Month: November 2021

Hello and welcome to Mind the Gap, a newsletter that adds perspective to the gender developments of the week.

We’ve come a long way from the days when parties promised free pressure cookers, mixer-grinders and gold for mangalsutras (Virendra Singh Gosain/HT PHOTO)

THE BIG STORY:

Everybody loves the woman voter

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s announcement of a ₹1,000 monthly stipend to women above 18 in poll-bound Punjab if his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is elected to power signals the rise and rise of the woman voter. Calling his promise the world’s ‘largest empowerment programme for women’, Kejriwal was speaking to an audience of AAP women volunteers in Moga on November 22.

This is not the first time that Kejriwal has tried to reach out directly to an increasingly important constituency. In June 2019, he promised free public transport to women, deployed bus marshals and added additional CCTV cameras and street lights.

The effort paid off. In the Delhi 2020 election, a pre-poll analysis by Lokniti-CSDS found, 60% of women (and 49% of men) were voting for AAP. The BJP managed just 35% of the women’s vote.

Not AAP alone

We’ve come a long way from the days when parties promised free pressure cookers, mixer-grinders and gold for mangalsutras — though few have matched the imagination of an independent candidate in the 2011 Tamil Nadu polls who reportedly offered a free trip to the moon.

The increasing ability of women voters to swing votes is apparent in the range of promises made to them. The Congress’s Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s commitment to field 40% of women candidates in next year’s Uttar Pradesh election is certainly unprecedented for an assembly election. In addition, she has promised a 40% quota in jobs, two-wheeler scooters and smartphones, vocational training centres and ₹1,000 per month as a widow’s pension.

Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has promised a 40% quota in jobs, two-wheeler scooters and smartphones, vocational training centres and ₹1,000 per month as a widow’s pension (ANI)

In Punjab, the Akalis have promised women ₹2,000 each.

That women voters are turning out in as large, if not larger, numbers than men is well documented. Increasingly, these women are determining electoral outcomes. In the 2021 West Bengal election, Mamata Banerjee’s TMC got 50% of the woman vote, compared to 37% for the BJP, according to a post-poll survey by Lokniti-CSDS. In Bihar, a year earlier, the women vote share was 41% for the NDA, just 31% for the coalition Mahagathbandhan–a decisive 10 percentage point difference that brought Nitish Kumar back to power.

In the same election in Bihar, there was a higher turnout of women in 79% of seats won by the NDA, 74% won by the BJP and 86% won by the JDU. In other words, when women turn up in large numbers to vote, their vote matters in deciding election results.

What do women want?

When it comes to fielding women candidates, political parties turn coy — with the exception of Naveen Patnaik’s 33% and TMC’s 42% in the 2019 Parliamentary elections.

For all its talk about women’s empowerment, the BJP that has a majority in Parliament has allowed the Women’s Reservation Bill that will earmark 33% seats to women in Parliament and the state assemblies, to languish.

Nitish Kumar’s record of fielding women candidates is abysmal while Kejriwal’s Delhi cabinet does not have a single woman minister. Yet, both politicians remain popular with women voters. Nitish has kept his constituency faithful by sticking to such promises as a prohibition on alcohol, a policy measure that few states can afford given the loss in state revenue.

In Punjab, women have been turning out to vote in impressive numbers. In the 2007 polls, voter turnout for women and men was more or less the same with 75.3% men and 75.5% women voting. In 2012, women voters beat men 78.9% to 77.6%. In the last election in 2017, it was 77.9% women to 75.9% men.

Women are a constituency that matters; not queens yet but most definitely king-makers.

NEWSMAKER

She’s probably the best recognised Afghan woman ever; the girl with the startling green eyes on National Geographic’s cover in 1984. Then, Sharbat Gula was still a schoolgirl at a refugee camp and her picture shot by Steve McCurry became ‘the most recognised photo’ in the magazine’s history. This year, on November 25, the Italian government confirmed that Gula has been evacuated to their country after Afghanistan fell to the Taliban.

She’s probably the best recognised Afghan woman ever; the girl with the startling green eyes on National Geographic’s cover in 1984 (AFP)

Gender Tracker

38% of murders of women globally are committed by a male partner.

(Source: United Nations Office on Drug and Crime)

WATCH

Norway’s state-owned postal service is marking 50 years since the country decriminalised same-sex relationships with a Christmas ad in which Santa Claus strikes up a romance with a man called Harry.

