While the year 2021 might have not been the easiest ride, we want to take a moment to acknowledge the bumps, but also the wins that the FII team came together to celebrate. As the year draws to an end, we take a moment to look back!
Below is an infographic and a short note on FII’s 2021 in review.
Editorial
We started the year on a great note! The Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation selected the FII website for inclusion in its South Asian Gender and Sexuality Web Archive. The Archive is an initiative developed by librarians at the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, and Harvard University, under the auspices of the Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation, and exists to amplify the voices of those fighting against long histories of patriarchal dominance in South Asia.
This year, the English editorial published close to 1230 articles. We maintained our intersectional, non-appropriation policy and we were able to curate voice from across strata. Our team also won a few prestigious Laadli awards and our writers community has seen significant, enriching growth which we cannot be more grateful for!
The FII Hindi Editorial published 757 articles in 2021. We must mention that from FII Hindi’s launch in 2019, we have come far, and that is not without the efforts of our great team and writers community that have joined FII Hindi over the past two years. FII Hindi also won four regional and one national Laadli Media Awards for Gender Sensitivity and Advertising, 2021.
Both the FII websites now also have accessibility tools that make them more accessible for people with disabilities.
Multimedia
In 2021, the FII digital community continued to grow on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, YouTube and LinkedIn. We also started a separate YouTube channel for FII Hindi. Our YouTube presence also grew significantly in the past year.
In 2021, we produced and published about 100 videos for our English YouTube channel. We also introduced two new series – The Feminist Archive, which takes a look and documents Indian history from an intersectional feminist lens, and Valid Questions, which is our attempt is to get to the bottom of some of the very common questions that are asked on a daily basis.
We produced and published about 42 videos for our Hindi YouTube channel. We introduced the Feminist Archive and Valid Questions series to our Hindi viewers as well.
The ‘Lets talk about challenges of PCOS‘ by Nishtha Shanti bagged the Laadli Media and Advertising Award for Gender Sensitivity, 2021, and the Orange Flower Awards for the Best Short Film. The ‘Vaginismus: when your vagina refuses to open up‘ video by Nishtha Shanti, also won Jury Appreciation at the Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity, 2021.
We also welcomed the second season of FII’s flagship podcast ‘Intersectional Feminism – Desi Style!‘, where we talk about everything pop culture and feminism. Hosts Sukanya Shaji and Nishtha Shanti have been fortunate to have conversations with amazing guests including Nandita Das, Anna M.M Vetticad, Smriti Kiran, Jyoti Nisha, Urvashi Butalia, among others.
Campaigns and Collaborations
At FII, we understand the value of the collaborations and partnerships. We continued to partner with various organisations and brands across sectors throughout the year 2021. We were fortunate enough to partner with organisations such as Oxfam India on the campaign #EmpowermentNotAge, Greenpeace India for the campaign #DetoxCity and ActionAid Association for the campaign #LinkingTheGlobalToTheLocal. Not just the development sector, but we were also fortunate enough to partner with brands such as Tinder for the #LetsTalkAboutConsent campaign, and with sexual and menstrual wellness brands such as Proactive for Her and That Sassy Thing.
We also partnered with the Internet Freedom Foundation on the International Safer Internet Day, with Rangeen Khidki for Sexual and Reproductive Health Awareness Day, with HowToUse Abortion Pill on International Safe Abortion Day, and with Proactive for Her for PCOS Awareness Month.
For the #16DaysOfActivism, we collaborated with World YWCA to celebrate the work YWCA leaders have done to fight against gender-based violence across the world. We wish to keep this spirit of collaboration alive in 2022!
Two of FII’s past campaigns, #GBVInMedia and #AbortionMeraHaq (in collaboration with Asia Safe Abortion Partnership) won the Social Media For Empowerment (SM4E) awards organised by the non-profit Digital Empowerment Foundation. The FII English ‘Adolescent Sexuality’ campaign by FII and Partners for Law in Development, and the FII Hindi campaign ‘Ab Bolna Hoga’ both won the Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity.
The FII Membership Programme
To sustain our efforts in the long-term and to keep bringing you the best of intersectional, feminist content, in January 2021, we launched the FII Membership Programme. The paid membership programme that offers premium content and benefits to our supporters. We are grateful to now have 120+ members whose contributions help sustain our work and ensure we thrive in these uncertain times.
If you too would like to support FII’s work, consider becoming an FII Member here.
Also read: FII’s Year In Review 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014.
