Chhaya Datar

Chhaya Datar (also Chāyā Dātāra born 1944) is an Indian activist, writer and feminist. Datar writes in Marathi and English.

Career Datar began writing and becoming politically active out of frustration as living as a housewife. She wrote her first collection of short stories in Marathi, Goshta Sādhī Saral Sopī in 1972 and her second, Vartulacha Ant in 1977. and became head of the women's studies department at the Tata Institute.

In Waging Change: Women Tobacco Workers in Nipani Organize (1989), Datar examines women's struggles for both political and economic justice in Nipani through the context of cigarette workers. In Signs, reviewer Chandra Talpade Mohanty, writes that Datar's Waging Change is an "elegantly crafted, detailed analysis of the organizational history of women bidi (hand-rolled cigarette) workers." She also describes in this story how tribal women find themselves by sharing their own experiences.

Datar has been published in Contemporary Sociology, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Economic and Political Weekly, and has contributed to the journal published by Men Against Violence and Abuse (MAVA), Purush Spandana. She released Tarihi Shesh on International Women's Day 2017.

Selected bibliography