Watch the ad here.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR:

November 25 saw the start of 16 days of activism against gender-based violence, an annual international campaign which will run until December 10, Human Rights Day. The campaign was started in 1991 and is used as an organising strategy by individuals and organisations around the world to call for the prevention and elimination of violence against women and girls.

Why it matters: One in three women across the world experience violence, according to the United Nations. In India, more than 25% of women surveyed in seven states in the first round of the National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5) face domestic violence. In Karnataka, the survey found, the percentage of married women who said they had faced physical or sexual violence from a spouse more than doubled from 20.6% five years ago to 44.4% in 2019-20.

STORIES YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

More women, fewer kids: For the first time since India began counting, the sex ratio has tipped in favour of women. The latest round of NFHS-5 finds 1,020 females for every 1,000 men. Women are also having fewer children, and the total fertility rate is just two children per woman, down from 2.2 earlier.

NFHS-5 covers 650,000 households, a significantly large sample size but tiny when compared to the 300 million households in India (Amal KS/HT PHOTO)

The third significant takeaway, reports Roshan Kishore in his excellent analysis, is the decline in under 15-year-olds in the share of the population. India still retains its demographic advantage of a youthful population, but under-15s now comprise 26.5% of the population, down from 34.9% in 2005-6.

NFHS-5 covers 650,000 households, a significantly large sample size but tiny when compared to the 300 million households in India. Only a national census will establish whether these trends can be applied to the rest of the population. The last census in 2011 counted 940 women for every 1,000 men; the child sex ratio (for children from birth to six years old) is even lower at 918 girls.

There’s bad news as well, almost half the women and children surveyed are anaemic. And stunting, an indicator of malnutrition, has seen a reduction of only three percentage points in five years with Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand continuing to be high fertility-undernutrition states

Read more on the NFHS-5 finding here, here, and here.

Reunited: A long legal battle has ended with the reunification of the one-year-old son of former Left student leader Anupama S Chandran with his parents, reports Ramesh Babu from Thiruvananthapuram. The child had been given away in adoption by Chandran’s parents who are influential CPI M leaders, and without her consent. Chandran said her parents disapproved of her relationship with Ajith Kumar, a Dalit Christian man.

Rape and the death sentence: The Bombay High Court has reduced the death sentence awarded by a trial court to three men convicted of gang-raping a journalist at Mumbai’s defunct Shakti Mills, reports K A Y Dodhiya. The men are repeat offenders but the two-judge bench said they deserved to repent their offence whereas a death sentence would put an end to the process of repentance.

Now cordoned off spot where a 22 year old woman photojournalist was gangraped on August 22, 2013 inside Shakti Mills in Mahalaxmi, Mumbai, Maharashtra (Hindustan Times)

In a separate judgment, the same two-judge Bombay High Court bench confirmed the death sentence of a Thane man for raping and murdering a three-year-old.

Uniformly same: A primary school in Ernakulum district, Kerala, has become the first government school in the country to introduce gender-neutral uniforms for its 754 students. Students of all genders will now wear long shorts and a shirt. “We wanted all the students to have the same uniform so that they could enjoy the freedom of movement,” said Vivek V, the president of the Parent-Teacher Association that took the decision to adopt a gender-neutral uniform. Read more here.

FIELD NOTES:

The Play’s The Thing:

A field study involving 92 villages in West Bengal found that community-based participatory theatre around the theme of domestic violence actually reduced spousal violence by a quarter. Conducted by Karla Hoff of the World Bank and Jyotsna Jalan and Sattwik Santra of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, the study found evidence of prolonged positive impacts.

“To change an individual’s core values and beliefs about the morality of violence against women requires that they begin to view women as individuals with the right to make decisions about their lives,” states the study published in Ideas for India. “To change a social norm, one can start with the individual or the community, but it is crucial to influence both.”

Participatory theatre, also called forum theatre, begins with the enactment of a play based on “facts”. After the performance, a facilitator from the theatre group (also called a joker) asks the audience if it agrees with the actions in the play. The play is then performed again, and this time audience members are free to shout ‘stop’ if they disagree with the actions and take on the role of the actor and play the scene with outcomes they want.

Watching the play reduced spousal abuse from 32% to 24%. The proportion of husbands who viewed wife-beating as legitimate fell by half.

Read the study here.

