Gouri Choudhury

Action India

"‘Community, Human Rights and Citizenship’ are the three core principles that define my work. Working with communities and building women's leadership in particular, have only strengthened my belief that it is through building collective consciousness that we can challenge the unequal social order."

GOURI CHOUDHURY, is a social activist involved with the autonomous women’s movement in India since 1978. A founder member of Action India she has specialized in working with a gender perspective on development issues, initiating and founding new ways of organizing women for collective action and building participatory democracy. She joined a group of radical thinkers concerned about the growing poverty and weakening of democratic institutions in India. They initiated grassroots mobilization in the urban slums of Delhi and laid the foundation of Action India in 1976. Founder of Organizations for Equality and Equity Gouri was one of the core group to form STREE SANGHARSH, a consciousness raising group which evolved a feminist perspective and organized protest against “dowry burnings”. Later, as a founder member of SAHELI she handled over 500 cases of marital violence during the 5 years of commitment to work at this crisis intervention center. As a founder member of ACTION INDIA a community based organization, Gouri and the Action India team played an important role in bridging the feminists in SAHELI with grassroots women in SABLA SANGHS. Together with other women’s organizations large numbers of women were mobilized in the early eighties to campaign for legislative reform, the outcome of which brought about amendments in the Rape Law and Violence against Women (Sec 498A). In 1986, Gouri was actively involved in initiating a shelter for destitute women established as SHAKTI SHALINI run by the mothers of dowry victims. Gouri was also a founder member of the Women’s Resource and Training Center JAGORI, and functioned as an executive member for 5 years. WOMEN POWER CONNECT a forum for women’s political participation and lobbying for gender based policies has been one of her involvement in recent years to work at a national level.