Women, water and social transformation were the subject of researcher Vathsala Aithal's October 6 talk "Can We Learn from the Subaltern? Women in India in Struggle for Water and Social Transformation." With multinational companies buying off water sources, water will be the gold of the future, Aithal said. In India today women are dealing with this environmental crisis through activist movements that bring to light the issues that affect their lives. Aithal's work looks at these women's movements in which "marginalized women at the end of the social hierarchy…assert their right to redefine the very structures that have an impact on them." 

Published Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2004