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FeaturesMedieval practices in a modern state
Three members of a family were hacked to death under the gaze of an entire village because their witchcraft was believed to be responsible for the death of a young girl. This is one of three such incidents in recent times in a village just 14 miles from Jharkhand's state capital, Ranchi, which itself has seen 240 murders of ‘witches’ in the past 10 years More... Singur's women: From warriors to worriersIn Singur following the exit of the Tatas, with no farmland returned and no land development either, landless agricultural labourers were the first to slip into the ‘food unsecured’ category, followed by sharecroppers, fisher folk and marginal landowners. Most affected in each category have been the women More... Women at work: The betel nut crackersA photo-essay on the poor, lower-caste, mostly non-literate women of Karnataka who labour undocumented and unrecognised behind the scenes of the multi-crore betel nut industry More... All aboard the ladies specialMore than 80% of women in Delhi say they are sexually harassed on public transport. The paternal administration’s only response is to further sexualise public spaces by offering ladies special buses with curtains to protect women from the male gaze More... 'Criminalising the client will cause prostitution to drop by 80%': Catharine MacKinnonLeading American feminist Catharine MacKinnon makes a strong case for criminalising the client and not the sex worker More... New vistas for working women in India's IT industryBy 2010 60% of graduates across Asia, America and Europe will be women. At its third annual IT Women Leadership Summit held recently in Bangalore, India’s premier trade body NASSCOM declared that workplace diversity and gender inclusion is a business imperative today More... Why is the women's movement silent on abortion?The Union Ministry of Health is examining the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act with a view to raising the time limit for abortion from 20 weeks to 24 weeks. What would the moral and ethical implications of this move be? And why has the women’s movement in India been strangely silent on these important developments? More... Maharashtra's age-of-marriage competition58% of girls in Maharashtra first conceive at 15-19 years. Following the success of an IHMP initiative which saw a three-fold increase in the use of contraceptives, delay in the median age of conception by a year, and a reduction in post-natal complications and reproductive tract infections, the Maharashtra government will reward villages that succeed in raising the age of marriage for girls More... The song, dance and sorrows of sex workers' livesVAMP, a sex workers’ collective, aims to ensure that marginalised communities like women in prostitution and transgenders can assert, articulate and access their rights. They couldn’t have come up with a better way of articulating their concerns than My Mother, The Gharwali, Her Maalak, His Wife, a play devised and performed by the sex workers themselves More... Murdered for Love'Honour' killings of young people who marry outside their caste are making front-page news every day. Even as the administration and local politicians look the other way, some courageous women have raised their voices and filed cases against the perpetrators of these barbaric acts More... Trafficking women for domestic workMany ‘employment agencies’ that are springing up in cities to place migrant women for domestic work are little more than traffickers. The condition in which these women work violates several laws including the Bonded Labour Act and in many cases the Child Labour and Juvenile Justice Act. Activists are calling for a specific law to regulate the domestic work sector More... Mistress of indigenous flavoursTriveni Devangan, daughter of a farmer in Chhattisgarh, set up an ice-cream factory a little over two years ago with a loan of Rs 22 lakh. Today, her factory has an annual turnover of over Rs 20 lakh. Her products sell in six districts of Chhattisgarh, with her signature flavours being most in demand More... The land is ours!Around half of all agricultural land in India is now farmed by women, as more and more men migrate to earn money. Yet the slow pace of land and property rights reform has failed to keep up. Although women may have more rights on paper than they did 20 years ago, there has been little progress on the ground More... Brick by brickTwelve illiterate tribal women belonging to a self-help group set up their own brick kiln, changing the power structure in their village in the process More... Delays do not bode well for Domestic Violence BillDomestic violence is spiralling: 7 lakh cases are expected to be registered in this year. But India's path-breaking new Domestic Violence Act, passed last year, has not yet been notified. Activists in the capital met recently to demand that the government notify and implement the law More... Supporting the ban: Bar girls are often traffickedA study by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences' Prayas project supports the controversial 2005 ban on bar dancers in Mumbai on the grounds that there is often an element of human trafficking involved in the entry of these women into the dance bars. The majority of women spoken to were not, in fact, exercising free choice and the right to livelihood but had been duped by middlemen More... Penalising clients of sex workers: Pros and consWill the amendments to the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act proposed by the government protect sex workers from exploitation at the hand of clients and police, or will it end up making them more vulnerable? More... Sting operation to find 'missing' girl-childSting operations are not conducted by the media and law-enforcement agencies alone. The Satara-based CSO, Dalit Mahila Vikas Mandal, has nabbed seven doctors red-handed for violating the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act and revealing the sex of foetuses More... Dancers in the darkAs three bar dancers commit suicide in Mumbai following the ban on dance bars in Maharashtra, an SNDT study busts several myths about the working conditions, backgrounds and lifestyles of these More... Delhi's skewed sex ratio: "24,000 girls go missing every year"Delhi's sex ratio has become more and more skewed over the years. One study of families which already have one or more daughters shows just 219 girls being born for every 1,000 boys More... The rot in Orissa's reproductive health servicesAt a recent public hearing in Orissa's Jagatsinghpur district, both men and women told harrowing tales of negligence, bungling and lack of facilities in the state's public healthcare system More... Women panchayat members: Catapulted into the public domainMore than a decade after the 73rd constitutional amendment made it mandatory for 33% of all panchayat seats to be reserved for women, have women begun to play a significant role in local self-governance? More... 'Treating infanticide as homicide is inhuman'Prosecuting women such as Karuppayee, the first woman in Tamil Nadu to be convicted of female infanticide, is hardly the answer to the problem of female infanticide and foeticide, says P Pavalam, state-level convenor of the Madurai-based coalition NGO Campaign Against Sex Selective Abortion (CASSA). The role of the state and society in perpetuating the secondary status of women is the real issue to be addressed More... Female foeticide: The collusion of the medical establishmentThe PCPNDT Act prohibits sex selection by any means, before or after conception. But, as one survey in Chennai of 29 ultrasound clinics found, for the medical fraternity it's business as usual More... |
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