Chayanika Shah

Chayanika Shah is a queer feminist, activist, educator involved in various women's rights movements in India since the late 1970s. She is known for her work in feminist science studies, initiating courses where science is explored using the lens of gender. Shah's work in science, feminism and queer rights, has involved a critique of science's control over women's bodies and sexualities. Shah has published several essays and publications on topics of gender, science and feminism and is a contributor in the field of feminism, queer rights and science.

Shah was one of the earliest members of the Forum Against Oppression of Women, Forum Against Sex Determination and Sex Preselection (FASDSP), a coalition of women's organisations. She is one of the founding members of a queer collective called LABIA – A Queer Feminist LBT Collective in 1995.

Early life Shah grew up in Nagpur (now a part of Maharashtra) in the 1960s-1970s. In 1977, she entered IIT-Bombay to earn a master's degree in physics, and receiving her PhD in 1986. She published her dissertation titled "Many Body Effects in Homogenous and Inhomogenous Electron Systems" in the mid-1980s, followed by a stint at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, where she attended summer school for researchers from developing countries. Shah, along with other women on campus, campaigned to rename the "Ladies’ Hostel" as "Hostel Number 10."

In 1980, when the National Forum Against Rape (which later became the Forum against Oppression of Women) was set up in response to the Mathura rape case, Shah was among 200 women who attended the forum's first conference to discuss the importance of drafting laws for women. which encouraged children to step outside the classroom and get their hands dirty. The idea was to inculcate “learning by doing” and deploy science in pursuit of social justice.

Autonomous collectives She has been part of two urban, autonomous collectives in Mumbai, India. The first, Forum Against Oppression of Women (The Forum), was founded in 1979, and the second, LABIA – A Queer Feminist LBT Collective, was founded in 1995.

The Forum was founded in January 1980 and Chayanika has been a member since 1983. To tackle cases of domestic violence, members of the Forum set up another organisation called the Women's Centre in 1982, which was imagined to run in tandem with the Forum but has since become a separate organisation. The Forum was also a member of the Forum Against Sex Determination and Sex Preselection, which was a coalition of organisations formed in 1986. Since 1995, she has been an active participant in the petition to repeal Section 377. Chayanika had been involved the Lawyers' collective case challenging the constitutionality of Section 377 since 2004. Shah has also questioned NCERT and NCPCR when they dropped a teacher training manual on school education that was inclusive of trans and other gender-nonconforming people on grounds that it would affect school children badly.

Publications Shah has co-authored several books, including “Bharat ki Chaap”, “We and Our Fertility: The politics of technological intervention”,