'The more equal a space, the more we see civilised behaviour': Shinjini Kumar, author, 'Busy Women'

When we say progress, what do we mean? Progress for whom? Progress by whom? No matter how many women’s empowerment campaigns are run or self-congratulatory Women’s Day messages shared in the office group chat, the reality remains that money and business are heavily gendered.

A former RBI regulator and fintech founder, Shinjini Kumar’s Busy Women: Building Commerce and Culture in Middle India is both a travelogue and a sociological study. Travelling through thirty tier 2 and tier 3 cities, the book is the story of the women entrepreneurs who are changing the rules of a game heavily stacked against their victory – in turn, shaping the country’s economic and cultural landscape.

In a fascinating conversation with Scroll

, she talked about the compounding benefits that working women bring to a family and a country despite the countless structural barriers.

You talk about how migration in India is deeply uneven: men usually move for work, while women move for marriage, often leaving their support systems behind. For the women entrepreneurs you met, did starting a business in a new city feel like a way to rediscover themselves, or was it more about coping with the isolation of joint-family life? And did being “outsider brides” ever give them an unexpected edge, since...

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