“There is a need to start looking at women as human beings first rather than victims. Women are capable of looking after their own issues if the government gives them the right to governance, which has been on the back burner for decades”, said Director Ranjana Kumari at CSR’s National Conference 2011 on Why Gender Matters on Monday.

The conference, held at the India Habitat Centre in Delhi on 21 November, brought together leaders from India’s government agencies, civil society and renowned academic institutions to discuss action-based solutions to the issues of gender inequality and women’s rights and empowerment. Various speakers took to the mic throughout the day to address some of the key problems troubling women and girls across the country: pre-natal sex selection, domestic violence, human trafficking and gender and governance.

Kicking the event off during the inaugural session, Bharati Saliwal from UN Women said, “Changing the status of women needs a mindset change. Violence against women is not excusable, acceptable or pardonable.”

Three brave survivors then recounted their experiences of gender discrimination and of overcoming incidents of domestic violence and trafficking. One of the victims was forced to undergo the abortion of her second child since she already had one girl. When she subsequently fell pregnant with a third girl child, she was forced to leave her home and was abandoned by her husband. Another victim, a 48-year-old woman from Western Uttar Pradesh, talked about being married to a HIV positive man who died a year later. She tragically suffered domestic violence at the hands of her in-laws. However, with the help of CSR, the woman has since been able to obtain widow pension and register her daughter for the government’s Ladli scheme.

Nonetheless, the work to be done extends far beyond individual efforts and empowerment. Speakers of all four sessions at Why Gender Matters spoke passionately of the need for better laws and better implementation of those laws in order to improve Indian women’s lives. They also stressed the need for more interaction between media and the government.

Focusing on the promotion of action-based change through experience sharing and participatory discussion, Monday’s conference aimed to establish policy, programme or budget input for government agencies and representatives. The relaxed environment provided a strong platform for collective action amongst non-government organisations and civil society, and resulted in innovative recommendations for new approaches and activities for those working at the grassroots level on gender.

Attendees included key figures from the government, civil society and academic sectors. Esteemed speakers included Smt. Bharati Silawal, EVAW Specialist, UN Women, Dr. Roma Debabrata, President of STOP, Ms. Varsha Despande, a Lawyer from Satara, Maharashtra, Ms.  Bijayalaxmi Nanda,  University of Delhi, Ms. Poonam Kathuria, SWATI, Ms. Lotty Aloric, Lok Sabha TV, Ms. Padma Devasthali, CEHAT, Ms. Indira Jaisingh, President of Lawyers Collective, Ms. Madura Dutta, Resident Manager of Banglanatakdotcom, Mr. N. Sanyal, Additional Sec. MOWCD, Professor Simhadri, Institute of Constitutional and Parliamentary Studies, Ms. Arti Dogra, District Magistrate Bundi, Rajasthan, Ms. Anupama Jha, Transparency International, Ms. Sunita Sehrawat, Ex-Sarpanch, Haryana and Dr. Praveen Kumari Singh, Ministry of Home Affairs and ACP Pratima Sharma of the Special Police Unit for Women and Children.

By Dr. Ranjana Kumari, Director of Centre for Social Research. 

Every newborn girl child will now be adopted by the Government of India. This is the India Planning Commission’s vision, in a new bid to tackle the country’s declining sex ratio. The Commission’s proposal renders the government responsible for the protection of pregnant mothers and their unborn daughters in rural areas, through involvement of health workers and local NGOs, and cash incentives for mothers and midwives.

The Planning Commission suggests monitoring all pregnancies in India by detecting the sex of the child early on and then subsequently supporting parents expecting a girl. Health workers will assist the mother through every stage of her pregnancy and track the growth of the child until she reaches two years of age.

At present, sex determination tests are illegal in India.  When taken with the intention of preventing female births, such tests constitute a violation of the most fundamental human right, the right to life, and are a clear manifestation of violence against women.  Nonetheless, the void between the number of female and male children continues to expand, and India bears the shame of having the worst sex ratio in the world. 2011 Census data reveals the number of girl children (aged 0-6) has decreased from 927 to 914 girls per 1000 boys in the last decade. This is a good indication of the extent to which sex-selective abortions and other harmful practices are carried out in India, regardless of preventative legislation.

