It was once normal for girls to marry at the age of 14-15, and deliver a child before they turned 17, said a judge of the Gujarat High Court while deciding on a plea for permission to terminate her pregnancy submitted by a minor rape survivor. On June 7, while indicating that he might not allow the petition if both the girl and foetus were healthy, Justice Samir Dave of the high court also referred to the Manusmriti during the hearing and recommended that the petitioner read it, and ask her mother/grandparents about their time. It is pertinent to note that the petitioner here is a rape survivor, who is 16 years and 11 months old and carrying a seven-month-old foetus.

The said plea had been moved by the petitioner’s father to seek permission from the High Court for aborting the pregnancy of the petitioner as it had crossed the 24-week threshold up to which abortion can be performed without a court’s leave.

On Wednesday morning, the lawyer representing the petitioner had sought an early hearing, saying the family was concerned because of the girl’s tender age. Responding to this, Justice Dave said there was anxiety because “we are living in the 21st century”.

“Because we are living in the 21st century, ask your mother or great-grandmother, 14-15 was the maximum age (for getting married). The child used to take birth before the age of 17. Girls get matured before boys. 4-5 months here and there doesn’t make a difference. You will not read it, but do read Manusmruti once for this” he added.

In response to this, counsel for the Minor’s father/Petitioner, said that under the Muslim Law, the age is 13 years, as reported by LiveLaw. The relevance behind this whole discussion, and recommending Manusmriti to a rape survivor, was not clear.

Later, as the expected date of delivery is August 16, the judge then consulted expert doctors in his chamber and informed the lawyer that “The court can consider (allowing abortion) if any serious ailments are found in the foetus or the girl. But if both are normal, it will be very difficult for the court to pass such an order,” as reported by the New India Express.

In the end, considering the facts and circumstances of the case, the court directed the Medical Superintendent of Rajkot Civil Hospital to get the girl examined by a panel of doctors to find out if the medical termination of pregnancy was advisable at this point. The doctors have also been direction to carry out an ossification test on the girl and a psychiatrist should ascertain her mental condition, Justice Dave said, asking the hospital to submit reports by June 15, the next date of hearing.

During the hearing, the judge also advised the girl’s lawyer to start looking for options in case the medical opinion went against the termination of the pregnancy. “I will not give permission if both are found healthy. The weight of the foetus is also good… What will you do if the girl gives birth and the child lives? Who will take care of that child? I will also inquire if there are government schemes for such children. You should also check if someone can adopt that child,” said the judge, as reported by the New Indian Express.

The order can be read here.

Manusmriti in court- anti-thesis to women empowerment 

 “As per Hindu Dharma, all women are created by God as prostitutes. They are prostitutes as per Hindu Dharma…Manu Dharma. The status of all women is less than that of a man.”

According to some scholars, Manusmriti was established by the 5th Century C.E, but regardless of the time of its first appearance, Manusmriti has remained colossally influential in determining the oppressive and patriarchal structure and the function of Indian society. Manusmriti, a book often revered by the right-winger Sanghis, is a book that has been single-handedly responsible for the derogatory position accorded to women and the people from the non-dominant caste since the post-Vedic period. It is through this book that a Brahminical patriarchal structure has been maintained in our country, establishing Brahmins as the highest authority deserving all the societal privileges.

It is this Manusmriti that says, “It is the very nature of women to corrupt men here on earth; for that reason, and circumspect men do not get careless and wanton among wanton women.” This book defines a woman’s social status, both in her current birth and beyond, as being dependent on the exact and proficient performance of home activities and duties towards her husband. While Manu was not the first to think of women as sexual tempters, corrupters, or portals to hell, it was through his book that such disgusting and derogatory anti-women were promoted and established. The castigation and condemnation of women has been underlined by depicting the woman as a dependent and loathsome creature in need of constant protection and supervision – initially by the father or brother, and later by the husband and son. Manusmriti has overtly advocated child marriage and dowry in addition to the disparaging image of women and the demonization of persons, particularly women, from non-dominant castes.

Aside from the dependent status bestowed to women, this is a text that advocates the most severe punishments for any violation of the caste order, and it is a text that is reflected in practice when women and men are killed for marrying across caste lines, entering institutes of higher education, or contesting elections.

