Archives: Women

There was a recent move in the Maharashtra Assembly which did not go down well with anti-abortionists. The state was planning to treat female foeticide as murder, and book culprits under the Indian Penal Code (IPC). On the face of it, it appeared a welcome step towards addressing the skewed sex ratio issue. But delve a bit deep, and the contours of the debate change – for the issue is also a lot about semantics and definitions. Fauzia Khan, minister of state for public health, announced in the legislative council that the public health department had asked its law and judiciary...

No sooner had Mamata Banerjee made her “I am a simple man” gaffe on CNN-IBN, than Twitter went ablaze. Digs and jokes ranged from the derisive to the racist. And sexist, of course. They went on. Yes, accents and pronunciations can indeed be funny. Quite often. And if you are a pundamentalist, you can always have a rolling day out in a multi-lingual country like India. But this Mamata ‘slip of the tongue’ was more a ‘slip of the mind’, and it was certainly not punny. ...

The West, led by the United States, has been incessantly pounding Libya in the name of humanity the last few days. Saving humanity, so we are told. Yet, the gravest humanitarian crisis of our times remains grossly neglected by the same self-righteous nations. If the rape of 400,000 girls and women in a 12-month period is not a humanitarian catastrophe, what on earth can be one? If the rape of 1.8 million women in the 15-year Democratic Republic of Congo conflict is not macabre, what on earth can be? ...

You, more often than not, become a product of the times and the circumstances that you live in. If you live in a conflict zone, the incessant bloodletting gets to you sooner than later. Either you become inured to brutalities, or start believing that killing one’s fellow human beings is the only to either to gain salvation or to solve your immediate existentialist problems. But suppose you were to extend this analogy to a place where cattle-rearing is one of the mainstays of the people. Would that mean that the government of the day there would start treating its own people as...

In the next ten years, 100 million girls will be married off against their consent before the age of 18. Their chance of dying in childbirth is five times those aged 20-24, and their risk of contracting HIV is significantly high. That's what the law of averages say. Their plight could have been better, even so marginally, had the US House of Representatives passed a particular Bill on Thursday night. The US State Department could have helped fight child marriage by expanding investments in other countries to empower girls and promote community understanding about the harmful impact...

The outrage in the Western world over the Sakineh Ashtiani issue increasingly seems like an outrage that is directed more at Iran, than any real concern over human rights. US President Barack Obama, who only the other day, lectured India on human rights, so far has not been able to utter a single world against a similar case in Saudi Arabia, where another young woman is on a death row. Last month, the Supreme Court in Riyadh endorsed the death sentence imposed on Sri Lankan maid Rizana Nafeek. Her crime: an infant had died in her care in 2005. Rizana has been sentenced to death for...

On December 24, 2008, Adama Kamara was six months pregnant and went into premature labour. By the next day it became clear she was suffering prolonged labour. The family observed her for one day before transporting her to a government hospital in Kambia, Sierra Leone. Transporting her to the hospital cost Le40,000 (US$13), which her husband borrowed from his neighbours. When they arrived at the hospital, Abu Kamara had to pay Le2,000 (US$0.67) for registration and Le10,000 (US$3.30) for a hospital bed, in addition to charges for medicines. At the hospital, Adama was given an...

Many Indian hospitals routinely subject rape survivors to forensic examinations that include the unscientific and degrading "finger" test, Human Rights Watch has said in a report. The 54-page report, "Dignity on Trial: India's Need for Sound Standards for Conducting and Interpreting Forensic Examinations of Rape Survivors," documents the continued use of the archaic practice and the continued reliance on the "results" by many defence counsel and courts. The medieval practice, described in outdated medical jurisprudence textbooks used by many doctors, lawyers, and judges, involves a...

Anything being done for the first time generates a lot of interest, both in the media as well as among the consuming public who devour such coverage. So when it comes to female MPs posing in a glam calendar, the interest generated is bound to be on the higher side. As it was when the Public Affairs (VV – Veci verejne) party in the Czech Republic started selling a 2011 calendar featuring photographs of some of its leading female members, including four newly sworn-in lawmakers, clad in revealing outfits and posing provocatively. ...

The polls are here – now is the time to fabricate politically correct statements. So the BJP prime minister-in-waiting Atal Bihari Vajpayee pledges to hasten in the Women’s Reservation Bill and goes on to add, “Rapists should be hanged.” Don’t ask why this man never came out with such radical assertions all these years. For pretty much the same reason, PR Kumarmangalam, when cornered on a TV show about his party creating an issue of Sonia Gandhi’s Italian roots, comes out with a patriarchal defence “...bahu akhir ghar ki hoti hai (the bride, after all belongs to the...