{"id":4080,"date":"2021-01-13T12:53:57","date_gmt":"2021-01-13T17:53:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicaleconomy\/?post_type=cu_people&p=4080"},"modified":"2025-04-29T11:13:48","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T15:13:48","slug":"navsharan-singh","status":"publish","type":"cu_people","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicaleconomy\/people\/navsharan-singh\/","title":{"rendered":"Navsharan Singh"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\n \n \n \n <\/h1>\n\n \n <\/header>\n\n\n\n

Senior Program Officer,
\nWomen\u2019s Rights and Citizenship Program, International Development Research Centre<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Master of Arts, Political Economy (\u201993)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PhD, Political Science (\u201998)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you ask Dr. Navsharan Singh how she came to be a promi\u00adnent advocate for women\u2019s rights throughout South Asia, she recalls an incident from her childhood in the northern Indian province of Punjab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had a friend on my street who was married when she was 16. Six months into her marriage, she was burned alive for not having a large enough dowry. That trauma had a profound impact on me,\u201d recalls Dr. Singh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As she matured, Dr. Singh says she wanted to understand what in the region\u2019s history and politics allowed millions of women to fall victim to violence. Rapes, abductions and murders were common\u00adplace during the first partition of the subcontinent in 1947, the second partition in 1971, and in India\u2019s Kashmir and the Northeast. Violence was also commonplace in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wanted to know,\u201d recalls Dr. Singh, who went on to join women\u2019s rights groups at a local university, \u201cwhat explained the impunity the perpetrators enjoy \u2013 be it the men in uniform or ordinary men in homes and in communities?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But she says it was her Commonwealth Scholarship, which brought her to Carleton University, that exposed her to the systematic study of the feminist question and ideas that enabled her to challenge the treatment of women in South Asia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI came from a small town and a small university, and I was inter\u00adested in how macro policies affected the people on the ground,\u201d recalls Dr. Singh, who remembers the supportive community of graduate students and professors at Carleton. \u201cWhile I was at Carleton, gender became the lens for a lot of my work. I\u2019ve focused on questions of women\u2019s rights and rape and violence in conflict zones ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI came from a small town and a small university, and I was inter\u00adested in how macro policies affected the people on the ground,\u201d recalls Dr. Singh, who remembers the supportive community of graduate students and professors at Carleton. \u201cWhile I was at Carleton, gender became the lens for a lot of my work. I\u2019ve focused on questions of women\u2019s rights and rape and violence in conflict zones ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Initially, Dr. Singh considered studying economics, but she switched into the Institute of Political Economy due to its emphasis on field research because \u201cthat was where my heart was. I was set on questions that I saw as life and death for women.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Dr. Singh spends much of her time on research and advocacy for understanding and overcoming women\u2019s marginalization in economy, polity and society.  She travels through India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and neighbouring countries documenting and speak\u00ading out about the challenges faced by women in South Asia, as a senior program specialist for the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn the work that IDRC supports, we keep asking why we are so immune to what happens to women in South Asia,\u201d says Dr. Singh. \u201cThere are gaps in the law in medical practice, in state willingness to apply laws and in social sanctions. Large-scale violence that women endured in the region at the time of conflicts remains a festering wound in the region\u2019s body politic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Singh\u2019s efforts have contributed to bringing positive effects to the lives of women and marginalized people in the region: she works with several women\u2019s research and advocacy NGOs that have successfully created standard operating procedures for police depart\u00adments dealing with sexual violence in Mumbai; another is campaigning against the 35-day limitation period for reporting a rape in Nepal; and another has created medical protocols for gather\u00ading evidence when a rape victim is brought to a hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMany questions remain and there\u2019s a need to lobby for better policies and changed attitudes. My hands are quite full,\u201d she acknow\u00adledges. \u201cBut I am hopeful because women in this country are so resilient\u2014even when all odds are stacked against them. They\u2019re fighting for justice and dignity and they have very strong survival instincts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Singh is part of Carleton’s prestigious 75 for the 75th campaign, honouring 75 of the Faculty of Public Affairs’ most distinguished alumni for Carleton University’s 75th Anniversary in 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2672,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"cu_people_first_name":"Navsharan","cu_people_last_name":"Singh","cu_people_initials":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_people_type":[89],"cu_people_expertise":[],"class_list":["post-4080","cu_people","type-cu_people","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_people_type-alumni"],"acf":{"cu_people_job_title":"Alumni","cu_people_degree":"","cu_building":false,"cu_people_office_num":"","cu_people_pronoun":"none","cu_people_designation":"","cu_people_email":"","cu_people_phone":"","cu_people_phone_ext":"","cu_people_linkedin":"","cu_people_bluesky":"","cu_people_twitter":"","cu_people_instagram":"","cu_people_facebook":"","cu_people_website":"","cu_people_orcid":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicaleconomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people\/4080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicaleconomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicaleconomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_people"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicaleconomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicaleconomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people\/4080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicaleconomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicaleconomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_people_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicaleconomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people_type?post=4080"},{"taxonomy":"cu_people_expertise","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicaleconomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people_expertise?post=4080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}