The Hindu : Little comfort to women

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Mar 09, 2002

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National

Little comfort to women

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI MARCH 8. Introduced in Parliament today as the Government's gift-of-sorts to women on International Women's Day, the Protection from Domestic Violence Bill, 2002, has become a cause of concern for women's groups which have cautioned against its enactment in its current form.

The women's groups rallied together during the day and issued a statement in the evening; describing the bill's introduction in the Lok Sabha as a "punishment for women on International Women's Day'' as it does not provide any remedy to victims of domestic violence.

The organisations that have thrown in their lot with the chorus against the Bill are Jagori, Nirantar, Action India, Ankur, Lawyers Collective, All-India Democratic Women's Association, Saheli, Akshara (Mumbai), Women's Centre (Mumbai), PLD, Anweshi (Calicut), Young Women's Christian Association (India), National Federation of Indian Women, Ekta (Madurai), Amnesty, Aali (Lucknow), Manasa (Bangalore) and Shakti Shalini.

Their day thus spoilt, the debate in Parliament on the Women's Reservation Bill — where all those who rose to speak on the subject favoured it — came as poor consolation; particularly as there has been no dearth of lip-service on women's political empowerment. And, the Prime Minister's reiteration of the Government position that a political consensus ought to be evolved before it is passed was a perfect case of adding insult to injury for women activists have insisted that this had become a pretext for delaying its enactment.

Apart from this, the women also got some advice from the former Union Law Minister, Ram Jethmalani, who — during the discussion on the Women's Reservation Bill in the Rajya Sabha — urged them to become aggressive like Goddess Durga to get their due.

The developments in Parliament vis-a-vis women and the consequent reaction from organisations working for gender uplift apart, the day was marked by a number of discussions on issues affecting the fair sex.

In one such discussion organised by the United Nations Information Centre on `Women and Sustainable Development', the First Lady, Usha Narayanan, sought to underline the need for gender equality by reminding that Mahatma Gandhi had once said "developmental works stopped half way because women are not associated with them". Of the view that development "has been something of an undeclared war against women and nature'', she said "development, if not engendered is endangered".

At another discussion on `Women Empowerment: Turning Dreams Into Reality', organised by the FICCI Ladies Organisation (FLO), wives of several heads of diplomatic missions based in Delhi spoke about the lot of women in their respective countries.

If NGOs had their say at the UNIC conference and women from the corporate sector at the FLO meeting, women scientists were the toast of a function organised by the Department of Biotechnology and the Department of Women and Child Development.

With the Finance Minister assigning the two departments the task of encouraging women scientists in his Budget speech, the Minister of State for Science and Technology, Bachi Singh Rawat, said strategies were being worked out to attract women into careers in science and engineering.

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