WOMEN OF THE WORLD

Calling it “one of the most transformative trends of our time”, the New York Times reports a rising gender gap in college education – in favour of women. With three women students for every two, women have not only closed the gender gap in educational attainment, but surpassed it. Men are also more likely to drop out of undergraduate studies than women. The trend is perplexing, given that a college degree has clear career and financial advantages.

That’s it for this week. If you have a tip or information on gender-related developments that you would like to share, write to me at: namita.bhandare@gmail.com.

Namita Bhandare writes and reports on gender

The views expressed are personal

Marika Gabriel contributed to the making of this page.

Hello and welcome to Mind the Gap, a newsletter that adds perspective to the gender developments of the week.

Under Indian law, sexual intercourse with a minor girl (defined as 16 years and younger) is defined as rape (PTI)

THE BIG STORY: Love, sex, and agency

On the face of it, it’s an unusual order. The Delhi High Court judge has ordered the custody of a baby boy to his biological father, a man accused of raping the baby’s mother who is a minor girl of 16.

Here’s the reality check: The Muslim girl, a class 9 student, told the court that she is in love with the 19-year-old Hindu man and was in a consensual relationship with him, a fact her parents disapproved of.

In March this year, when she went missing, her mother filed a police complaint. The girl was found a month later. She was five months pregnant. The 19-year-old was arrested under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and rape charges. The baby was born in August and handed over to a friend of the girl’s brother for adoption.

The 19-year-old was arrested under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and rape charges (AFP)

In September, Justice Mukta Gupta granted bail to the 19-year-old and restored the baby to his mother. But since she’s a minor, noted the court, she cannot be permitted to live with the accused. The girl has said she would rather live in a government-run shelter home than return to her parents.

So, the question: What happens to the baby? “The baby boy cannot be permitted to be languishing [in the shelter home]…custody of the baby boy has been handed over to… his natural father,” the court ruled.

Statutory rape

Under Indian law, sexual intercourse with a minor girl (defined as 16 years and younger) is defined as rape, and is punishable under sentences that vary from a minimum of seven years to a maximum of life (or even the death sentence).

Until 2012, the age of consent was 18. Now, it is 16. The minimum legal age for marriage is also 18 for women, 21 for men, and there is a move to raise the age for women to 21 to bring it at par with men.

A study of 600 rape trials in Delhi in 2014 by journalist Rukmini Srinivas found that 40% of all tried cases dealt with consensual sex (REUTERS)

A study of 600 rape trials in Delhi in 2014 by journalist Rukmini Srinivas found that 40% of all tried cases dealt with consensual sex, usually involving the elopement of young couples where the minor girl’s parents had filed rape charges against her partner.

The lack of agency

In 2019, Partners for Law in Development (PLD) studied consensual romantic relationships of 15 girls aged between 15 and 20. The sample size is small, but revealing. Read the study here.

Almost all the girls came from families where they were subject to strict vigilance and restrictions on their movements. They had no agency on crucial decisions affecting their lives, including education and marriage.

They were required to pitch in with long hours of household work and many had been pulled out of school for this reason. Leisure was a luxury and friendships even with other girls, discouraged. Some reported physical abuse from parents. For many, a romantic relationship was the first realization of self-worth.

Raising compliant girls

The agency of adolescent girls is rarely spoken about in mainstream discourse. Girls in India are brought up to be silent, unquestioning, and compliant. Whether in villages where they are subject to khap panchayat rules or in cities, adolescent girls are subject to a range of restrictions from their mobility (where they go, with whom, and why) to their extra-curricular interests. Girls’ limited access to mobile phones and devices through which they can access online education was made apparent during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Behind these restrictions lies the fear of parents that a daughter’s romantic relationship will bring “shame” to the family honour in a country where over 93% of marriages are arranged in line with caste, community, and religious endogamy.

Meanwhile, the girl in the Delhi High Court judgment will remain at the shelter home until she turns 18, when she will finally be at liberty to live where she wants.

NEWSMAKER

Make way for Saurabh Kirpal

For four years, Saurabh Kirpal has waited for his name to be cleared by the Supreme Court collegium as a judge in the Delhi High Court. Three times since 2017, the collegium dithered and so, although Kirpal had led the legal battle in getting the Supreme Court to decriminalise Section 377, it was not as accommodating where diversity on the Bench goes. And then this past week, his name was finally cleared.