Are we going forward or backward?

Dr. Ambedkar had burnt the Manusmriti in December 1927 at the Mahad Satyagraha in the presence of thousands of women and men, when he was only 36 years old. And yet, a judge of the High Court had, in a court of law, promoted the reading of Manusmriti to educate a girl child on how she should be aware of the duties of child bearing that her mother and grandmother had played at their own times. The Manusmriti says that women should concentrate on the tasks they are good at, i.e., bearing and rearing the progeny, and Justice Samir Dave had basically recommended a rape survivor, approaching the court for abortion, to learn from it.

Only a few days ago, the Supreme Court had intervened in an order of the Allahabad High Court seeking confirmation of the ‘Manglik’ status of a woman who had accused her partner of making a false promise of marriage. On June 3, 2023, the Supreme Court of India put a stay on Allahabad High Court’s order to confirm the ‘Manglik’ status of a rape survivor. On May 23, 2023, a single-judge bench of the Allahabad HC was hearing a bail petition filed by the accused. The accused said he backed out of the promise after learning that the girl was not ‘Manglik’. The High Court had then asked the astrology department of Lucknow University to look into the horoscope of the woman to verify the claim of the man she accused of having a relationship on the false promise of marriage.

In view of these two recent judgment, it seems like the judiciary is not far or isolated from the structure or patriarchy existing in our society. There is a need for the judiciary to recognising society’s deep-rooted patriarchy, and their contribution in it, and initiate a course correction in the way the judiciary itself views gender rights. It is essential that this course correction is not only limited to the Supreme Court, but also reaches the high courts and the district courts, that the common person approaches to seek justice. Many a times, the judges of the courts of India, have reiterated the misogyny, besides carelessly making statements that are anti-women to its core. Women are battling society’s ingrained prejudices, and even accessing courts for seeking justice in cases of crimes committed against their bodies is a fight big enough, without having the judges supporting gender stereotyping and promoting books like Manusmriti.

Related:

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UP: Four rapes reported in four days

UP: SHO suspended after delay in investigation of minor Dalit girl’s rape

Two men convicted in case of gang rape: Muzaffarnagar 2013 communal violence

When Will Society Hold Men Accountable for Patriarchy

UP: Five days after attack on father of Dalit gang rape survivor, two infants and survivor set on fire at home by gang-rape suspects

21 years down, ‘Lack of Evidence’, says Gujarat Court and Acquits 27 Accused of Gang Rape, Murder During 2002 Violence

Indian Courts on Marital Rape, an analysis: fresh petition in SC

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Source: Sample Registration System 2015, Economic Survey 2018
Note: Sex ratios at birth are for 2013-15, per capita income for 2015-16.
 
The sex ratio at birth is declining in urban areas faster than rural areas, with 902 girls being born in urban areas, compared to 923 girls in rural areas, IndiaSpend reported in August 2017.
 
An adverse child sex ratio is also reflected in the distorted gender makeup of the entire population. In 2031, India will have 936 females per 1,000 males, lower than the sex ratio in 1951 of 946 females per 1,000 males, the World Bank predicts.
 
When families opt for fewer children, the pressure on women to produce sons becomes more intense. “Modernisation and rising incomes make it easier and more desirable to select the sex of your children,” said this March 2010 story in the Economist, a news magazine. “And on top of that, smaller families combine with greater wealth to reinforce the imperative to produce a son.”
 
The sex ratio at birth has declined in 17 of 21 large states in India over two years, with the sharpest drop of 53 points in Gujarat, according to the previously mentioned 2018 Niti Aayog report.
 
“There is a clear need for States to effectively implement the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994 and take appropriate measures to promote the value of the girl child,” the Niti Aayog report said.
 
(Yadavar is a principal correspondent with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

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By Aas Mohammad Kaif, TwoCircles.net

As one enters the village, a girl named Sundar is seen in charge of a general goods store, which belongs to her father Brijendra. The 17-year-old is shy but intelligent enough to understand the importance of her job and the store. This probably explains why Sundar did not talk to this reporter until she supplied the goods asked by a customer in her shop.

“The village girls are no less than the urban ones. We can also give better result to the society if someone shows trust in us,” says Sundar while commenting on the unique thing happening in her village.

