Promoting Women's Rights in India

CENTRE FOR WOMEN´S DEVELOPMENT STUDIES | Gender issues have increasingly become part of the Indian public debate in the last years. Despite growing public support for women’s rights, gender inequality remains strongly reinforced by patriarchal societal structures and social norms. Additionally, public discussion on the female employment crisis, agrarian distress, caste issues and the changing political economy in the context of gender inequality is usually neglected.

Especially in Northern India, where the majority of the population speaks Hindi, those gender issues are most present: employment of women traditionally is lowest in India and they face strong social constraints. The partnership between the Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS) and the RLS seeks to strengthen women’s rights in the Hindi-belt by disseminating knowledge and promoting exchange between academics and civil actors.

CWDS aims at developing, publicizing and promoting knowledge about women’s roles in society and possibilities to strengthen their societal position. In the project “Dialogue: Women in contemporary India: Contexts and possibilities”, CWDS and RLS wanted to contribute to the public discussion on various dimensions of gender inequality and its inclusion in analytical discourses on social transformation in the Hindi-belt. For that, various workshops and a panel discussion targeted at young researchers, scholars and students were organized and reported on. The project has been successfully completed. RLS and CWDS continue their work.