Stories of Sri Lankan Women - Issue #5

February 28, 2022

Everystory Sri Lanka is a feminist storytelling and knowledge-sharing collective based in Sri Lanka and working across South Asia.

This is our flagship project: Stories of Sri Lankan Women. Through this work, we aim to gather as many stories as possible of inspirational Sri Lankan women born in the 20th and 21st century whose lives, work, and experience have and have been shaped by our social, political, and cultural contexts. At this stage, we intend to create a compendium of Sri Lankan women’s stories drawing out synergies across places and contexts, spotlighting on catalytic moments, and exploring where and how we can tell feminist histories.

About the Work

In October 2021, we launched the first thirty stories collected through this work to the public. The collection, development, publishing, and launching of these stories have all been made possible by the generous support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Sri Lanka and the Maldives. We are proud to present into the public domain the first thirty stories from the Stories of Sri Lankan Women project.

The women featured in this first phase are diverse, and each has her own compelling journey to share. We intentionally chose to highlight stories of women currently living and based in Sri Lanka or who have been for a greater portion of their lives. The stories span across generations, industries, experiences, race, ethnicity, religion, and historical contexts. It is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list of any kind, but rather, a glimpse of the phenomenal herstories that exist.

Through this mailing list, we will share with you the stories from the first phase of our work as they are concurrently released on our social media accounts.

You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn (where you can find tri-lingual summaries of each of the stories as well) and our Medium page.

“To me, the biggest thing about being a female academic in technology is whenever someone says, “Hey, I followed you, you were my role model, I decided to do technology because of you madam”, especially [when it comes from] a female student.”

-Vishaka Nanayakkara (Senior Lecturer - Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Moratuwa)

“When I reflect on my 80 years of life, I am happy about my past life, and also, I’m not sad that I had to go through [many difficult years]. I’m happy with what I’ve achieved and contributed. Teaching gave me enormous happiness. I love playing the piano when the children sing, and when they sing, I get a real happiness.”

-Seeta Vimalakshmi Jabanesan (Western Classical Music Teacher)

“My hope for the future: the future that follows, is that there will soon be a day where gender disparity is erased and true diversity and inclusion is embraced with people given their rightful place based on merit, and society has the required strength and ability to strongly oppose biasness and favouritism”

-Melanie Janine Kanaka (Global Deputy President, The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants [CIMA])

“If people tell me I shouldn’t do something simply because I am a woman, I’m going to try my best to do it. It’s an ongoing journey. Challenging gender stereotypes is a bigger mountain to climb.”

-Jayanthi Kuru-Utumpala (Mountaineer, Rock Climber, and Women’s Rights Advocate)

Do not miss reading these stories

Please click and drag this email to the “Primary” tab in your email interface so this newsletter won't get lost among other promotions.

Feel free to share these stories and sign up for our mailing list here.

If you have any questions, suggestions, feedback or would like to support this work please email us at [email protected]

Reply

or to participate.