The doors of about 700 houses in Lohadda village have been marked with the names of the daughters living in those houses. Doors or adjoining walls have been painted in red, yellow and blue with the slogan “mere gaanv ki yahi pahchaan, beti ko mila samman” (The respect to my daughter is the only identity of my village).

It is almost a ‘custom’ to write the name of the head of house — who is often a male — on the door or the nameplate, but by showcasing the names of hundreds of girls, the village has come up with a unique example.

The drive was initiated by the village head Satendra Pal who was elected as the village head in 2015. He told TwoCircles.net, “I am a father of two daughters. So I thought that the village should be known by the name of its daughters. Then we launched a campaign for the same.”

“We painted the wall and door of every house with the names of the daughters. The government helped us with Rs 10,000 rupees, while I contributed Rs 20,000 from my own pocket to get the work done,” added Pal, who tells that while the village has a lesser number of girls than boys, there are more girls going to the school when compared to boys.

Naaz, a post-graduate from Science, agrees to the fact regarding the higher enrolment among the girls. “There are more girls in regular studies here. About 50 girls of the village have finished their college, but boys have not crossed the halfway yet,” said Naz. “So the girls are achieving things, obviously they are getting the identity too,” she added.

Pooja, another post-graduate in English, believes that the days when boys used to take the family name forward are now a thing of the past. “I feel happy whenever I see my name with my father’s written on the door of my house. Even my brother liked it very much. There is no rule which says that only boys should do earn the respect of the family, now the girls are doing so very efficiently,” said Pooja.

The drive has sparked a new motivation within the rest of the girl students of the village. Girls are now dreaming of things which were considered as “urban” for a long time. Maybe it is this motivation, which pushes Anushka, an 11-year-old primary student, to say “I want to be a doctor” within a second of being asked what she wants to be when she grows up.

“My mother called me ‘Malkin’ (landlady) the day when my name was written on the house door,” says Dipanshi, a 13-year-old primary school student.

The village of Lohadda is filled with many such tales where the girls have decided to “take on the world” after their parents and neighbours put their trust in them. Be it 13-year-old Umra, who learns from her aunt the important of studies, or 8-year-old Ikra, who is considered to be “house monitor” by her father Afzal, the village Lohadda is blooming with a new tale.

The episode has also spread a sort of remorse or sadness in the families where there are no daughters, but on the other side, the whole village is celebrating what their daughters have been achieving. As Om Prakash, 56, tells, “It doesn’t matter anymore if it is a girl or a boy.”

Village residents show an example where there is not any discrimination in families between girl or a boy. Dharmendra Kumar, Sub-district Magistrate at Khatauli, has embraced the drive and claimed the work to be ‘outstanding’.

According to village head Satendra Pal, few nearby villages like Satedhi or Sikandarpur have also adopted the same model by engraving the names of the daughters at house doors.

Courtesy: Two Circles
 

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A woman with 12 years or more of education has her first child at the median age of 24.7, which is 3.7 years more than the median age of first pregnancy (21) for women between 25-49 years, according to the National Family Health Survey, 2015-16 (NFHS-4) report.
 
A woman with no schooling has her first child at 20.
 
Almost one-third or 33.6% of India’s population is born of adolescent pregnancies; delaying the onset of child bearing could reduce India’s projected 2050 population of 1.7 billion by more than a quarter, IndiaSpend reported on January 12, 2018.
 
If a woman studies for 12 years or more, she has an average of 2.01 children, compared to 2.2 for all women and 3.82 for women with no education, based on the mean number of children born to women aged 45-49–a period that marks the end of a woman’s fertility.
 
“Postponing first births and extending the interval between births have played a role in reducing fertility in many countries,” said the NFHS-4 report.
 
The total fertility rate for women–the number of children she will have in a lifetime–between 15-49 years is even lower at 1.71 for women with more than 12 years of education compared with 3.06 to women with no education and 2.2 for all women.
 
“Education is the best contraceptive pill,” said Poonam Muttreja, executive director, Population Foundation of India, an advocacy working on family planning.
 
There is enough global evidence showing that educating women can reduce the fertility rate of countries, Muttreja said. “Now, national evidence also points that educating women can be a good population control strategy.”
 
