The protests by some women workers at Urban Company, the Indian platform that provides home and beauty services, are not new. What is unprecedented is the legal notice sent by the company to its workers (called “partners”) who are protesting against “unfair trade practices”, which the women say, will hurt their earnings. Back in October, the women had sat in protest too. Then, the company agreed to revise its commission rates, a bone of contention with the workers. On December 20, there was a new round of protests as 50-odd women began a sit-in outside the company’s office to demonstrate against new…

A year of loss and devastation still managed to have its undeniable hurrahs. More women judges in the higher judiciary, and the Delhi High Court, set to welcome its first openly gay judge, were a win for wider representation In the end, it wasn’t institutions so much as women themselves who raised the greater cheers. Lovlina Borghain, Mirabai Chanu, and PV Sindhu went to the Olympics and showed what women are made of. (Getty Images) As the year came to an end, the flight out of Kabul brought the last remaining students of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, including…

Hello and welcome to Mind the Gap, a newsletter that adds perspective to the gender developments of the week. Bringing the minimum age requirement for women at par with men falls in line with Constitutional guarantees of equality for all citizens (Shutterstock) THE BIG STORY The government is planning to introduce a bill to increase the minimum marriage age of women from 18 to 21. To become law, the bill must be passed by both houses of Parliament after it is introduced, most likely during the winter session. The proposal, cleared during a Cabinet meeting on December 15, follows the…

The government is planning to introduce a bill to increase the minimum marriage age of women from 18 to 21. To become law, the bill must be passed by both houses of Parliament after it is introduced, most likely during the winter session. The proposal, cleared during a Cabinet meeting on December 15, follows the recommendations of a task force headed by Samata Party leader Jaya Jaitley. In his 2020 Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the government was considering steps to ensure daughters were “married off at the right age”. The case for Increasing the marriage age…

Hello and welcome to Mind the Gap, a newsletter that adds perspective to the gender developments of the week. ‘Honour’ killings, where the families of daughters who exercise agency in their choice of marriage partners and so incur their family’s wrath for bringing disgrace, are India’s enduring shame (AFP) THE BIG STORY She was making a cup of tea for her mother and brother who had come to visit; her husband was ill and lying in an adjoining room. “Come home and visit,” the mother said, apparently trying to make up for the months of silence since June when the…

Hiring women drivers and conductors will instill confidence and enable more women to use public transport DTC hired its first woman driver, V Saritha, in April 2015 with announcements to hire more. Six years later, Saritha remains its sole woman driver (Hindustan Times)” Omkari’s family was scandalized when she told them she wanted to learn how to drive. This is not women’s work, they protested. You better stick to the odd tailoring job at home. Omkari, who uses only one name and has studied till class 10, persisted. The battle was won once she convinced her husband, who runs a…

Hello and welcome to Mind the Gap, a newsletter that adds perspective to the gender developments of the week. Behind the various laws that seek to regulate women’s bodies lies the question of choice. How freely do women exercise agency when it comes to marriage, when to have a baby, or how many babies to have? (Hindustan Times) THE BIG STORY: Of women’s bodies On December 1, Lok Sabha passed the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill by a voice vote after a three-hour discussion. The bill is the most recent of a series of legislations that concern women’s bodies including one on…

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…

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…

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…

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, says Ranjita Sinha, she knew she wasn’t like other kids at her all-boys school. She didn’t want to play sport, preferring instead to dance and sing. “There was no word for me back then,” she says on the phone from West Bengal where she runs…

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? What happens to them when education ends? (Waseem Andrabi / Hindustan Times) When K, the younger daughter of parents who work as household help near Solan, Himachal Pradesh, enrolled in 2019 to do her Bachelor of Arts (General) through the distance-learning programme of the Indira…