He has never hidden his sexual orientation, has spoken about how he came out to his parents (his father, BN Kirpal is a former Chief Justice of India) and has pitched for same-sex marriage (ANI)

The Oxford and Cambridge-educated 49-year-old lawyer has edited an anthology, Sex and the Supreme Court. He has never hidden his sexual orientation, has spoken about how he came out to his parents (his father, BN Kirpal is a former Chief Justice of India) and has pitched for same-sex marriage.

An excellent cook with varied interests from classical music to history, he lives in New Delhi with his parents, his Swiss partner of 20 years, and their two dogs, Barolo and Margaux.

WE WILL MISS…

Mannu Bhandari whose death at the age of 90 on November 15 is a huge loss to the world of letters. A thinker who wrote about strong, independent women, Bhandari was best known for her story, Yeh Sach Hai about a single woman research scholar in a relationship with a predictable, if somewhat boring, man and the conflicting emotions she experiences, particularly after a job interview in another town where she runs into an old flame. The story was made into a film, Rajnigandha, by Basu Chatterji, a box office success that introduced many Indians to the work of this writer.

In June 2021, Poonam Saxena wrote about Bhandari just before she turned 90. Do read her evocative piece here.

STORIES YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

Sexual intent, not skin-to-skin: The Supreme Court has clarified that touching a child with sexual intent even if there is no “skin-to-skin” contact is an offence under POCSO, reports Abraham Thomas. The clarification comes after the two controversial decisions of the Bombay High Court in January. In the first, a single judge bench ruled that the “act of holding a girl’s hand and opening the zip of pants was not sexual assault as defined by POCSO but only sexual harassment.”

In the second, the same bench said groping the breast of a minor girl without ‘skin-to-skin’ contact could not be termed as sexual assault.

Uniform Civil Code: The Allahabad High Court has asked the central government to look into implementing a uniform civil code (UCC) as mandated by the Constitution, reports Jitendra Sarin. Calling the UCC a “necessity”, Justice Suneet Kumar was hearing a batch of 17 petitions by interfaith couples who wanted protection from the court. Parliament needs to come up with a “single family code” to protect interfaith couples from being “hounded as criminals”, the judge observed.

Women and drug trials: Until as recently as 1993, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), of the United States, considered women to be a special subgroup of patients, resulting in their exclusion from most clinical trials. This exclusion has had disastrous results as adverse drug reactions affect different groups differently, writes microbiologist Anirban Mahapatra. Women, for instance, are twice more likely to suffer adverse drug reactions than men. Read how and why here.

FIELD NOTES:

The luxury of leisure: Ashwini Deshpande, a professor of economics at Ashoka University, parses data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) to find out how the first wave of Covid impacted paid work, domestic chores and leisure.

The diminishing workforce: Women’s labour force participation had already been in free-fall for the last decade. So, when the lockdown was declared in April 2020, more men lost jobs than women in terms of absolute numbers simply because there were far more men than women in employment. But as the economy opened up, male employment recovered from April to August 2020, whereas for women, the likelihood of being employed was nine percentage points lower than that for men.

The household burden:

By December 2020, the time spent by men on housework had fallen to below pre-pandemic levels (Priyanka Parashar)

The pandemic, finds the paper, also worsened the burden of domestic chores for women, although in April 2020 at the peak of the lockdown, men spent more time on housework relative to December 2019. The good news didn’t last for long, though. By December 2020, the time spent by men on housework had fallen to below pre-pandemic levels, while women were spending more time than ever on domestic chores.

Leisure: An obvious casualty was leisure time. By the end of 2020, time spent with friends had fallen to one-third of pre-pandemic levels. Read the paper here.

AROUND THE WORLD

Where is Peng Shuai?

Weeks after making allegations of sexual harassment against former Chinese vice-premier Zhang Gaoli, tennis star Peng Shuai’s whereabouts remain uncertain. Chinese state media tweeted an email purportedly from Peng to the Women’s Tennis Association claiming that she was resting at home. The WTA is not convinced and leading tennis players including Naomi Osaka have tweeted their concern. “Censorship is never OK at any cost, I hope Peng Shuai and her family are safe and OK,” she tweeted.

Peng Shuai of China (REUTERS)

In early November, in a social media post, the 35-year-old Peng Shuai said that Zhang Gaoli, married and 40 years older than her, had assaulted her on at least one occasion. That post was erased within minutes of being published.