 
Source: National Family Health Survey, 2015-16
 

Source: National Family Health Survey, 2015-16
*Mean number of children ever born to women aged 40-49
 
Only 4% of women with 12 years or more of education have teenage pregnancies compared with 8% for all women and 20% for women with no schooling.
 
Child bearing at a very young age is associated with increased risk of complications during pregnancy and childbirth and higher rates of neonatal mortality.
 
Children born to educated mothers have higher chances of survival; under five mortality–deaths per 1,000 live births of children under five–of children whose mothers had no schooling was 67.5 while it was less than half (26.5) for children of mothers who had more than 12 years of schooling, IndiaSpend reported on January 16, 2018.
 
A woman with more than 12 years of education waits three years (35.7 months) to have another child, compared to 31.3 months for women with no schooling.
 
Birth intervals of less than 24 months can harm newborns and their mothers, causing preterm births, low birth weight and death.
 
Only 21.5% women aged 15-49 had studied for more than 12 years, compared to 29.6% of men.
 
In 2017, only one in five adolescents–14 to 18 years–had completed eight years of schooling and by 18, 32% females are not enrolled in schools against 28% males, according to the latest Annual Survey of Education Report, IndiaSpend reported on January 17, 2018.
 
(Yadavar is a principal correspondent with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

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In Pratapgarh, a village that could be anywhere in the Hindi belt, a young man, Ravi, gets to know that his wife, Seema, is pregnant with a girl child, third time in a row. He wants her to get an abortion because he wants a male child. He forces Seema to accompany him to a doctor who agrees to conduct the abortion though the foetus is past the 20-week deadline for a medical termination of pregnancy. Seema undergoes the abortion but is critical, having lost a lot of blood. She is rescued by her sister Sneha, an idealistic young doctor who rushes her to the hospital and threatens to call the police.
 
This is the plot of the fourth and fifth episode of Main Kuch Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon (I, a woman, can achieve anything’), a soap produced by Population Foundation of India (PFI), a Delhi-based population research and advocacy organisation.
 
What marked this soap apart was its use of education-entertainment, or ‘edutainment’, to talk about women’s reproductive health and gender rights. Through its protagonist Sneha Mathur, the series dealt with topics such as child marriage, age at first pregnancy, spacing, family planning, sex selection, quality of healthcare and domestic violence.
 
The serial ran for two seasons on the national channel, Doordarshan, from 2014 to 2016 and was watched by 58 million viewers in its first season, according to television audience measurement and Indian readership survey. The two seasons and their reruns together reached over 400 million people, according to Doordarshan.
 
The project, funded by United Kingdom’s department of international development, Gates Foundation and supported by United Nations Population Fund, managed to change attitudes, according to a 2015 PFI study.
 
While 73% women knew about the legal age of marriage before the show, their numbers increased to 83% after the first season, the study found. Before the serial, 57% men cited the fear of side-effects for not using modern methods of contraception. This number fell to 32% after the first season.
 
How popular entertainment became a tool for social messaging
 
Why is popular entertainment being used to deliver critical social messages on gender rights? Because it can reach and convince the target audience fast, according to activists.
 
Here are some discouraging trends in women’s empowerment: In 2015-16, only 53.5% women in the reproductive age-group used modern methods of contraception, a decline from 56.3% in 2005-06, according to National Family Health Survey-4 data. In 2015-16, 28.8% of married women faced spousal violence, the figure is 31.1% in rural areas.
 
Poonam Muttreja, executive director of the PFI and a 40-year veteran of the development sector, said she was disappointed and frustrated at how little organisations such as hers had impacted social norms and attitudes. Most information education communication initiatives had shown little impact, she said.
 
 Then, on a visit to a Gates Foundation conference on behaviour change communication, she became aware of the impact of entertainment education, or edutainment as it is called. In South Africa, Soul City, a television series in the 1990s, talked about a range of health and development issues such as HIV/AIDS, rape, disability and alcoholism and created positive impact on people’s behaviour.
 
 Could such an approach work in India? With this thought, Muttreja sought the expertise of Arvind Singhal, a US-based communication and social change expert.
 
