Alkazi Collection of Photography

Homai with other press photographers, at a photo session with Mrs. Gandhi

Homai Vyarawalla / Alkazi Collection of Photography

Lord Mountbatten taking the salute at the Guard of Honour, Rashtrapati Bhawan, when leaving office as Governor-General in June, 1948

Homai Vyarawala Photo Collection via AFP - Getty Images

Indian photographer Homai Vyarawalla in her early years.

Homai Vyarawalla began taking pictures in the 1930s, and is considered India's first woman photojournalist. She documented a significant period in India's history as it transitioned away from British rule. Through her camera, she captured Gandhi's life and funeral, the Dalai Lama's arrival in India after his escape from Tibet in 1956, and the departure of the last British Viceroy Lord Mountbatten.

Vyarawalla died on Jan. 15 at the age of 98, after complications from a fall. Her interest in photography began when she was 13-years-old, when she used her camera to take pictures of life in Bombay. Her biographer, Sabeena Gadihoke, described her upbringing in the Hindu:

Belonging as she did to a middle class Parsi family, Homai had to struggle for most of her life. She always said that had she not become a photographer, she would have joined any other profession that was available to her. Not working was never an option for her. Her father, an actor in a travelling Urdu-Parsi Theatre troupe had to borrow money to return to India when his company declared bankruptcy in Rangoon. He died soon after and Homai's mother augmented the family income by weaving the parsi kusti (sacred thread). Homai was the only girl in her class in the Gujarati school where she studied.

Her favorite subject was India's first Prime Minister Jawaharal Nehru. According to the New York Times:

Ms. Vyarawalla called Nehru her “all-time favorite subject” and “extremely photogenic,” and when photographing him she would wait for an informal image to materialize — lighting a cigarette or releasing a pigeon. She was present at his funeral.

“When Nehru died,” she told the newspaper The Indian Express, “I felt like a child losing its favorite toy, and I cried, hiding my face from other photographers.”

Homai Vyarawalla / Alkazi Collection of Photography

Jawaharlal Nehru lighting up a cigarette for Mrs. Simon, the wife of the Deputy High Commissioner of Britain.

Homai Vyarawalla / Alkazi Collection of Photography

Aerial View of the Republic Day Parade in Delhi taken from the top of India Gate in 1951

Often surrounded by men at events, she stood out from the pack of press photographers. According to NPR:

Draped in a sari and lugging heavy photographic equipment, she photographed in an era when the media had unprecedented access and an ongoing camaraderie. "All of us helped each other," she said of her male counterparts. "If someone was changing film, he would request another photographer to take an extra picture for him. We even traded negatives so that no one missed out on a good picture."

Vyarawalla recognized that she was a minority in a male-dominated profession and as a result adapted her behavior with her subjects. According to India Today:

"Much, much later, after I had torn too many sarees with other photographers stepping on them that I began to wear salwar kameezes," she explains. The decision to dress formally was as deliberate as the decision to stay aloof from the subjects she was photographing. "I always did my work and moved out. In fact, many times I did not even greet my subjects. I knew I was working in a man's world in an orthodox society. So I developed this 'stern' persona so nobody got any wrong signals."

Vyarawalla put away her cameras and stopped taking pictures in 1970, when she became disappointed in the shifting attitude of other photographers. According to India Today:

"The atmosphere had changed considerably," she explains. "Photographers were getting a bad name. My colleagues had all been gentlemen but the new crop did not know how to behave in high society. I did not want to be associated with such riffraff.

Homai Vyarawalla / Alkazi Collection of Photography

Gandhi with Khan Abdul Ghafar Khan and Sushila Nayar, his personal physician, arriving for the meeting of the Congress Committee, where the partition of the country was decided, 1947

Homai Vyarawalla / Alkazi Collection of Photography

Pandit Nehru releasing a dove, sign of peace at a public function at the National Stadium in New Delhi, mid 1950s

Leonhard Foeger / Reuters

Nobel Peace Prize winners from left, Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee, human rights activist Tawakul Karman from Yemen and Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf , raise their arms as they watch a torchlight procession from the balcony of the Grand Hotel in Oslo, Norway, Dec. 10.

