ARZ · Swift Wash · Qualitative research
Beautiful Women
Research for ten first-person narratives about survival, work and dignity.
The core of the project
“We were impressed with how she quickly managed to build a relationship with the girls and gain their trust.”
Juliana Lohar, General Manager, Swift Wash
Context
Stories that required care before they could become public.
Beautiful Women tells the stories of women working at Swift Wash, a laundry established by ARZ in Goa as part of an economic rehabilitation programme for survivors of commercial sexual exploitation.
The publication needed to communicate difficult personal histories without reducing the women to the violence they had experienced. The research depended on time, trust and a form of interviewing in which participants could decide how their experiences were shared.
Interview approach
Listening with care
Relationship first. Establish comfort and trust before asking participants to revisit deeply personal experiences.
Listen beyond a questionnaire. Follow memory, hesitation, detail and emphasis so that the interview remains responsive to the person speaking.
Elicit material with care. Help participants articulate experiences that could form the basis of full first-person narratives.
Protect complexity. Hold together trauma, humour, work, family, aspiration and agency without turning a life into a single issue.
The research made room for the women to speak about the whole of a life, not only the part already defined by institutions.
Collaborator
Salil Chaturvedi · Writer