Singhal used the concept of “positive deviance” in the show. This meant nudging communities to re-discover traditional wisdom and act on it. Singhal and Muttreja documented 60 cases of those who had defied regressive social norms but stayed rooted in their communities.
 
“We made sure that the serial had great aesthetics like a Hindi film because we wanted to be aspirational,” said Muttreja.  The team approached theatre and film director Feroz Abbas Khan, who made films such as Gandhi, My Father, to direct the series. The script took a year and a team of 12 experts, ranging from sociologists to gynaecologists and theatre artists, contributed.
 
The plot stayed real but pushed for social change
 
The series used characters who reflected rural reality–Sneha’s brother, Purab, is an unemployed alcoholic who beats his wife and doesn’t think about contraception. Despite this, Sneha’s aunt prefers him over his sisters. Purab’s wife, Ratna, has three children, is pregnant again and has little decision-making power.
 
But the serial shows Purab reforming into a responsible and positive character.
 
“People are tired of showing evil mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law plotting against each other,” said Muttreja. “They are ready for positive content that talks about real-life issues.”
 
The makers used multiple tools to increase the series impact–TV, radio, social media and celebrity spots.
 
Each episode ended with a message and a quiz and a number on which to give a missed call. When called back, respondents could either answer the quiz or participate in a discussion. The serial received 1.4 million calls from across the country over two years.  Men and women called and shared their opinions, poems and vowed to change. The calls were recorded and analysed.
 
‘Sneha Clubs’, where viewers discussed issues raised, were formed with the help of 10 nonprofits in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. The show was also converted to radio, with readings from Sneha’s diaries, and broadcast on 230 All India Radio stations. It was also translated into 12 languages for regional telecast.
 
To reach ‘media-dark’ regions of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh–areas with little TV–a radio adaption was broadcast using six community radios.
 
Impact: Disapproval of early marriage for girls rose from 23% to 43%
 
To assess the impact of the serial after the first season, the PFI undertook an evaluation of 30,000 households in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. These two states account for 15% of India’s population and are in need of greater awareness about family planning.
 
It was found that the programme reached 36% of TV-owning and 72% of radio-owning population in these two states. Of its viewership, 52% were women.
 
As we said earlier, the show helped boost awareness about critical gender issues. Among women with married children, awareness about the legal age of marriage was 59% before the start of the series, rising to 80% after the show was screened. Around 23% of these women felt that early marriage leads to loss of opportunity before the show; after the first season, the numbers rose to 43%.
 
Only 2% men felt that marriage meant loss of opportunity before the show; the numbers grew to 31% after the first season.
 
There was also a shift in beliefs about the age at a woman should have her first child–before the start of the show, 57% of mothers-in-law voted in favour of 21-25 years. After the first season, 86% agreed that this age bracket was ideal for motherhood.
 
The show also appears to have reduced the number of women who believed that a girl shouldn’t return to her parental home once she marries–from 45% at the start of the season to 28% after it ended. The series also convinced many female viewers that it was not okay for men to hit their wives on the suspicion of infidelity–66% supported the ‘punishment’ before the show, and it came down to 44% afterwards.
 
There are other instances of how the show’s protagonist inspired communities. In Nayagaon village in Madhya Pradesh, where no girl had ever gone to college, Ladkuwar Khushwaha, a 16-year-old girl decided to continue her studies after school. While her parents supported her, the village objected. It is alleged that those who opposed her even rammed a car against her legs. But Khushwaha persisted and today, ten girls from her village go to college.
 

 
In Chhattarpur village in Bihar, a few men formed a group and vowed to stop domestic abuse, plan their families and help their wives with housework. “Ghar mein haath bataeinge, hum khana bhi banaenge (We will help our wives in chores, we will also cook),” was their slogan.

 
 
The show expands, but funding has now run out
 
When the makers of the serial found that 40% of their viewers were between 15 to 24,  the ministry of health and family welfare requested them to include the government’s adolescent programme, Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram (RKSK), National Adolescent Health Programme, in the second season.
 
The second-season’s focus was on teen problems. It talked about Prita, Sneha’s sister, and the challenges she faced running a girl’s football team in the village.
 
Farhan Akhtar, Bollywood actor and director, volunteered to be a sutradhar or narrator in the second season and talked about gender equality after each episode.
 
