Tamil Female Civil Space: Its Evolution and Decline in Tamil Eelam

by N. Malathy

Modern Feminist ideologies serve only middle class women in the developing world. The condition of the vast majority women in the developing world remains largely unchanged. Why is that? This form of modern feminism can evolve only when certain economic conditions that parallel the standard of living in western countries are met. In the de-facto state of Tamil Eelam, which was destroyed in a genocidal war in 2009, a different form of grassroots feminism was evolving. It mostly drew in women from the working class. It is a type of feminism that will truly serve the wretched of this earth. This book begins to describe both how this particular type of grassroots feminism evolved and the early success it achieved.

N Malathy, an Eelam Tamil, has been living in New Zealand for several decades and holds a PhD in computer science. She lived and worked in the Tamil Eelam de-facto state from 2005 till 2009. In an earlier book, A Fleeting Moment in My Country..., she describes her experience of this de-facto state. She had continued to interview the women to record this vital part of Eelam Tamil history before it is lost with the sweep of time and buried by the pervasive and powerful geopolitical forces currently at play.

141 pages, Paperback

Published July 1, 2019

About the author

N. Malathy is a member of the Eelam Tamil diaspora who has lived in New Zealand for four decades. She is a computer scientist who has engaged with and written extensively on the human rights situation in Sri Lanka. She graduated from Peradeniya in Electrical Engineering and holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.

She spent four years in the country of Eezham Tamils, in Vanni under the control of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), from 2005 till 2009. During this period she worked in a human rights body, a women’s organization, and an orphanage. Her experiences spanned working with civilian institutions in the de facto state of the Eezham Tamils, preparing documentation for peace talks, documenting systematic human rights violations by the Sri Lankan military and working on a project to raise awareness of domestic violence.