Her hair neatly tied back in a bun, the lipstick bright red on her lips, Usha is talking about a typical day in her life. For the single mother of four, Sunday or Monday makes no difference to her routine: Up before dawn, cook and pack school lunch for the kids, a quick bath and […]
International Women’s Day: A day to celebrate, and heed the warnings Read More »
The issue isn’t just India-Nepal relations. The issue isn’t just the racist treatment of international students by university authorities. The issue isn’t just the desperate backtracking of an inhuman stance by a private university. At its heart there is only one issue. How do institutions respond when women complain about harassment?
The death of a KIIT student leads to the question: Are our institutions failing women? Read More »
Chandrababu Naidu wants more professional women to join the workforce. To do this, the Andhra Pradesh chief minister said in a LinkedIn post, the state will expand work from home (WFH) opportunities “in a big way, especially for women.” The idea, he continued, is to provide “equal and full access to growth opportunities” particularly in STEM
The work-from-home conversation raging all over the world Read More »
A tale from modern India: A man rapes his wife so brutally she dies. She leaves a dying declaration before a magistrate. There’s a post mortem that finds grievous injuries. A trial court sentences the man to 10 years in jail. He appeals and the Chhattisgarh high court acquits him of all charges, rape, unnatural
Marital rape can’t remain an exception to rape law Read More »
Some see her as a victim of a domineering and abusive husband. Others assert her right to dress (or not) as she pleases. Bianca Censori, the wife of rapper and designer Ye, the man formerly known as Kanye West, has been notoriously tight-lipped about what she thinks about nudity, the female form, her husband or
The red carpet’s “naked dress” is a tired and tried trope Read More »
There’s a lot to be happy, and hopeful, about the latest ASER or Annual Status of Education Report (Rural) that has since 2005 measured Indian schoolchildren’s ability in reading, writing and arithmetic. Fears that the pandemic, when India had one of the world’s longest school closures, would disrupt learning outcomes and lead to children being
Mind the Gap: ASER survey finds the kids are (more than) alright Read More »
The first uniform civil code in independent India could have been an opportunity to showcase a progressive template for other states. It ought to have restricted itself to marriage, divorce, maintenance, adoption and inheritance—areas governed by personal laws that create discrepancy among citizens. Instead, the state of Uttarakhand has taken on the role of Morality
When law seeks to make the State the Big Brother Read More »
One billion women around the world are estimated to be out of the purview of the financial sector. Closing the gender gap “would be the right thing to do as a matter of equity alone,” writes Mary Ellen Iskenderian, the president and CEO of Women’s World Banking (WWB), a global non-profit that seeks to provide
Mary Ellen Iskenderian: Why the financial inclusion of women matters Read More »
It’s a tiny word, an acronym to be precise, but few topics have been as explosive or divisive as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in Donald Trump’s America. In an election campaign where Trump made race, gender and ‘wokeism’ central issues, promising to rollback DEI initiatives and scoffing at Kamala Harris as a ‘DEI candidate’,
Why American companies are wrong to roll back DEI policies. Read More »
In Kerala, India’s most developed and literate state, an 18-year-old Dalit athlete has revealed to social workers that she has been sexually abused since she was 13 by 64 men. Gang-raped five times in as many years, she says. Let that sink in. At the time of writing, police in Pathanamthitta district have detained 42
Larsen & Toubro chairman SN Subrahmanyan’s advocacy of a 90-hour work week is deeply problematic on so many levels that it merits examination beyond the usual 24-hour social media cycle. In a video on Reddit apparently during an employee interaction the 64-year-old was asked why the multibillion-dollar conglomerate was making employees work on Saturdays. “I
Why L&T’s SN Subrahmanyan needs to talk to more women Read More »
BBC has a list of 100. Financial Times has just 25. But writing from an Indian perspective, viewing India from within, who were the women who made the most impact? Who were those who would not give up whatever it took? And who are the changemakers to remember? These are the women, from India and
The Challengers: Women who shook the status quo in 2024 Read More »