Vol 11: Tariff-ying trade war and women caught in crossfire
How Trump's tariffs will have a gendered effect in South Asia, what to make of ICC's task force for Afghan female cricketers, who's afraid of the Phules and more.
Welcome back to our first full newsletter of the season!
This week, I included a few compelling reads from political participation in Nepal and marriage in South Asia to the story of a hyperlocal newsroom in India, led and run entirely by Dalit women for the past two decades.
In the deep dive, I explored how Trump’s see-sawing tariff policy could hit South Asia’s garment workers, who are predominantly women. From canceled orders to erased progress in girls’ education and maternal health, the ripple effects are real, and they're gendered.
Also: huge thanks to everyone who filled out the survey (still open btw)! Based on your recommendation, I’ve added a new corner on women’s sports. There's so much ground to cover - from cricket to tennis, and the everyday battles fought off the field.
If you haven’t already, do consider subscribing to Newspaperwali and sharing it with your friends, colleagues and relatives.
Now, let’s get into it. 👇
Feminist Reading Recommendations/Watchlist
This powerful piece by Namita Waikar in People's Archive of Rural India on how women farmers in Dindori district of Madhya Pradesh in India have come together to form the Halchalit Mahila Kisan Women Producer Company that is encouraging organic and natural methods of farming among its members. So far, they have 1,400 registered members who are also shareholders.
As we said goodbye, Godawari told us what they would say in response to the nasty remarks by men. Raising their fists, they said in unison, “hum Bharat ki nari hain, phool nahi chingari hain – we are women of India, we are sparks, not flowers.”
Speaking of farmers, for The Daily Star, Susmita Das wrote on the feminization of agriculture in Bangladesh, where women farmers remain undervalued despite their rising numbers and face numerous challenges from limited access to land and financial services to training and modern technology.
A deep dive by Priyankana Bastola in Kalam Weekly explored how women across Nepal came together for the Intergenerational Feminist Forum’s Anupam Abhiyan, a women-led political campaign aiming to bring more women into positions of governance. Together, they raised a unified call: “Chaurasi ma mahila, hunu parchha pahila – in the (Nepali) year 2084, women should come first.”
Check out Khabar Lahariya, a hyperlocal news outlet in India led entirely by women, most of them Dalit, Muslim or Adivasi. For the last 23 years, Khabar Lahariya has been serving news through a naariwadi chasma (feminist lens) across mediums from its website to YouTube and Instagram.
Zahra Haider’s tender essay Not Your Wife reflected on marriage in South Asian culture, expectations of a traditional wife, what it means to want something different and the messiness and beauty of relationships.
“In South Asian culture, marriage is less a choice and more a graduation…
We don’t teach girls how to build intimacy, we teach them how to serve tea. We don’t teach them how to express anger safely, only how to swallow it with a smile and some kheer. We dress them in zari and gold, and we call it empowerment, even when they’re being handed over like heirlooms.”
Deep Dive: Trump tariffs and women’s jobs at risk
If you own T-shirts from H&M and Zara, or shoes from Nike, chances are at least some of them were made in textile factories in South Asia, where labor is cheap - and usually female.
Earlier this month, President Trump announced steep new tariffs on exports from many countries: 44% on Sri Lanka, 37% on Bangladesh, 29% on Pakistan, 26% on India and 10% each on Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan and Maldives.
He’s since walked it back with a 90-day tariff pause, but a blanket 10% tariff on most countries still stands. The uncertainty about what comes after and the across-the-board tariffs will hit export-oriented sectors like textiles in South Asia hard, according to the World Politics Review.
More than 80% of garment workers in Bangladesh, and 78% in Sri Lanka, are women. For millions, these jobs have played a crucial role in educating and empowering, improving their financial independence, and benefiting their health and that of their children.
“In Bangladesh, parents kept their daughters in school, because these factory jobs reward basic numeracy and literacy,” Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, a development economist at Yale University, told the World Politics Review.
“If the jobs start disappearing, then the returns on education go down. And what that means is the reversal of really impressive growth of female enrolment in Bangladesh.”
Meanwhile, some major global brands such as Gap, Walmart and Levi’s have reportedly started demanding reduced pricing or urged suppliers to bear the burden of the tariffs, while others have paused or canceled orders until there is more clarity.
Sound familiar?
This isn’t the first time powerful US and European fashion companies have tried to pass on unexpected costs to suppliers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many refused to pay overseas suppliers for more than $16 billion of goods, leaving millions of garment workers facing reduced hours and unemployment.
