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 gender gap of roughly four hours. Fair? Far from it. One of the key reasons that holds women back from paid employment is the inordinate time they spend on unpaid housework. Clearly, the more time women spend on housework, the less they have for paid work…

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: BBC) 3. The rollback of this 1973 decision by the US Supreme Court was a huge blow to abortion rights in that country. What is the 1973 decision known as? 4. In October, the Board of Control for Cricket in India announced pay parity for…

In the summer of 2017, five judges of the Supreme Court (SC) sat down to answer one question: Was the practice of triple talaq — where a Muslim husband could divorce his wife by saying the word for divorce three times — “fundamental” to the practice of Islam? The hearing was long overdue. India’s personal laws allow different religions to follow their customs in marriage, adoption, inheritance and divorce. While Hindu law reform began in the 1950s (to great protest by status quoists), Muslim personal law proved trickier.

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 him, it was in a civil court but with tampered documents that put her age at 18. Soon after, she converted to Islam. Three months after her marriage, Shahid was arrested for kidnapping and raping a minor under the Pocso (Protection of Children from Child…

In the decade since data has recorded a rise in numbers not just of rape but also of all crimes against women. Ten years ago, we claimed ownership of the 23-year-old as “India’s daughter”, bestowing on her an unasked-for martyrdom by calling her Nirbhaya. (File Photo) We were so angry then but so full of hope. Ten years ago, the gruesome gang rape of a 23-year-old student in Delhi on December 16 brought tens of thousands of people to the streets, undeterred by tear gas, water cannons, and the winter chill. The world’s attention. Anger in Parliament. A judicial commission.…

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 his home in Dabua, Faridabad, laughing, whistling at girls and passing lewd comments. “All the boys did it. We thought it was harmless,” he said. Thappad, starring Tapsee Pannu, dealt with intimiate-partner violence (Source: Youtube ScreenGrab) There are far too many boys in India who…

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 conversation on social media around safety in public transport and on the streets. Her tweet got over 209,000 impressions with 8,300 people engaging, many of them women who spoke of being sexually harassed with some sharing that often, in the face of bystander apathy, their…

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 member in 2021. 3. Over half, or 56% of all female homicides globally are committed by their own family members. For men, it’s 11%. 4. Karnataka records the highest incidence of spousal violence in India with 44% of married women reporting physical and sexual violence, according to the National…

For as long as girls are taught that marriage is their only goal, they must compromise and a bad husband is better than no husband, they will continue to remain in abusive relationships. Until the monstrosity of his alleged crime, Aaftab Poonawala was your average abusive neighbor. (Anshuman Poyrekar/HT Photo) When R, then 19, fell in love with a man from another caste, her parents made one thing very clear: She was dead to them.

Credit: HT Print Shraddha Walkar had cut ties with her family when she walked out of home to move in with her boyfriend, Aaftab Poonawala in 2020. When a friend, Lakshman Nadar told her father in mid-September this year that he hadn’t heard from her for months, the father got in touch with the police. It was only then, after interrogation, that Aaftab confessed he had killed Shraddha, cut her body into pieces, stored them in a fridge he purchased for the purpose and then disposed of them bit by bit late at night in the adjoining Mehrauli forest. Friends of the…

At 9.18 pm on February 9, 2012, a 19-year-old woman working with a call centre at Gurugram’s Cyber City got off the bus to walk the remainder of the remaining 10-minute distance home at Chhawla Camp. Suddenly, to the shock of two friends who were walking with her, a red Tata Indica pulled up and dragged her in. On February 13, the police arrested a man called Rahul who confessed to raping and killing the woman along with two other men, Ravi Kumar and Vinod. Based on this confession, the woman’s body was found in a field in Haryana’s Rewari…

For too long, too many of us have remained silent about just what it takes to be an employed mother, believing the lie that if we lean in enough, it will all magically work out. It won’t It won’t. If we want workplaces and society to acknowledge, if not understand, what it takes to be employed, we need to articulate our priorities, instead of hopelessly trying to catch all the balls in the air. (Getty Images/iStockphoto) I am talking to B, a young mother just emerging from the shock and awfulness of Covid-19, working from home, lockdown, online classes, housework,…