The Planning Commission is therefore highly critical of the ban on sex determination tests and proposes relaxing the law to make way for an alternative, more effective solution. However, their proposed alternative will only aggravate the problem. The idea of conducting sex determination tests in rural India is, for lack of a better word, ridiculous. This proposal is not only short-sighted because it overlooks the strong prevalence of pre-natal sex selection in urban areas, but also for failing to address the socio-economic and cultural context of the declining child sex ratio. In light of poverty, patriarchal social structures and traditions, or a combination of all three, parents-to-be continue to go to all lengths to avoid having a girl child. As a result, between 1980 and 2010, somewhere between four to twelve million Indian girls were aborted because of their sex. The question is therefore, when the parents themselves do not want to give birth to girls, how effective can the government really be in persuading them to change their mindsets? Determining the sex of every unborn child in India would make women very vulnerable to pressure and violence from family and community members, potentially leading to an increase in abortion and suicide rates.

Sadly, while the ban on sex determination tests was at one time a landmark achievement,  the Indian girl child is now being treated as a pawn in a game of statistics and unethical lobbying, not as a human being. Now is not the time to relax India’s law on the prohibition of sex determination tests.

Ever wondered who is updating the CSR Facebook page, searching for the latest statistics on crimes against women, or assisting our core team in envisioning, coordinating and facilitating our projects and programs?

We are always very proud of our enthusiastic young interns in the CSR office. Over the years we’ve had interns join us from both across the country and across the world – from Punjab, Jharkhand, and Maharashtra in India to Scotland, Germany, Canada and Georgia. They’ve worked on a variety of projects such as Walk a Mile in Her Shoes, the I Stand for Safe Delhi campaign, Human Rights Defenders training workshops and numerous research projects. We’d like to introduce you to some of our current hard working interns!

Meet Maia Barkaia, Research Intern at Centre for Social Research, from Sokhumi, Georgia.

Research Intern Maia working hard at work in the CSR office

What brought you to New Delhi?

I am currently working on a Ph.D in Gender Studies (looking at the intersections of gender and religious identities) through Tbilisi State University. Over the past few years, my studies have been related to India and, as I read more about women’s struggles and feminism in India, I decided to immerse myself in some practical work in additon to my more theoretical experiences. I had the privilege of joining Centre for Social Research as an intern this August.

Describe a typical day at CSR for you…

My day at CSR is quite busy, but interesting. During the day I’m looking through different academic articles related to the project that the  research team works on, processing data, and writing reports on the studies that have been carried out.

What is the most shocking thing you’ve learned about women in India since starting your research at CSR?

While reading CSR reports and  research projects about pre-natal sex selection and sexual harassment, I was  profoundly shocked by the sheer scale of discrimination against women in India.

What do you enjoy doing when you’re studying or working?

I like that there is such a wide variety of things to do in Delhi. I love attending different cultural programs and public meetings, roaming in the streets of Old Delhi, visiting friends in Jawaharlal Nehru University and exploring new and exciting places outside of the city.

On April 25 and 26, members of our research team, including Head of Research Dr. Manasi Mishra, were invited to participate at key speakers at the second Beti Bachao (Save the Girl Child) conference in Panipat, Haryana state. Beti Bachao was founded last year in Ambala by activists from 14 Indian states and meets annually to strengthen the campaign.

Organised by the Alliance for People’s Movement (NAPM) and Asha Parivar, the conference was jointly inaugurated by Chaudhary Virendar Singh, General Secretary of All India Congress Committee; Manimala, social activist and writer; Veena Behen from Gandhi Global Family; and eminent Pakistani peace activist Saeeda Deep. More than seven hundred people from across India participated in the conference.

By Michelle Tan, Intern – Research Department.

Dressed in a plain brown Saree, a 44-year-old woman from a remote rural village in Ambala (Haryana state) peered at us curiously when we knocked on the broken, rusty gates of her house. “Namaste,” my colleague Amrita said. “We are from Centre for Social Research and would like to conduct a quick survey with you. Can we come in?” The woman nodded her head shyly, smiled at us and then excitedly beckoned us into the front yard of her house.

To say that she lived in a “house” might be somewhat of a misnomer, especially since her “house” was in fact really a shed, and there were half-laid stones and bricks strewn everywhere. The walls were Grey and incomplete, and construction had obviously long been in progress. We sat down on the only piece of furniture to begin what we had initially imagined would be a typical conversation on female foeticide—or, as typical as a conversation on female foeticide could be. What we didn’t expect was that our host would so warmly and immediately open up to us, revealing her most personal experiences of sexs election, discrimination and the ordeal she went through when standing up against it.

Already a mother of one boy and two girls, our host was pregnant for the fourth time when her in-laws and husband found out from a sonogram that she was once again expecting a girl child. Angered by the news, the family adamantly insisted that she should undergo an abortion. They, like so many in India, believed that a girl child was a waste of family resources. A girl, they argued, was of no particular value and as a result of dowry, she would also be impossibly expensive. But unlike many mothers who silently suffered, our host was strong-willed and refused to give up her child or undergo an abortion. She was henceforth disgraced and expelled from her family, slammed in the face with a quick divorce. Shamed by the scandals of their daughter, her parents put her up for a second arranged marriage. She married again, but her husband died young in the Indian army, and she became a widow. At the moment, she continues to bravely and independently support four young children on her own—an incredibly rare, brave and admirable feat especially in rural India.