In Bangladesh alone, more than a million garment workers - mostly women - were fired or furloughed as a result of cancelled orders and buyers’ refusal to pay, according to the Center for Global Workers’ Rights (CGWR).
For factories that run on tight margins, this kind of uncertainty can be devastating.
Not just in South Asia, the same story could played out in Jordan, Cambodia and Vietnam where women's livelihoods depend on steady, export-driven factory work. Women could be the biggest casualties of Trump’s trade war.
📰 Gender News Minute
Nepal has reduced maternal deaths by 71% since 2000, according to a World Health Organisation report. However, there is a risk of major backsliding as U.S. aid cuts take effect around the world.
The UK’s highest court on Wednesday ruled that transgender women cannot be legally defined as women, in a case that could have widespread ramifications for equality protections.
“I think this will be the kicking-off point for a very enhanced push for overt restrictions on the rights of trans people,” said trans woman and former UK judge Victoria McCloud told The Guardian.
A woman was allegedly stripped off her hijab and a Hindu man accompanying her was physically assaulted by a group of men in a disturbing incident in India’s Muzaffarnagar. Police have registered an FIR and arrested six individuals, vowing strict legal action.
Over 9,600 images of Lankan women and girls, some as young as 15, were illicitly obtained and shared without consent on a cloud platform, The Sunday Times reported. The news organization, that received the link through an anonymous source, reached out to the cloud platform provider MEGA and within 20 minutes, the company responded and deleted all the data from the storage.
The rape of a 28-year-old teacher laid bare systematic failures in handling sexual assault in Maldives, the Maldives Independent reported.
From January 2022 to the present, 998 sexual offences were reported to the police, which forwarded 24 cases of rape for prosecution, charges were raised in 10 cases and only three of which resulted in convictions, according to the news report.
🏆 Sports Corner
Following years of silence, the International Cricket Council (ICC) announced the formation of a dedicated task force to support displaced Afghan women cricketers.
Firstpost’s Vishal Tiwari argued that this is symbolism as Afghan women are still effectively stateless athletes with no national team to represent. The cricket body, under its new chairman Jay Shah, is unwilling to confront the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB), which continues to operate without a women’s team and still enjoys full ICC membership.
After their latest win against Scotland, Bangladesh’s cricket team is just a solitary victory away from finishing in the top two places in the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2025 Qualifier. They will face West Indies today and Pakistan on Saturday. Match hosts Pakistan are also in a strong position and another triumph - either against Thailand later in the day or Bangladesh - will see them progress to the Women’s World Cup in India later this year.
For the first time since 2020, Indian women’s tennis team qualified for the Billie Jean King Cup playoffs. The triumph came following a thrilling 2-1 win against South Korea by Ankita Raina and Prarthana Thombare, that secured India’s spot alongside New Zealand in the global tournament.
Postcards of Courage: Savitribai Phule
Amid the ongoing controversy in India regarding the censorship of Bollywood movie Phule, I wanted to focus on Savitribai Phule, Dalit icon and India’s first female teacher.
Before the headlines, the tweets, and the debate, there was Phule: walking to school under a shower of stones and cow dung just because she dared to teach girls, dared to educate those who were never allowed to read, and dared to reimagine dignity for those written out of the system.
Every lesson she taught was a challenge to caste and gender hierarchies. Her activism wasn’t theoretical - it was radical, grounded, and dangerous to those opposed to freedom.
Some further readings on Phule:
Locating Savitribai Phule’s Feminism in the Trajectory of Global Feminist Thought by Renu Pandey.
This article on how Savitribai and her adopted son Dr. Yashwantrao sacrificed their lives while combating the bubonic plague in Bombay and Poona in 1896-97.
The Scroll wrote on Savitribai’s literary work and how her poems were the first to use the term Dalit as we know it now.
Surendra Kumar’s piece in The News Minute on the debate around the biopic Phule, censorship and how caste privilege continues to shape cultural narratives.
While censorship has always been a thread running through India’s cultural and political fabric, there have also been moments when the state has allowed space for truth. Here’s from one such time when Doordarshan’s Bharat Ek Khoj explored the work and life of the Mahatma Phule and Savitribai Phule.
That’s all, folks!
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Until next time,
Bansari Kamdar
About me: Newspaperwali is curated by Bansari Kamdar, a seasoned journalist and researcher. Prior to this, Kamdar worked as the Europe, Middle East, and Africa editor at Reuters News. As an independent reporter she has also contributed to The Boston Globe, Diplomat, and World Politics Review, among others.