Asmita Ghosh
Communications and Digital Advocacy Specialist
focussing on issues around gender and health.
About Me
I am a Communications Specialist based out of Bangalore, passionate about using digital storytelling tools to spark social change. My interests lie in gender justice, sexual and reproductive health and rights, media representation of gender, and achieving health for all.
I started my career at the digital feminist platform Feminism in India, where as the first employee, I helped build the platform into one of India's largest feminist media platforms. As Campaign Lead, I directed over twenty digital advocacy campaigns on various issues under the feminist umbrella, of which six have won awards like the Social Empowerment For Empowerment Awards and the Laadli Awards for Social Change. I have also freelanced on digital campaigns for organisations such as World YWCA, IYAFP, UNAIDS, Oxfam India and Point of View.
I am also a part of various global youth networks, as a Women Deliver Young Leader, an ASAP Youth Champion and a former Co-Chair of the Thought Leadership Working Group of the Youth Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Rights.
Currently, I am the Communications and Engagement Manager at Transform Health, a global coalition advocating for the equitable digital transformation of health systems. In this role, I have been involved in community and movement building, directing global events, managing internal and external organisational communications, and enabling advocacy among partner organisations through accessible resource creation.
Projects
Over the course of three and a half years as the Campaign Lead at Feminism in India, I conceptualised, directed and executed over twenty digital advocacy campaigns on a variety of issues under the feminist umbrella, online violence against women, abortion rights, navigating consent & rejection, etc. These campaigns have gained wide traction on the internet, some having a reach of over two million. I have worked with clients that are both non-profits as well as corporate brands, including Oxfam India, World YWCA, High Commission of Canada, Tinder and PUMA. Four of my campaigns won the Social Media 4 Empowerment Awards and Laadli Media & Advertisements Awards for Gender Sensitivity. I have also freelanced with several organisations on campaigns, and currently work at Transform Health. Below, I am sharing some of the projects that I believe represents the best of my work.
The #GBVinMedia Toolkit with FII
While at FII, I wrote and published a toolkit for journalists to report gender-based violence sensitively, and then designed a host of advocacy activities to disseminate its findings, including workshops with media students, a crowdsourced art campaign to curate ethical imagery, as well as a larger digital advocacy campaign highlighting ethical journalism standards.
Digital Health Week with Transform Health
As the Communication and Engagement Manager at Transform Health, I've worked closely with my team to execute our flagship moment for three years – the annual Digital Health Week: a global week of action to champion digital health for universal health coverage.
This included conceptualising a community-owned global moment in which anyone could take part, handling event organisation and logistics, communication strategies and execution, resource creation and writing, and impact monitoring.
The event has been extremely successful, with 100+ organisations taking part each year, much beyond Transform Health's coalition network. It has become a key moment in the global calendar for organisations working in the digital health sector to plan their annual events and activities around.
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#MyDataOurHealth with Transform Health
Transform Health started a grassroots-led campaign called #MyDataOurHealth to socialise the topic of health data governance, and move the issue from a technical issue to a personal one. The campaign complemented Transform Health's high-level advocacy to establish a global health data governance framework, by building public and political support for this agenda. We piloted the campaign with community-based organisations in East & West Africa to take this issue forward in their networks and communities.
As Communications & Engagement Manager, I led the design, branding and communications of this campaign. This included creating key messages, posters, videos and an interactive AR Instagram/TikTok filter to drive engagement. We also made easy-to-replicate communication assets that CBOs could adapt to their contexts and communities, using simple tools like Google Slides – enabling campaign messages to be contextualised by the drivers of the campaign while staying on brand.
#EqualOnline Campaign with POV Mumbai
#EqualOnline was a digital advocacy campaign that I worked on for Point of View Mumbai, which sought to explore the digital lives, bodies and freedoms of women, trans and non-binary people. It aimed to increase awareness about how people occupying marginalised identities had experiences with the internet that were often left out of mainstream discourse, which had significant impacts on their access, expression, freedom, safety and mental health.
It did this through posters, videos, stories and engagement on social media, including a Twitter Spaces conversation that brought together eight powerful women, trans and non-binary people who spoke candidly about their experiences online, and the challenges they faced, including Swara Bhasker, a famous Bollywood actress known for her fearless voice online and the violence she endures because of it.
#EmpowermentNotAge Campaign with Oxfam India
I worked alongside Oxfam India's Gender Justice Team on the #EmpowermentNotAge Campaign that interrogated the need to change the minimum legal age of marriage for girls from 18 to 21 – commonly viewed as a progressive move. Using posters, social media engagement, articles and partnerships with media platforms, we highlighted credible research to illustrate why this was counterproductive to the empowerment of women. We also campaigned Members of Parliament through email campaigns and outreach to contest the issue at the governmental level. As of now, the policy has been stalled with no further updates.
