Namita Bhandare

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. […]

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.

India’s laws and the highest court have provided the direction. The challenge is to get its institutions to fall in line with the law The bullying of transgender kids is routine despite the Supreme Court’s 2014 NALSA judgment that recognises the “third gender” as equal citizens (Shutterstock) By the time she was four or five,

Hello and welcome to Mind the Gap, a newsletter that adds perspective to the gender developments of the week. As schools tentatively return to physical classes, the big questions are: How much learning has been lost? (HT PHOTO) THE BIG STORY Back to school Do girls face a disproportionate impact, given the existing gender gaps?

It’s time we celebrate love as the purest emotion between two individuals. It’s time we celebrate our Constitution for promising equality for all At its core lies a clash between constitutional guarantees and societal morality (Amal KS/HT PHOTO) In a week when the Delhi High Court (HC) is hearing a clutch of petitions seeking legal

Hello and welcome to Mind the Gap, a newsletter that adds perspective to the gender developments of the week. Only 268 of 2,839 Congress candidates — just 9.4% — who have contested a state election since 2017 were women (ANI) THE BIG STORY Priyanka’s great gamble Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s promise to field

Justice in one case does not signal the end of crimes against Dalit women. But it does signal one tiny step forward in a longer march against caste hierarchy. Dalit women face sexual abuse daily, said Manjula Pradeep, convenor, National Council of Women Leaders. When rape survivors try to file police complaints, they are accused

From regressive comments on modern women to an obvious — and widening — gulf between girls and boys, the gender divide at home and at work appears to be deepening in India and the world India is home to the world’s largest number of single women, but this is not a homogeneous group (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

This week saw child marriage back in the news. This and the Bombay High Court’s new guidelines on sexual harassment at the workplace are worrying developments. Child marriage is India’s enduring shame and we are home to the largest number of child brides in the world, with 1.5 million girls under 18 married every year,

In India and parts of the world, women have had reason to celebrate this week. But systemic gender issues in a largely patriarchal society remain As of January 2019, women make up 3.8% of the Indian Army, billed as the second-largest in the world. (Hindustan Times) For 67 years, the National Defence Academy (NDA) has

MeToo has a powerful message for women too, that of solidarity and a continuum. Feminist organising goes back to the reform movements of the 19th century. It has not always been united but we have seen its effectiveness through the anti-rape and anti-dowry movements of the 1970s and 1980s to the anti-rape upsurge in 2012.

Music was an act of resistance for the girls in Afghanistan’s first all-women orchestra. Some managed to leave the country, but others lie low, their future uncertain, as they await clarity from the Taliban Zohra, Afghan women’s orchestra, performs during the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit in New Delhi, in 2017. (HT Archive) When she came