In Pakistan, the fate of habitual rapists: A joint session of the Pakistan Parliament approved a criminal law amendment that will punish habitual rapists with chemical castration. The use of drugs to reduce or remove sex drive is currently in use in Indonesia, Poland and the Czech Republic. Some countries, like the United Kingdom and South Korea, have a law for voluntary chemical castration in return for reduced sentences.

That’s it for this week. If you have a tip or information on gender-related developments that you would like to share write to me at: namita.bhandare@gmail.com.

Namita Bhandare writes and reports on gender

The views expressed are personal

Marika Gabriel contributed to the making of this page.

Hello and welcome to Mind the Gap, a newsletter that adds perspective to the gender developments of the week.

Victims of acid attacks are almost always young women from socio-economic marginalised communities who have turned down men (Sanjeev Verma/HT)

THE BIG STORY

It’s a familiar tale. Man says he loves woman. She turns him down. In retaliation, he attacks her with acid, inflicting unimaginable pain and leaving her scarred for life.

This horrific storyline played out twice in nine days in the National Capital Region. In the first incident on November 3, a 23-year-old married woman turned down the advances of her neighbour, Montu who, as revenge, tied up the woman and threw acid on her. He then fled to his native Buxar, in Bihar from where he was arrested three days later.

The woman suffered 45% burns on her face and upper torso, and has reportedly lost vision in both her eyes.

Less than 10 days later, in a separate incident on November 12, a 21-year-old woman working in an e-commerce firm turned down the marriage proposal of her cousin, Ravinder Singh. He retaliated by attacking her with acid. She too has reportedly lost her vision.

Life-long suffering

The National Crime Records Bureau reported 228 acid attacks in 2018, 249 in 2019, and 182 in 2020–a decline caused by the pandemic and the lockdowns that followed. In 2013, the home ministry estimated 500 acid attacks over the previous four years.

India, along with Bangladesh and Cambodia, has one of the world’s highest incidences of acid violence, found a 2011 report by Cornell University. “Acid attack perpetrators do not usually intend to kill their victims, but to cause long-lasting physical damage and emotional trauma,” the report noted.

Victims of acid attacks are almost always young women from socio-economic marginalised communities who have turned down men.

When hydrochloric, sulphuric and other acids, commonly used to clean toilets or clear clogged sewage lines, come into contact with human skin, it causes it to melt and can even damage the underlying tissue, muscle, bone and internal organs. It causes permanent disfigurement and disability, leaving victims with a lifetime of physical and mental suffering and economic consequences.

Acid violence and the law

In 2009, the Law Commission recommended that acid attacks should be treated as separate offences with compensation spelt out for victims. In 2013, the Justice JS Verma Commission too asked for the offence to be treated in a separate category rather than under the umbrella section on causing grievous harm.

In 2006, Laxmi, the victim of an acid attack who uses only one name, filed a petition in the Supreme Court. Seven years later, the court finally ruled and recommended a raft of measures, from the strict regulation of the sale of acid–no sale without ID proof and a valid reason for purchase, shops to maintain a register of all sales — to guidelines on medical care and treatment as well as financial compensation to victims.

For a while, sales were strictly regulated, says Aparna Bhat, Laxmi’s lawyer. But then things became lax again with acid being sold freely in the market.

Because of Chhapaak, for a while, acid violence was in the news. Then everyone forgot and moved on (Dheeraj Dhawan/Hindustan Times)

“As with most public interest litigations, there is no regular monitoring of the Supreme Court order,” says Bhat. Laxmi’s story generated a fair amount of attention and Deepika Padukone even starred in a movie, Chhapaak. For a while, acid violence was in the news. Then everyone forgot and moved on.

NEWSMAKER

Falguni Nayar, CEO of Nykaa, photographed at her office (ABHIJIT BHATLEKAR/MINT)

Falguni Nayar became the second Indian self-made billionaire (after Biocon founder Kiran Majumdar Shaw) when the parent company of the cosmetics e-tailer she founded in April 2012 made a blockbuster debut on the stock exchange. The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad graduate and former managing director of Kotak Mahindra Capital Company was quoted saying: “I hate being counted as a woman entrepreneur. We need to break stereotypes including gender stereotypes.”

Not all superwomen wear capes:

Inspector E Rajeshwari of T.P. Chatram police station, Chennai, was part of the investigations that booked more than a dozen men who raped a hearing-impaired woman in Chennai in 2018. In August this year, she cracked a case of child trafficking and penetrative sexual assault while raiding a shopkeeper for illegally selling ganja. Her most recent rescue came on November 10 when she rescued an unconscious man during the Chennai flooding by hoisting him on her shoulders.

