Two Delhi high court judges, Rajiv Shakdher and C Hari Shankar could not agree on whether marital rape should be criminalised. What they did agree on, however, was that the case could move to the Supreme Court since substantial questions of law were involved. The judges were hearing a bunch of petitions first filed seven years ago to look at an exception in India’s rape laws that exempts a man from the charge of rape even if he forces his wife to have non-consensual sex. The question before the judges was whether this immunity to husbands went against the constitutional…

They studied in the same school and had known each other for 11 years. She is Muslim, he a Dalit from the Mala community. When they declared their intention to marry, her family said a flat-out no. On January 30, she left home and a day later married the love of her life at an Arya Samaj temple. Her family filed a missing person’s report at the police station. B. Nagaraju, 25 and his wife, Ashrin Sultana, 25, told the superintendent of police, Vikarabad district that they feared for their lives. The police told her parents to stay away from them. But…

After 21 years of service when Maniben Maganbhai Bhariya, an Adivasi women working as an anganwadi helper in district Dahod, Gujarat, retired on February 20, 2006 she was drawing a salary of Rs 1,250 a month. Based on this, Maniben was entitled to a one-time gratuity of Rs 14,423. Seven years later when even that sum hadn’t been paid to her, she filed an application to the prescribed authority. Yes, she was owed the money, the authority agreed. Yes, she was owed the money, an appellate authority confirmed. Yes, she was owed gratuity ruled a single judge bench of the…

India needs a focused fight that involves government, the private sector, and civil society. The government can pass laws and policies such as expanding paternity leave and providing tax breaks for companies that promote inclusion (Shutterstock) In 2017, when I began a 12-part investigation on women and work, people were surprised when told that Indian women were dropping out of the labor market in droves. “But you see women everywhere,” was the response I often got. At that time, women’s labor force participation at 27%, according to the government, placed us just above Saudi Arabia among the G20 nations.

As the interfaith couple–Muslim man, Hindu woman–was about to enter the registrar’s office at Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh (UP) on April 18 to marry under the Special Marriage Act, they were accosted by a group of Hindu Yuva Vahini activists. This is ‘love jihad’ the group alleged. The man had befriended the woman on social media, using a fake Hindu name, it claimed. The police was called in to file a first information report (FIR) with various charges slapped on the man, including kidnapping and abduction. Then, they informed the woman’s parents who live in Ludhiana to come and take away…

In an event that got little public attention, the Greater Chennai Corporation launched a ‘gender lab’, the first such initiative by any local urban body in the country. Simply put, as the name suggests, gender lab is an experiment on what would happen, and what it would take, to design a city’s infrastructure keeping women in mind. The fact that the gender lab, set up with assistance from the World Bank and the Nirbhaya Fund, was inaugurated in the presence of the mayor and the police commissioner is a sign of intent and gives cause for hope. To start with,…

It is our convenient, shifting attitudes to rape, our unrelenting focus on the victim, not the crime, that makes us all complicit. That an elected head of a state is part of this mob makes it tragic Victim blaming is not new. Survivors continue to be asked what they were wearing, why they were out, and why they didn’t put up a strong enough fight. They continue to be subjected to banned practices like the two-finger test. If the case ever reaches court, they are asked humiliating questions; sexual history, for instance (REPRESENTATIVE PHOTO) The death of a 14-year-old girl…

History books might not tell you about these trailblazing women but do you know who they are? 1. Everyone knows Savitribai Phule, the self-taught feminist reformer who is India’s first female teacher, fought for girls’ education, campaigned for widow remarriage and set up India’s first infanticide prevention shelter in 1853 where unmarried women could leave their babies. In 1873 she organised a marriage. What was so unusual about it? 2. Name the 14th century Bhakti saint from the Mahar community who sang of family, the hardship of daily existence and devotion to God. Her 62 surviving abanghas (compositions) speak of being served left-over food…

After qualifying for the final in 2017 World Cup and the 2020 T20 World Cup, the hope that women’s cricket in India had turned the corner was belied when the team failed to make it to the semi-finals for the first time since 2016. There was no shortage of talent from the experienced Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami, who between them have played 432 ODIs, to Harmanpreet Kaul who has played more than 100 games. Balancing this was a raft of younger players including Shafali Verma who made her debut as a 15-year-old in 2019. So what went wrong? “World…

For women who continue to fight for the equal agency, there is something primitive about this modern version of throwing down the gauntlet The time has come to say to men: We will fight our own battles. If you’re an ally, support us. If you’re not, get out of the way. (Biplov Bhuyan/HT PHOTO) As often happens to women in public transport, the man brushes past me as he rushes to the front of the bus. Someone decides to act on my behalf and grabs the guy and slaps him. Other passengers get involved and there’s a free for all.…

Kanye West has been barred from performing at the Grammys due to his ‘concerning online behaviour’. Kanye, who now goes by the name Ye, is up for five Grammy awards. The incident that led to the rapper’s Grammy disbarment, and 24-hour suspension from Instagram, was a racial slur against Daily Show host Trevor Noah who had expressed concern for West’s wife, Kim Kardashian, after she filed for divorce in February. West’s online and offline behaviour has been, to be polite, erratic: overkill with a truckload of flowers to Kardashian on Valentine’s Day; posting private correspondence from her current boyfriend Pete Davidson; berating…

The Karnataka High Court has upheld the state government’s ban on the wearing of hijab (head-scarf) by students in school. The three-judge bench pronounced judgment on a petition filed by some Muslim girl students seeking protection of their right to wear a head scarf in educational institutes. The girls have now approached the Supreme Court to challenge the high court decision. What the judgement says “Wearing of hijab by Muslim women does not form a part of essential religious practice in Islamic faith. The prescription of school uniform is only a reasonable restriction…” “Prescription of school dress code to the exclusion of hijab, bhagwa,…