Artist and Lawyer Challenges Traditional Gender Norms and Fights for Equality

Using her power as a legal executive and artist to initiate conversations on intersectional justice in India, Kruthika N.S. is forging a path toward equity and equality. Despite constitutional guarantees and legal provisions put in place to help ensure gender equality, patriarchal norms continue to be entrenched in Indian society. Significant gender disparities have existed in the country’s economic, educational, and civic domains for generations, enabling a culture of silence and acceptance. Kruthika believes her work can help break that silence.

As a lawyer, Kruthika’s work has focused on the barriers women, specifically sportswomen face in the forms of sexism and gender biases. Sportswomen in India often lack the support for basic necessities like safe sporting facilities and rarely work in spaces where they are apprised of their rights in case of sexual harassment. Kruthika is using her voice to fight for change, while also expressing her sense of justice as an artivist and multimedia creator. Her art and advocacy campaigns are challenging India’s entrenched gender norms to bring about sustainable change.

Kruthika hopes her GSMP experience will help her gain clarity on starting her own social enterprise through which she aims to create a gender-inclusive space in sport and the arts. For GSMP: Empowering Women through Sports 2021, Kruthika will be mentored by Liz Gray, Global Co-Head of Brand Consulting and Aubree Curtis, Global Co-Head of Brand Consulting and Social Impact at Creative Artists Agency, and their team in New York, New York.