From msnbc.com news services:

Presenting the prize in Oslo to three women who include a Yemeni activist whose Arab spring protests helped undermine her country's veteran leader, Thorbjoern Jagland, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said: "No dictator can in the long run find shelter from this wind of history."

"It was this wind which led people to crawl up onto the Berlin Wall and tear it down. It is the wind that is now blowing in the Arab world," he said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. ambassador to China on Saturday urged Beijing to improve its human rights record, pointing to imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo as an example where China falls short.

Read the full story here.

Odd Andersen / AFP - Getty Images

The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize laureates, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf , right, Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee, left, and Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman, center, pose on Dec. 10, with their medals and certificates during the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony at the City Hall in Oslo, Norway.

Paula Bronstein / Getty Images

Bibi Saiba, 25, suffers through hours of prolonged labor pains with her mother Bibi Jan, left, at her side and her aunt at the Badakhshan Provincial hospital June 2, 2011, in Faizabad, Badakshan, Afghanistan. Crises put pregnant women at greater risk due to sudden loss of medical support, trauma, malnutrition, disease and exposure to violence. According to UNICEF, 52 babies out of every 1,000 die within two weeks of birth and 134 die before their first birthday. While 1 in 8 women in Afghanistan die during pregnancy or childbirth making it the worst place in the world to be a mother. Many mothers are having children too young along with diet, and extreme poverty they face huge challenges having a healthy pregnancy. Afghan women also deal with vitamin D deficiency from staying indoors and being covered up. In the rural parts of the country, in remote areas Afghan women deliver with no skilled help because women cannot leave home without a male and there aren't enough midwives to help every mother in need given Afghanistan's poor infrastructure.

Paula Bronstein / Getty Images

Muhammed Walai holds his granddaughter who died at birth as Haibalan, the grandmother, watches at the Badakhshan Provincial hospital on June 1, in Faizabad, Badakshan, Afghanistan.

 I was surprised to see that the United States ranked only 31st on the annual Save the Children Mothers' Index. Read more here.

The women in these two pictures are a world apart, but they’ll be in the same country in a month’s time. It’s interesting how their roles differ in the two societies. One is saying goodbye to her kids and marching off to war. The other has almost no gender equality within her country.

While I agree with the thoughts, decisions and social norms that enabled 1st Lt. Belland to choose a military career, part of me is torn apart by the look on Krystal’s face and the clinging hugs of her children. No one ever said equality would be easy.

J. Miles Cary / Knoxville News Sentinel via AP

First Lt. Krystal Belland hugs her children, Caleb, 7, and Emily, 4, on May 13, 2011 as she prepares to leave the Army Reserve Center in Knoxville, Tenn. More than 200 soldiers from the 489th Civil Affairs Battalion will spend the next month training at Fort Dix, N.J. before traveling to Afghanistan in June.

Paula Bronstein / Getty Images

Afghan women pray during Friday Prayers at the Madinatul-Elm mosque on May 13, 2011 in Kabul, Afghanistan. Within many mosques women have separate areas from the men for prayer. However, in many parts of Taliban controlled Afghanistan, women are only allowed to pray at home.

AP reported on January 14, 2011:

WASHINGTON — A military advisory commission is recommending that the Pentagon do away with a policy that bans women from serving in combat units, breathing new life into a long-simmering debate.

Though thousands of women have been involved in the fights in Iraq and Afghanistan, they have done so while serving in combat support roles because defense policy prohibits women from being assigned to any unit smaller than a brigade whose primary mission is direct combat on the ground. On Friday, a special panel was meeting to polish the final draft of a report that recommends the policy be eliminated "to create a level playing field for all qualified service members."

The report by a panel of retired and current military officers says that keeping women out of combat units prohibits them from serving in roughly 10 percent of Marine Corps and Army occupational specialties and thus is a barrier to promotions and advancement.

Click here to read the full story.

It's pretty interesting that International Women's Day and events like the Carnival celebration pictured in the previous post are happening simultaneously. See more images from International Women's Day here, and video from Andrea Mitchell and Nightly News below.

Mariana Bazo / Reuters

Women in wheelchairs attend a demonstration calling for equal rights in issues such as employment and access to public transportation, on International Women's Day in Lima, March 8.