“We, then made eight films around the six themes of the [RKSK] programme of nutrition, sexual and reproductive health, gender equality, mental health, preventing injuries and substance abuse,” said Muttreja.
 
PFI researchers created the name ‘Saathiya’, meaning friend, for peer educators who run the programme. CDs of the films were made part of the kit distributed to peer educators.
 
After the last episode ended in 2016, the makers found it difficult to find funders for a third season, despite the show’s popularity. There is little corporate funding available for projects that revolve around behaviour change, said Muttreja.
 
The makers calculated the cost of production, outreach, promotion and interactive voice response service and the reach (400 million as per Doordarshan), at Rs 1.08 per capita for both seasons or Rs 0.72 per capita per year.

(Yadavar is a principal correspondent with IndiaSpend.)
 
We welcome feedback. Please write to respond@indiaspend.org. We reserve the right to edit responses for language and grammar.

Courtesy: India Spend
 

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According to Section 19 of the law, a child marriage should not be considered an offence if it meant for the interest of an underage girl.

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Image Courtesy: Jonathan Stening/Flickr, CC BY-NC

One in three women around the world currently experience gender-based violence. Harmful practices such as trafficking, forced marriage, domestic violence and female genital mutilation occur both in public and in private spaces. Today, these forms of violence are recognised as a major violation of human rights, a public health challenge and one of the clearest forms of gender discrimination. It’s also widely acknowledged that women experience heightened levels of violence in cities.

Tens of thousands of delegates from right across the globe met in Quito, Ecuador, to discuss the future of cities at the UN’s Habitat III conference, where the fifth and final version of the New Urban Agenda was adopted by member states. The document will help to guide urban policy around the world for the next 20 years. Which begs the question: how have women’s voices and gender issues been incorporated into it?

Impressively, with each new draft of this latest document, women’s views are increasingly being taken on board. Consultation took place at a range of levels, with notable contributions from important global networks that fight for women’s rights and gender equality, such as Slum Dwellers International (SDI), Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising (WIEGO) and the Huairou Commission.

Living without fear

From the first draft to the final document, references to women more than doubled from 14 paragraphs to 32, out of 175. The final document explicitly states that cities should:

Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, ensuring women’s full and effective participation and equal rights in all fields and in leadership at all levels of decision-making, and by ensuring decent work and equal pay for equal work, or work of equal value for all women, as well as preventing and eliminating all forms of discrimination, violence and harassment against women and girls in private and public spaces.

The fact that these commitments explicitly address the prevention and elimination of violence against women and girls in public and private spaces, as well as safety and security for women in cities, is a major achievement.

In particular, there are three commitments that have the potential, not just to empower individual women, but also to transform gender power relations in cities. These include land tenure rights for women, which gives women individual titles to land. When integrated into land regulation procedures, measures like these can transform gender power relations because it means women no longer have to depend on men in order to access land, as seen in Recife, Brazil.

Another key commitment relates to informal economy opportunities for women in terms of “livelihoods, working conditions, income security, legal and social protection”. Access to an independent income for those working in the informal economy – such as waste-pickers and recyclers – empowers women, while successfully contesting legal rights can change structural power relations by reducing their dependence on men for financial resources.
 

Image Courtesy: Jonathan Stening/Flickr, CC BY-NC

The third commitment relates to calls for cities with “public spaces and streets, free from crime and violence, including sexual harassment and gender-based violence”. This empowers women by enhancing their mobility, and access to both education and employment opportunities, which can allow them to live more independent lives.

Watered down

Yet some measures to address violence against women and girls were diluted throughout the five drafts. The first draft not only identified the importance of preventing and eliminating violence against women and girls in cities, it also specified how it should be addressed: through a range of measures, including the “investigation, prosecution and punishment of the perpetrators”.

It also called for the provision of services for survivors, recognition “that the treatment of women and girls can be a broader reflection of societal norms” and a commitment to “using education and public awareness campaigns as a further tool against abuse”.

But by the final draft, making places safer for women and girls had become a matter relating merely to the design and management of infrastructure and urban public spaces – for instance, by ensuring transport is accessible and improving urban sanitation. There was no acknowledgement that many of the problems faced by women and girls are caused by underlying gender inequalities in society. And in the paragraph on urban safety, crime and violence prevention, women are entirely ignored.

