You Will Live In This World As A Daughter

I was commissioned as one of four female photographers (two Indian and two British) to make a project about Punjabi women in the Punjab (India) and in the Black Country (United Kingdom).

After reading in the 2011 Punjabi census that for every 1000 boys that were born - 895 girls were born, I chose to look at how it is being a daughter of the Punjab. I wanted to question the visibility of girls and women (after spending five weeks in India I found it odd that I never saw a pregnant woman and often I would walk down a road and only see male faces) and so I made a playful series of photographs that move between hiding and revealing.

The title, You Will Live In This World As A Daughter, is inspired by lyrics in the song Middle of the Night by The Soviettes - 'He said, "Now listen girl I'm your father, and you will live in this house as a daughter"'.

I spent a month in Jalandhar, in the Punjab, where I visited an all-girls college where a lot of girls play sport to allow them to continue with their education, as well as an orphanage/refuge (where the residents are primarily female) that has a crib in the outer wall for people to leave their babies. A person of note who I met is Ginni Mahi, a viral singer who speaks about equality for women.

In the Black Country amongst the women and girls I met were British Bindi who are four friends who write about how it is to be British Asian, and Rupinder Kaur, a poet who wrote a poem that talks about how some Punjabi daughters have freedom but others don’t. A family with three daughters said their grandparents cried when the third daughter was born, but they were happy to have a healthy baby. Often families will only celebrate and give out pink ladoo – a popular Indian sweet – when boys are born.