 children in the Jerusalem's Old City, and she helped them escape, and she helped basically hide them until they were able to survive.

She went from that into creating multiple orphanages across villages and other cities across Palestine. And these orphanages always focused on educating these girls and women, because she knew how strong that is for us, or how, basically, that is something integral of our life.

And it turned from her going into small educational orphanages into making a very powerful university in Palestine, from her and her little actions across Palestine.

Harjit: Wow. That's amazing.

Lina: The other woman that I think of, her name is May Ziadeh. She's a Palestinian-Lebanese author, and she's a women's rights advocate. And she's basically another educator of woman. She is known basically for gathering meeting places for intellectuals, journalists, critics, and philosophers across Palestine. Always focusing female characters in her works because she knew what strong and impactful personalities that these women hold. It's still, to this day, something we all talk about.

And Fadwa Tuqan, she is this strong Palestinian poet who always focused on also women's strength and characters that helped with a lot of the Palestinian revolutions that happened.

That's how I think about it. I'm very proud that I am where I am in my education, and that's always been something so integral to my life, and something that I want to continue. And it's because of these women that have just established those movements.

And then we also think about how in order to combat occupation, and in order to resist Zionism, for Palestinian women, it wasn't the main fighting thing I guess you would think of.

Harjit: Physical means versus intellectual means, is what I think about.

Lina: Gathering women together and having these spaces where women can have their voices heard, and share what they think needs to change, and what they think the avenues for change. It was more of a social way of doing things, and it always made sure to advocate for everyone's need, and always made sure to include everyone's voices beyond just women's voices. But it did focus on the woman.

And someone who did that is Zulekha Al Shehabi. And she did a lot of these gatherings and campaigns for women's rights, and also for combating Zionism, and combating a lot of the discrimination and a lot of the unfairness that was happening to Palestinians, and specific to Palestinian women. Her efforts were influential in the creation of several women's societies across Palestine.

Harjit: That's amazing. Lina, I was just thinking about something while you were talking about how women really gather and use education as their sword, which I really thought was a powerful line.

Honestly, I think that is what I really want to emphasize in this episode, is that women really, in the essence, understand being radical, about imagining these new ways, and new definitions, and new worlds, and how to make them happen. And they use several different means, whether it is physical, or intellectual, or social, to make these changes.

Even revolutionary women have allowed me to have a seat at the table, even though that seat might still need a lot of work, when it comes to me being a woman in medicine. And that's where I come to the history of women in medicine and how they've been revolutionary. And there were specific women that I really wanted to touch upon, especially these women who are women of color. So with their multiple intersectional identities, they really left a mark in medicine.

And the first one I actually had talked about in my episode about being radical in medicine, but again, I want to remind everybody about Rebecca Lee Crumpler. She was the first black woman physician. So she was a nurse, she became a doctor, and she decided to work at the Freedmen's Bureau Medical Division.

So after the Civil War ended, there were four million people that were enslaved and they became free. There was no assistance provided for them, so they didn't really have a place to live, no financial stability, no food security, and they were cramped in small places. And this was a place for a lot of pathological diseases. So this created a public health crisis.

And at that time, she was one of the four leaders who really decided to very intentionally help these people that were underserved, under-resourced, and marginalized.

And she decided to dedicate her time to help her community. I would say this community was obviously integral to the making of America. The very buildings we live in, the very institution we have as a nation is because of black people. And she was this integral person who kept black people healthy.

And then the other person that I came across was Susan . . . and I don't want to say her last name incorrectly, but it's Picotte. And she was the first indigenous woman to become a doctor in 1889. And she was amazing because she served a pretty big population and she would walk by foot serving them.

She lobbied a lot about prohibiting alcohol on the reservation. And as we've talked in the past, alcohol was utilized to oppress people, indigenous people, even further. And she really lobbied for this and was able to open a hospital at a reservation.

All these women . . . There are a lot of examples. There's Margaret Chung. She was the first American-born Chinese woman. She created a lot of resources in Chinatown in San Francisco.

We also had Virginia Alexander. She was a child of formerly enslaved parents. She really pioneered public health research, and understanding of disparities of health between black populations and white populations.

We also have Helen Rodriguez-Trias, a Latina in medicine who really worked on expanding services for underrepresented women and children in low-income populations.

I think a lot of women take on the difficult task of leading and really shaping movements that help people that are marginalized. They're already under-resourced, and then they take on this huge task to help those people that are marginalized. In my brain, what that means is double the work, double the energy, double the emotional labor, double the physical labor. And really, these women are upholding medicine.

When we see all the "I want to be a helper" or "I want to help people" and "I want to save people in medicine" . . . and I'm doing this all in air quotation marks because I really am thinking about how these are the women who make that name of this is a service-oriented field. But I really wish that people understood that, and understood that these are the women who led that service orientation.

Lina: Yeah. Well, even just think about me and you. At least in my experience in medical school and in my rotations, I see the small changes I do when I meet women from my community, and when I'm able to be a provider for these women.

The patients that I have felt like I have truly empowered, and truly impacted, and helped in making sure that their voices are heard are the women from my community.

And it always was such a huge difference when they knew that someone from the same community, or someone who understood a little bit more about what's going on in their backgrounds and their multiple intersections of identities, and I was able to take all that, understand it, and provide a way to, "This is how I'm going to represent you," that still made a huge difference in their care.

And that's why it's so important. All these women who were the first medical providers coming out of their backgrounds or identities, that was such a huge change for them because they were able to be that voice for a lot of people in their community, and they were able to empower a lot of people in their community.

Harjit: Yeah, and these women really led the path for us. They led us to imagine a world where there are a ton of women physicians, when they were the first. And that's really where I see that revolutionary spirit.

It allows me to also have an example that though it's difficult to carry that spirit, there are always small ways that we can be revolutionary. And it might be the way we diagnose patients. It might be the way we treat patients. It's both revolutionary and critical of us to be thinking about all these factors.

And that's how I feel like everybody, even our listeners, can adopt a revolutionary spirit. If we just think things are going to stay the way they are . . . We've all heard it, older generation people be like, "Oh, nothing is going to change. Nothing ever changes." And if we continue to feel that way, nothing will change.

I just think it's so important that we honor these women, and that's why this women's history month, I really wanted to talk about these women and how they've shaped my identity, my revolutionary spirit.

Lina: I try as much as I can each day to go in with the fact that there will be wins in my day, and there will be the small revolutions that I'm able to do. And a lot of it is around the women that I can empower, and the women that I can not necessarily help but just . . .

Harjit: Influence, right?

Lina: Yeah. And that includes myself as well. It's important to recognize these women and to recognize that there's probably still much more to happen, and much more to do, and much more to change. But when we're all looking at all of these small things that we go by day by day, I know we'll continue to encourage that thought and that change. And we'll continue to encourage other women to be like, "Yes, this is something that we can all do together," and uplift each other, and get to that place.

Harjit: Yeah, Lina, that's well said and I think a great way for us to close this episode.

I just wanted to thank all of our listeners who joined us on this small little journey to talk about women in revolutions. Really the pillars of revolutions.

If you want to share any women that have really impacted you or your story, please send us a direct message @bundleofhers, our Instagram page. We also are so excited because we have new pins, "Power From Identity." They're super cool and super fun, and we are excited to send you some. So please share a story with us so we can give you a pin.

As our "Bundle Of Hers community grows, really thankful for everyone who's supported us, even if this is the first time you're listening. And like I said, please follow us @bundleofhers. You can listen to our podcast at all podcasting platforms.

Lina: Bye.

Harjit: Bye-bye.