Our Story

our story

Point of View was founded as a non-profit in Mumbai in 1996.

Right from the beginning, we have had a wide view of gender, seeing gender as an arc or a spectrum, and seeing sexuality as fundamentally interlinked with gender. We have seen gender and sexual expression as core to free expression, and understood this terrain as a political one. Since our inception, we have used words, images, art, culture, and media to change headspace around gender.

1996

It was the 50th year of India’s independence. We started out with a photography exhibition titled ‘In Black and White: What Has Independence Meant for Women?’ Consisting of 125 images by 42 photographers, the exhibition travelled to 22 cities in India. For these initial years, we were fighting for headspace: placing the broad concept of gender in the public domain.

2001

We started pushing more boundaries around gender: surfacing the realities of women and trans persons in sex work in their own voices. In 2002, we produced the documentary In The Flesh, which centred the lives of three sex workers; the accompanying book Unzipped, took a deeper dive into their lives.

2006

We started speaking in many tongues – about gender and HIV, mental health, body image, domestic violence. We started changing the media lens by enabling women to tell their own stories – they way they wanted. In 2008, we collaborated with SANGRAM and VAMP to produce a play titled ‘My Mother, The Gharwali, Her Maalak, His Wife.’

2011

We were early responders to the expansion of our lives into digital spaces, and have contributed to setting the agenda for what these spaces can be – free, safe and welcoming to all people. We entered the disability space to celebrate and assert women with disabilities as sexual beings – just like anyone else. We hosted our first digital storytelling workshop in 2013.

2016

We built India’s only dedicated program at the intersection of gender, sexuality, and technology. We built knowledge, capacities, skills and content at this intersection on five interconnected issues – norms, spaces, violence, bodies, sexual expression – among women’s rights, sexual rights, and digital rights communities of activism and practice.

2021

We are recognised as a pioneer, leader, and field-builder on looking at digital technologies through a feminist sex-positive lens. We are also recognised for our work on disability through the lens of gender, sexuality, and violence.

Read about our current programmes

The Pyaar Plus booklets are incredible and they have made me so happy since the first one. Not just because I wish I had something like this when growing up, but also because I have shared them with the young people in my life with confidence about and comfort in how affirming they are.

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Support us in empowering women, girls, and gender and sexual minorities to shape and inhabit digital spaces.

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