All aboard the ladies special
More than 80% of women in Delhi say they are sexually harassed on public transport. The paternal administration’s only response is to further sexualise public spaces by offering ladies special buses with curtains to protect women from the male gaze
'Criminalising the client will cause prostitution to drop by 80%': Catharine MacKinnon
Leading American feminist Catharine MacKinnon makes a strong case for criminalising the client and not the sex worker
New vistas for working women in India's IT industry
By 2010 60% of graduates across Asia, America and Europe will be women. At its third annual IT Women Leadership Summit held recently in Bangalore, India's premier trade body NASSCOM declared that workplace diversity and gender inclusion is a business imperative today
Why is the women's movement silent on abortion?
The Union Ministry of Health is examining the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act with a view to raising the time limit for abortion from 20 weeks to 24 weeks. What would the moral and ethical implications of this move be? And why has the women’s movement in India been strangely silent on these important developments?
Maharashtra's age-of-marriage competition
58% of girls in Maharashtra first conceive at 15-19 years. Following the success of an IHMP initiative which saw a three-fold increase in the use of contraceptives, delay in the median age of conception by a year, and a reduction in post-natal complications and reproductive tract infections, the Maharashtra government will reward villages that succeed in raising the age of marriage for girls
The song, dance and sorrows of sex workers' lives
VAMP, a sex workers' collective, aims to ensure that marginalised communities like women in prostitution and transgenders can assert, articulate and access their rights. They couldn't have come up with a better way of articulating their concerns than My Mother, The Gharwali, Her Maalak, His Wife, a play devised and performed by the sex workers themselves
Murdered for Love
'Honour' killings of young people who marry outside their caste are making front-page news every day. Even as the administration and local politicians look the other way, some courageous women have raised their voices and filed cases against the perpetrators of these barbaric acts
Trafficking women for domestic work
Many 'employment agencies' that are springing up in cities to place migrant women for domestic work are little more than traffickers. The condition in which these women work violates several laws including the Bonded Labour Act and in many cases the Child Labour and Juvenile Justice Act. Activists are calling for a specific law to regulate the domestic work sector
Mistress of indigenous flavours
Triveni Devangan, daughter of a farmer in Chhattisgarh, set up an ice-cream factory a little over two years ago with a loan of Rs 22 lakh. Today, her factory has an annual turnover of over Rs 20 lakh. Her products sell in six districts of Chhattisgarh, with her signature flavours being most in demand
The land is ours!
Around half of all agricultural land in India is now farmed by women, as more and more men migrate to earn money. Yet the slow pace of land and property rights reform has failed to keep up. Although women may have more rights on paper than they did 20 years ago, there has been little progress on the ground