#AbortionMeraHaq Campaign with FII
FII collaborated with Asia Safe Abortion Partnership to host the #AbortionMeraHaq campaign on safe abortion. This campaign featured 40 posters, 17 articles, 2 videos, and continuous social media engagement, all in the course of one month. As Campaign Lead, I innovated the strategy and created and disseminated all the content for this successful campaign.
#MyGynaecStory Campaign
The Health Over Stigma campaign by Haiyya looked at the stigma faced by unmarried women at the gynaecologist. They collaborated with FII for the online leg of the campaign, called #MyGynaecStory. Over the course of six months, we shared over 260 such stories of women who reached out on social media of their stories and experiences.
Talks
This section contains a curated selection of the talks and workshops I have given at various events, seminars and conferences over the years, as well as workshops I have attended as a participant.
 CAC Conclave 2019: Expanding the Discourse on Comprehensive Abortion Care, New DelhiPanellist at talk on 'Amplifying Allies: Leveraging the Potential of Media' by IPAS Development Foundation. |  Women Deliver Conference 2019, VancouverDigital poster presentation on '#GBVinMedia: Recommendations on the Ethical Reportage of Gender-Based Violence |  Gender Faultlines and New Feminisms 2019, CalicutKeynote speaker with talk titled 'Online Feminisms: How Women Are Taking Back The Tech' at Zamorin's Guruvayurappan College. |
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 Missing!: Women In Media (2019), New DelhiPanellist at Lady Shri Ram on representation of women in media, with co-panellists including Rituparna Chatterjee and Nishita Jha. |  Digital Safety Workshop For Schoolgirls in West Bengal, 2021Conducted workshop for Transform Schools, for 100 girls from government schools in West Bengal in Class 9 & 10 on online safety and violence. |  Digital Citizen Summit, 2018, New DelhiModerator of panel discussion on 'How Do Women With Disabilities Experience The Internet' featuring noted disability rights activists at DEF Summit by Digital Empowerment Foundation |
 Feminism 101 Workshop at NIT CalicutHeld workshop for 50+ students from an engineering background on fundamentals of patriarchy, feminism and power relations. |  Feminist Approach to Gender-Based ViolenceHeld workshop for adults in Asar Project's mentorship program on feminist approaches to gender-based violence. |  Woman Up! Summit 2018, JaipurKeynote speaker with talk titled 'Internet Feminist Subcultures'. See full recording of the talk here. |
 Workshop on Gender-Sensitive Journalism, 2019, New DelhiCo-facilitated an open workshop for media students and professionals on how to critically understand gender-based violence in films and news, organised by Feminism In India and Breakthrough India |  Workshop on Sexual Pleasure in SRHR Advocacy, 2018, New DelhiAttended a two-day workshop by Love Matters India on Sexual Pleasure: The Forgotten Link in Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, on centring pleasure in SRHR advocacy. |  Youth Advocacy Institute, 2018, Sri LankaAttended the Asia Safe Abortion Partnership's YAI 2018 on abortion rights advocacy in South Asia, as well as the Youth Advocacy Refresher Institute held in Mumbai in 2019. Returned as a trainer on digital advocacy campaigning for the next cohort at the YAI 2020 in New Delhi. |
Articles
A selection of articles that I've written and published at Feminism in India.
Feminism in India, Jan 11 2021
Feminism in India, Dec 4 2019
Feminism in India, Feb 8 2019
Feminism in India, Jan 30 2020
Feminism in India, Nov 23 2019
Feminism in India, Jan 23 2017
Feminism in India, Dec 29, 2016
Feminism in India, Dec 22, 2016
Feminism in India, Nov 23, 2016
Feminism in India, Nov 29, 2016
In The Media
This is a selection of media that I have been featured in. Click on the boxes to be redirected to the full article/video/podcast.
 India Today TV Interview: On 'Toolkits' During Greta Thunberg Controversy |  In Search of Justice podcast: Justice in News Media |  ETV Bangla Interview on #GBVinMedia |
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 All Things Policy Podcast: How Not To Secure Women's Liberty |  Mid-Day feature of #GBVinMedia project |  Feminism in India podcast: 'I'm sexting with my partner, but is the cyber world safe?' |
 Newslaundry on #GBVinMedia |  Cyber Democracy Podcast: Tindering With Bumble & Hinge |  The Hindu on #GBVinMedia |
Life Outside Of Work
When I'm not working or losing brain cells to the addictive void of social media (which I tell myself I have to stay abreast of for work reasons...), I occasionally moonlight as a singer. Below you can find some clips of my (100% amateur) vocal shenanigans. Fun fact: I've gone viral for musical parodies twice!
Feminism in India, Jan 11 2021
Feminism in India, Dec 4 2019
Feminism in India, Feb 8 2019
Feminism in India, Dec 22, 2016