We left that day, humbled and in awe of this incredibly strong woman. Her story serves as a painful and grave reminder that female foeticide, for all its supposed allegations and denials, is still a real and pervasive reality in much of Indian society today. Her story reminds us that women who transgress from the norm and elect to stand up against their family to save a female fetus risk losing their livelihoods, if not their lives. Her story stands out not only because she was empowered in spite of lacking a formal education or any privileges whatsoever, but also because she spoke with no complaint and no expectations of sympathy. That’s where she stands victorious: because this one woman in her plain brown Saree does not see herself as an object of pity, but as a woman in her totality who can and will get her due in her own right.

View more photos from the April 5-7 baseline study in Ambala at Centre for Social Research’s Flickr account.

Yesterday, our Research team held a Community Watch Group meeting as part of our Meri Shakti, Meri Beti project at the anganwaadi (daycare) centre in the Manav Chowk and Kotwali Sarai areas of Ambala, Haryana.The meeting brought together over 30 women from the local community as well as young girls and boys.

Major issues discussed included the need for educating boys and girls so that they know more about their rights and duties as community and family members. Many women called for recruiting more men to Community Watch Group meetings to enlist their help in spreading awareness about pre-natal sex selection (female foeticide) and the need for equality between genders.

Community Watch Groups meetings are an important part of our team’s work on violence against women, female foeticide and overall efforts to promote gender equality. They represent an important opportunity to interact with local communities and share ideas on how best to move forward on these issues.

The second Interface workshop under our comprehensive Meri Shakti Meri Beti project was held at the Panchayat Bhawan of Kurukshetra, Haryana state on March 4, with thanks to our funders: WomenPowerConnect and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Bahari Mohalla(community) residents of all ages attended the meeting with aaganwadi (daycare) and ASHA workers, and students from Kurukshetra University and the Kurukshetra College of Education. The designated “Expert Group” included Dr. Sushma Saini, Chief Medical Officer, and Ms. Deepshikha Kaushik, Domestic Violence Officer.

Initiating the workshop, our own Dr. Manasi Mishra spoke about the wider social and economic implications of pre-natal sex selection (female foeticide). To successfully address pre-natal sex selection, the status of women must increase by changing the deeply patriarchal mindset in communities and families. Chief Medical Officer Dr. Saini pointed out that ultrasound technology was invented to assist medical treatment and not to perpetuate a social malice like female foeticide. Other speakers, including members of the local community, spoke about the high cases of domestic violence in parts of Haryana and the importance of taking more responsibility to care for girl children.

To date, the Meri Shakti, Meri Beti project to reduce pre-natal sex selection has organised over 40 Community Outreach Programs, nine Community Watch Group meetings, two Expert Group meetings and one Interface Workshop in the Kurukshetra district of Haryana state.

To view more photos from event, visit Center for Social Research’s Flickr account.

Continuing in our efforts to fight female foeticide, our Research department led an Expert Group Meeting in Kurushetra, Haryana as part of the Meri Shakti, Meri Beti project last week. We were honoured that our meeting was attended by both local community members and figures from the local medical community, including the Chief Medical Officer of the Civil Hospital, Kurukshetra Dr. Sushma Saini; PC/PNDT Officer Dr. K.K.Sharma; Family Welfare Officer Dr. Madhu Sharma; and the Superintendent of the Civil Hospital, Dr. Lajya Ram.

The main purpose of the meeting was to look into how ultrasound machines are actually registered, and how portable machines are being used and transported. We also discussed the follow-up of two long-pending legal cases, heard community members’ concerns about 3 new area clinics, and talked about the level of awareness amongst doctors to combat pre-natal sex selection.

Dr. Manasi Mishra, our Head of Research and the Meri Shakti, Meri Beti project coordinator, also highlighted some of the recent initiatives by the Haryana government in fighting female foeticide. They have introduced cash rewards of Rs. 5 lakhs, 3 lakhs and 1 lakh ($11,200, $6,700 and $2,235 USS) for best sex ratio state districts. Additionally, informers who can provide information relating to illegal practises will receive a Rs. 5,000 ($110 USD) reward. However, some argued that the prize money awarded from the government is much too meagre, and no one will ever risk his life for it.

Overall, the meeting provided a valuable opportunity for medical professionals to exchange ideas and discuss the problem of female foeticide: It’s heartening to be able to join forces with committed medical professionals who are as determined to end this practise as we are.