President Ram Nath Kovind presents the Padma Shri award to folk dancer Matha B Manjamma Jogati during the Civil Investiture Ceremony-IV at Rashtrapati Bhawan (PTI)

Dignity dance: While receiving a Padma Shri from President Ram Nath Kovind, the striking Manjamma Jogati, a transgender folk dancer, made a gesture that many said is a traditional blessing and won hearts and the internet. In interviews with TV channels, she said she had been abandoned by her own family when she was 15 and appealed to parents to support their transgender children.

Watch: Transgender folk dancer Manjamma Jogati wins Padma Shri award

QUOTE UNQUOTE

THE WORLD AS DESIGNED BY MEN HAS

DESTROYED MANY THINGS. THE WORLD

SHOULD BEGIN THINKING LIKE WOMEN. IF IT

WAS DESIGNED BY A WOMAN, IT WOULD END

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND CHILDREN.

These words were by Angelica Ponce, executive director, Plurinational Authority for Mother Earth, Bolivia at COP26.

STORIES YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

Arrest for online rape threat: Software engineer from Hyderabad, Ramnagesh Srinivas Akubathini has been arrested for making online rape threats to Indian captain Virat Kohli’s nine-month-old baby girl with actor Anushka Sharma, reports Sharangee Dutta. The threats were made after Kohli stood up to Twitter trolls in defence of his teammate Mohammad Shami following India’s defeat to Pakistan in the T20 World Cup match. The 23-year-old IIT-Hyderabad graduate is reported to have had plans to pursue higher studies in the US. Police said he has a history of online trolling using multiple identities.

Justice served: Gayatri Prajapati, a former minister in the Akhilesh Yadav government, and two associates have been sentenced to life imprisonment for gang-raping a Chitrakoot-based woman at his official residence in Lucknow. The complaint was lodged in 2017 and Uttar Pradesh police finally arrested Prajapati after receiving orders to do so from the Supreme Court. Read Pawan Dixit’s account of how events unfolded.

Rape-accused UP minister Gayatri Prajapati arrested by police in Lucknow (PTI)

Wear what you want: Teachers in Kerala have the right to wear what they want, the state’s higher education minister R Bindu said after a college asked a lecturer to not wear salwar-kameez to class. The higher education department issued a circular after teachers complained that several institutions in the state practiced such policing. More here.

…Or don’t: No brides with open hair or groom with beards, no cake or champagne at weddings, ruled the Kodava Samaj in Kodagu district, 225 km from Bengaluru. Yet another instance of the culture custodians imposing restrictions in the name of retaining ‘purity’?

Beating a retreat: After being threatened with contempt proceedings by the Supreme Court, the Army beat a hasty retreat on its decision to deny permanent commission to 72 female short service commission officers and agreed to grant permanent commission to all officers who had qualified on merit, reports Abraham Thomas.

Women in the World

Anger in Poland: The death of a 30-year-old woman who died of sepsis 22 weeks into her pregnancy has sparked massive protests in Poland with vigils and marches in Warsaw as well as smaller cities including Gdansk and Pszczyna, the town where the woman died.

The protests come a year after the country’s constitutional court imposed a near-total ban on abortion. As a result, the woman’s family alleged, doctors refused to perform an abortion after the woman’s waters broke, waiting instead for the foetus which was born with severe abnormalities to die naturally. The delay resulted in sepsis and the woman’s death.

Protestors carried banners reading “Not one woman more” and “My Body, My Choice”. The health ministry issued a clarification to doctors that abortions are legal, in some cases.

Advocate for paid family leave: Meghan, the wife of Prince Harry, has emerged as an advocate for paid family leave with her phone calls to members of the US Congress for their support. The United States is one of the few remaining countries that still does not legally mandate paid maternity leave.

Daughter’s run: Sara Duterte, the eldest daughter of Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte will run for vice-president in next year’s election. Sara will be the running mate for Ferdinand Marcos Jr, son of the late dictator, who is running as president.

Sara Duterte and Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte (AFP)

That’s it for this week. If you have a tip or information on gender-related developments that you would like to share write to me at: namita.bhandare@gmail.com.

Namita Bhandare writes and reports on gender

The views expressed are personal

Marika Gabriel contributed to the making of this page