Mind the Gap

Source: PTI That hardy perennial, the Uniform Civil Code (UCC), popping up with regularity ever since it was written as a desirable goal in the Constitution 74 years ago, has in the past few months been gaining traction. A private member’s bill to implement it nationwide was listed for introduction in the Lok Sabha during the Budget […]

On the first day of Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s “complete war” on child marriages, 1,800 people were arrested under provisions of the Prohibition of the Child Marriage act that puts the minimum age of marriage at 18 for women and 21 for men. Those arrested included 52 qazis or priests and many arrests are reported to have

When I quit my full-time job, my then boss wanted to know why. I loved my job, I told her. It gave me a sense of identity and pride. But it also left me with feeling terribly guilty. My girls were growing up, fast. Most days when I got home, I was just too wiped

Image source: Google Almost 100 years ago, Sarojini Naidu, one of the 15 women members of the Indian Constituent Assembly and a leading figure of the freedom struggle, asserted she was not a feminist. According to her, to be a feminist is to acknowledge that one is repressed. Hers was a particularly formal and somewhat

Alia Bhatt, Kate Winslet and 12-year-old me facing utter mortification when the pimply boy in my class commented on my “muscular” legs—a stray remark that meant that for years I just couldn’t bring myself to wear dresses and shorts. I was lucky because unlike so many women today, particularly women in the public eye, there

While details of the assault by a male passenger who urinated on a 70-year-old woman on a New York-Delhi Air India flight are still emerging, there’s news of another incident, also concerning a male passenger, a woman and urine. The first incident took place on November 26, but came to light only recently. The second also took

For men to share the housework Thanks to the 2019 Time Use Survey by the National Statistical Office we know exactly how men and women spend their time. Women, across India spent an average of five hours a day to men’s hour-and-a-half to cook, clean, wash, and care for children, the elderly and the sick. That’s a

1. Droupadi Murmu was appointed India’s first tribal, and second woman, president. Of which state was she earlier the governor? 2. “Women, life, freedom” is the slogan of Iran’s ongoing women-led protests sparked by the death of a 23-year-old woman while in the custody of the country’s so-called morality police. Can you name her? (Source:

Anjali* was 15 and was raised by her widowed mother when she met 19-year-old Shahid. She was drawn to his soft-spoken nature and the fact that he had a steady job at a fast food outlet. She knew her mother would never accept her relationship with a Muslim man. So when she decided to marry

Back when Rahool was not fully a man, he believed, like so many of his friends, that an occasional slap to his girlfriend was no big deal. “I thought she’s my property, why should it be anybody else’s business?” he said. Pradip, now 25, was one of the boys who hung around the by-lanes of

I’m going to let male readers of this newsletter into a long-held secret of the sisterhood. Ask your women friends about the one indispensable accessory they carry, or think they should, while using public transport. Their answer might surprise you. It is the humble safety pin. Last week, Hana Mohsin Khan, a pilot, started a

Caption: Representational image Image Credit: Unsplash 1. Gender-based violence begins before birth with pre-natal sex selection and abortion and continues through child and forced marriage, honour killing, sexual violence, sexual harassment at work, cyber crimes, and domestic violence. 2. Worldwide, 45,000 women and girls – five an hour – were killed by an intimate partner or family