Throughout the agenda, women are typically referred to as part of a composite, monolithic and vulnerable group. There are continual references to “age and gender-responsive” interventions – but very little clarity as to what this means or involves in practice.

In fact, only one practical commitment was made, to age and gender-responsive budgeting. This involves strengthening the capacity of national, sub-national and local governments to ensure that there are equal numbers of women represented throughout all state institutions, and to take women’s needs into account in the allocation of state budgets.

Compromises have to be made when agreeing on global agendas and the inclusion of women is complex and contradictory. But if the UN’s agenda is to effectively address issues of violence against women and girls, it needs to clarify the meaning of generic “gender-responsive” commitments, and consider women specifically, rather than as part of a larger group of “vulnerable” citizens.

While design and management can play an important role in forging safer cities, it is essential to move beyond these aspects, in order to transform gender relations in urban spaces around the world over the next 20 years.

(Cathy McIlwaine,professor of Geography, Queen Mary University of London; Caroline Moser, Emeritus Professor, University of Manchester).

(This is part of a series on publicly funded UK research at the UN Habitat III summit in Quito, Ecuador. It is a collaboration between the Urban Transformations Network, UK Economic and Social Research Council and The Conversation UK. The original story may be accessed here.)
 

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(Deepa Karmakar)

अच्छा…जब ये ओलम्पिक नहीं खेल रही होती हैं…तब आपकी उम्मीदें कहां होती हैं…जब ये घर चलाने के लिए चाय बेचती हैं, सब्ज़ी बेचती हैं…सरकारी नौकरी के लिए दर-दर पर गिड़गिड़ा रही होती हैं…कोच से साई के अधिकारियों तक के शोषण का शिकार हो रही होती हैं…लेकिन फिर भी खेल छोड़ना नहीं चाहती…

(Srabani Nanda)

तब क्या आप उनकी उम्मीदें जोड़ और संवार रहे होते हैं?

(Laxmi Rani Majhi)

क्या आपको एक समाज के तौर पर उनसे कोई भी उम्मीद रखने का हक़ है? आप उम्मीद रखिए क्रिकेटर्स से…इन जांबाज़ लड़कियों की जवाबदेही आपके प्रति नहीं है…आप ने जिनको कभी सम्मान और समाज में जगह तो जाने दीजिए. काम और रोटी तक नहीं दिए.वो आपकी उम्मीदों के बारे में सोच भी रही हैं, तो अपने आप से अन्याय ही कर रही हैं.

(Lalita Babar)

सुनो बहादुर लड़कियों, तुम हार रही हो…लेकिन ज़िंदगी की जंग जीत रही हो…इस स्वार्थी समाज के लिए खेल मत खेलो…देश के लिए मत खेलो…अपने लिए खेलो…अपने सम्मान और अपने फायदे के लिए खेलो…क्योंकि तुम खेल नहीं रही होती…तो ये ही लोग, जो आज ओलम्पिक में तुमको अपने सम्मान और उम्मीदों से जोड़ रहे हैं…वो तुमको सड़कों पर छेड़ते…तुमको घर में नौकरानी बना देते…तुमको अपने से तो जाने दो…घर से आगे नहीं बढ़ने देते…

कुछ भी करो…मेडल भी जीतो…वरना सिर्फ अपनी खुशी के लिए खेलो…इन लोगों को तुमसे उम्मीद रखने और जवाब मांगने का कोई हक़ नहीं है, बस इतना याद रखो…हां, जीतो, लड़ो…सिर्फ अपने लिए…

(Dutee Chand)

Deepa karmakar Laxmi Rani Majhi Dutee Chand Srabani Nanda Lalita Babar और बाकी सब के लिए भी…जाओ और खेलो…सिर्फ खेलो…अपने आप से उम्मीद रखो कि तुम लड़कियों के लिए बनाई गई समाज की हर बाधा तोड़ोगी…मर्ज़ी से जियोगी…

बस सिर्फ इतनी ही उम्मीद!

The post जाओ और खेलो ! सिर्फ खेलो ! – इतनी ही उम्मीद appeared first on SabrangIndia.