LAUSR

Women have been integral to Kashmir’s struggle for justice since the 1987 uprising. Kashmiri women have joined men in protesting militarization, human rights abuse and gender-based violence by state forces. The July 2016 Kashmiri rebellion, however, represented a shift from the past: it produced new politicized constituencies amongst female school and college students. A news report from Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar, described an April 2017 collective protest by students of the Government Women’s College, who were joined by girls of the Kothi Bagh Higher Secondary School: or over three hours, the protesting students clashed with police, attacked police vehicles, threw stones and chased away police patrols despite tear-gas shelling by security forces (Hussain 2017). Notably, 2016 generated a distinctly gendered protest movement exemplified by women-led, women-only protests across Kashmir. Indeed,