Women & Child Welfare

Sometime after observing World Menstrual Hygiene Day, a community development nonprofit, The Desai Foundation in collaboration with Shantaben Vidhyabhavan announced the expansion of its “by women, for women” Sanitary Napkins Program in Gujarat, India.  The program which provides training, employment and access to sanitary napkins, is expanding the second branch, inorder to reach an additional 250,000 women and girls. The product manufactured and sold through this...

The Maternity Bill has been in force since 1 April, bringing in a host of issues in its wake. There have been over the economic forces that come into play while implementing the tenets of the Act, with HR managers across disciplines trying to find solutions to their specific requirements within the framework mandated by the...

Abortion remains highly restricted in India. The governing law, the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act (1971), permits abortions before 12 weeks of pregnancy by a registered medical practitioner or before 20 weeks of pregnancy with the approval of two registered medical practitioners, but only if the mother or child's mental or physical health is in danger. A slightly more liberal amendment is under consideration, but still does not allow abortion if the woman simply wishes to terminate the pregnancy.

As part of a Global Trends study, Ipsos examined global attitudes toward the role of women, parenting, and family across 22 countries by interviewing 18,180 adults. Majority of Indians surveyed (64%) think role of women in society is to be good mothers and wives revolving around home, according to the 2017 survey. When it comes to...

With the decreasing sex ratio in India, it has been reported by the Indian Government that the sex ratio will drop further in the coming years. The report, by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation was published earlier in the year. According to the report, the number of women every thousand men will drop...

Recently, Assam’s health minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, unveiled the draft of a new population policy for the state. It proposes, among other things, to penalise people who have more than two children. However, the Government has sought public suggestions on the draft population policy, which would be put up in the public domain, before...

Individual Social Responsibility is about continuing to make efforts inorder to make a difference in the lives of people. Earlier this month, a dowry-less social wedding ceremony was organised at Palakkad in Kerala. The biannual ceremony, witnessed 21 couples tying the knot during first edition of this year’s social wedding. “We have always believed in...

Tribal population in India is a community that is underdeveloped both economically and socially. They mostly live in isolation from mainstream population. Women especially often find it difficult to be employed in the mainstream jobs. However, they are very good at traditional skills, which are tapped on by We Will Help (WWH) Charitable Foundation,...

Investopedia defines demonetisation as, “the act of stripping a currency unit of its status as legal tender. Demonetisation is necessary whenever there is a change of national currency. The old unit of currency must be retired and replaced with a new currency unit.” The demonetisation of banknotes policy was enacted by the Government of India ceasing the usage...

An estimate of 1.2 million children are pushed into the abyss of forced prostitution in India, which means that India has the largest amount of child prostitutes in the world. Out of those 1.2 million cases, only 55 legal cases led to convictions in 2015. To counter this impunity, ‘School of Justice’ was launched on...

The Union Cabinet on Friday took long pending steps to strengthen laws against child labour. It approved ratification of the Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138) and Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182) of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave its approval...

It is estimated that there are 20 million commercial sex workers in India, and around 80% of these, i.e. 16 million women, are victims of sex trafficking. This alarming figure begs for people to take notice of growing criminal industry of the trade of human beings, not only in India but throughout the world. Ruchira Gupta, Indian anti-sex-trafficking activist is...