Flipping the model on human rights advocacy
Human rights activist Mallika Dutt ’83 and her company Breakthrough won a $1.25 million Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.
By Matthew Crowley
Mallika Dutt ’83 calls violence against women the world’s biggest human rights pandemic. For more than 30 years, she’s worked to eradicate it by helping younger generations make the issue their own.
With her nonprofit advocacy group Breakthrough, Dutt has used media, arts, and technology to change gender-inequality-perpetuating norms. This spring, she secured a three-year, $1.25 million 2016 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship to continue the fight. Dutt, who received an honorary doctorate from Mount Holyoke in 2012, also will be a featured speaker at The Mount Holyoke College Shakti Program, “Igniting leadership among young women in contemporary Indian society,” August 20-21 in Mumbai, India.
In a statement announcing this year’s six award winners, the nonprofit Skoll Foundation said the prize recognizes leaders whose organizations disrupt the status quo and drive large-scale change.
“These six remarkable people give voice and agency to the voiceless and marginalized, and give us good reason to believe in a radically better future,” foundation President and CEO Sally Osberg said in the statement.
After earning her Mount Holyoke degree in international relations, Dutt, 54, pursued a master’s degree in international affairs at Columbia University and later a law degree at New York University. She told the Christian Science Monitor in 2014 that the idea for Breakthrough came when she was working for the Ford Foundation in India. She wanted to flip the human rights advocacy approach from reaction to prevention. Addressing violence after it happened wasn’t stopping it, she reasoned.
Young people, ages 11 to early 20s, are Breakthrough’s core constituency. In India, Dutt’s home country, Breakthrough fights child marriage, domestic violence, and sexual harassment. In the United States, Breakthrough fights gender-based violence on college campuses.
“The money is going to allow us to make some investments,” Dutt said. “More than anything, it’s going to allow us to expand our networks and hopefully reach out to funders and resources that we may not have known about.”
Dutt said she believes violence against women starts with gender norms and codes about masculinity and femininity. It also starts with patriarchy, which is rooted in the idea that women are somehow inferior. Some men’s groups objectify women by collecting revealing pictures of them as a membership rite. Accepting the norm of accessing women in this objectified, sexualized way, is a way men might justify sexual violence later, Dutt suggested.
Challenging gender norms, she said, begins with exposing and discussing them.
In India, Breakthrough’s “Share Your Story” initiative has mothers talk to sons about how harmful attitudes toward women affect men’s lives. The program has gained major traction, she said, and millions are sharing their stories.
Stories are powerful because they’re malleable, she said, noting that if you change the story and change the behavior, you change the system.
“It’s an unusual way for people to be talking about this issue,” she said, “because most of the time, we just keep talking to men and saying, ‘This is bad.’ When guys see the ways in which the same actions that they are perpetrating against other women are being played out vis-à-vis their mothers, it suddenly shifts their understanding of their behavior.”
Breakthrough complements television, radio, and print campaigns with training, public forums, social media discussions, and art—street theater and music videos. Dutt says her biggest challenge is changing the idea that violence against women is happening to someone else, somewhere else.
“We’re asking you to stand up for gender equality and for norms that respect human rights right here in your own home, as well as what might be happening in another part of the world,” she said. “For us, it’s really important for people to understand that this is everyone’s issue, it’s a men’s issue, a women’s issue, all genders are impacted.”
Mount Holyoke powerfully shaped Dutt’s path. During her time on campus, she came to understand that she had been born a feminist. She gained the language, constructs, and community to believe in herself.
“At Mount Holyoke, we really were taught that we could do anything, be anything that we wanted to in the world,” she said. “I don’t think I would have been able to go on and create the institutions that I have and take the kinds of risks that I have without that kind of groundwork that Mount Holyoke gave me.”
In the same spirit, Phoebe Schreiner, Breakthrough’s US country director, said Dutt believes everyone can develop the tools, and attitudes, to spark change.
“From a humble bicycle repairman in a remote Indian village, to a young college student in the US, to a corporate CEO overseeing operations around the globe, Mallika understands that anyone and everyone has the possibility to change our world and the realities for us all,” Schreiner said of Dutt.
For example, Schreiner said, during a presentation to the United Nations about ending violence against women and girls, Dutt spoke not of government obligations, nor of statistics nor of policy. She told the story of Will McElhaney, a US college student who challenged rape culture in his fraternity house and on his campus.
Dutt believes her efforts, and Breakthrough’s, are paying off. She said the Skoll Award validates the efforts and recognizes the success.
“I definitely see the effects of our work at a generational level,” Dutt said. “I see younger people standing up. I feel that, yes, things are changing. And, certainly, women are not taking the abuse and the violence silently anymore.”
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