by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Rabat : The Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) will organize a national training workshop on cottage industry for rural women in Kampala, Uganda, on 25-27 September, as part of Kampala’s celebration as the African Region’s Islamic Culture Capital for 2017.
The workshop aims at increasing rural women’s chances in finding an income-generating work to contribute to social development, enhancing economic capacities, fighting poverty and empowering rural women.
The workshop will benefit 40 women from various rural regions of Uganda. Dr Aicha Bammoun, Program Specialist at the Directorate of Science and Technology, will supervise the workshop on behalf of ISESCO.
—AG/IINA
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Bhavana Akella,
Bengaluru : It was in 1905 that the first Nobel Prize for Peace was won by a woman, Bertha von Suttner. Since then, there have been 15 others who have been awarded the Nobel Peace prize for their efforts. In a multitude of cultural settings from different countries and situations, all the women had one aspect in common — fighting injustice.
In her latest book, “Battling Injustice: 16 Women Nobel Peace Laureates” (HarperCollins; Rs 599; 512pp), 28-year-old international journalist and peace activist Supriya Vani chronicles the lives of these 16 women.
Looking at each of the women through a cultural and political lens, Vani brings out facets of these women one wouldn’t otherwise know.
From the youngest Nobel Peace Laureate Malala Yousafzai to Africa’s first woman head of state Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, to the Iranian crusader for human rights Shirin Ebadi, to Myanmarese politician Aung San Suu Kyi, Vani also managed to meet all the 10 living female Nobel peace laureates.
“It was indeed a herculean task. It needed grit and determination and, above all, tenacity of purpose to pursue all living 10 women Nobel peace laureates and convince them about my earnestness to further the cause of world peace,” Vani told IANS in an interview.
Meeting the women was both inspiring and ennobling, said Vani, who is also a member of the advisory board of The Hague Justice Portal.
She also had to visit the International Court of Justice and many international libraries to gather information about the six peace prize winners who are no longer alive.
“One need not gather all the details. One only needs to know the intrinsic values which they cherished in their lives which need to be made known to others,” Vani elaborated.
The author also shared in the book personal letters written by these women to their families during challenging periods, their thoughts as teenagers and how grit was a common denominator she could draw among all the 16 women.
“Fathoming the guts of these women to fight injustice has been at the core of my entire research effort. I have not penned abridged biographies of these eminent women, but dovetailed all such events in their life which show the purity of their mind and empathy,” Vani said.
“Barring Mother Teresa, who achieved sainthood by virtue of her selfless service to the suffering humanity, all others were peace activists who battled myriad vicissitudes in their social and political lives and succeeded in their mission,” the writer stated.
Meeting women like these is a special experience, Vani believes. “Meeting Suu Kyi, Shirin Ebadi, Leymah Gbowee, Malala and her parents was a pilgrimage of a sort. All of them are very special to me,” she said.
“The only part which is stressing me now is the silence of Aung San Suu Kyi about the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Burma (Myanmar),” Vani admitted.
There has been much criticism of Suu Kyi, with many across the world asking for her Nobel Peace prize to be taken away amidst her silence when thousands of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar are being forced to flee the country. (Close to 400,000 have fled since August 25 alone when the army launched a crackdown.)
But each of the women peace laureates she met had left an “indelible mark on my psyche”, Vani said.
“Some of them took personal interest and conveyed to me that I am taking forward the cause which they are close to, for which they have been bestowed the Nobel Peace prize,” the writer added.
(Bhavana Akella can be contacted at bhavana.a@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Entrepreneurship, Women Entrepreneur
Seema Chaturvedi
Kolkata : Lack of access to capital, gender bias at work place and a weak infrastructure in capacity building for women to derive necessary skill sets are the “key challenges” in the way of women entrepreneurship in India, a US-based woman entrepreneur and investment banker said here on Thursday.
“In India despite all the pro women government schemes, the awareness of how to get access to capital is very limited. The women may manage to get the debt but the access to private equity in the form of venture funding or mid to late stage funding is minimal,” Accelerator Group LLC Managing Director Seema Chaturvedi said in a media round table organised by the US Consulate General Kolkata at the American Center here.
She also stated that the women are victims of gender bias at workplace across the world and are stereotyped primarily as care givers in the household.
“It came out during the workshops that whether the woman is from New York or from Coimbatore, there were slimier experiences of significant gender bias at the work place. These experience was not related to being an entrepreneur but is more related to being a woman,” she claimed.
In the run up to the upcoming Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) 2017, Chaturvedi was in the city to engage with Global Links students, government officials, entrepreneurs, businessmen, start-ups, and NGOs for promoting entrepreneurship, innovation and business incubation through programmes.
Claiming that the capacity building for women skills is strongly missing in this country, she said a lot women entrepreneurs in India do not have an ability to access certain opportunities as they lack certain soft skills like pitching their ideas to the investors.
“A lot of women either do not have access or are not aware of the opportunities, Some of them do not know how to pitch. So the bottleneck is more societal,” she added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News
New Delhi : Union minister Smriti Irani and Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya on Tuesday awarded 12 women from different parts of the country to recognise the transformational impact of their work across villages, towns and cities.
“Women Transforming India Awards”, this year, to promote equal opportunity of women, received 3,000 entries from across the country.
“It is a great opportunity for me to be here among these wonderful women who have such inspiring stories,” Irani said during the award ceremony.
“You don’t hear such stories everyday. These stories need to be told. We are going to do something so as to bring across these stories of change to the whole nation,” she added.
She further said that the stories from previous year’s awards will be combined along with this year’s and reached to the people through some medium.
The list of winners included Subasini Mistry, who saved for two decades to build a hospital for the needy after losing her husband at a young age, Arunima Sinha for being India’s first amputee to climb Mount Everest, and goat veterinarian Sunita Kamble for creating alternative livelihood opportunities for women.
A jury comprising former Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, Indian Olympian P.T. Usha, Indian Air Force officer, Wing Cdr Pooja Thakur, Panagariya, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, and UN Resident Coordinator Yuri Afanasiev, UN Resident Coordinator undertook the process to shortlist 12 top awardees.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News
Google photo
New Delhi : Leaders of women farmers from different parts of the country have gathered here for an interface with various government agencies to demand they be legitimately recognised as farmers and that their rights as farmers be upheld.
They are participating in the “National Consultation of Women Farmers”, being organised at the Constitution Club here to discuss the subject — “Realizing the Rights of Women Farmers: Developing a Roadmap for Action”.
A number of sessions are lined up for August 30.
Their main demands center around getting rights over land and resources, both individual and common, and equal entitlements over various schemes and services meant for farmers.
The most desperate request that all the speakers constantly emphasised on Tuesday was to get “recognised and supported as farmers”.
“Although, they put in the most work into farming, across crops and regions, they are hardly recognised as farmers,” Sejal Dand, member of Mahila Kisan Adhikaar Manch (MAKAAM), said.
She explained that the problem was compounded by the fact that no gender-disaggregated land records were maintained in the country, and that the state governments needed to address this issue on an urgent basis.
Farmers on the panel demanded that if the government was truly keen on doubling farmers’ incomes, then women farmers’ organisations should be provided with various financial outlays, incentives and tax exemptions.
“The government is constantly publicising Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana. However, in states like Uttarakhand where I come from, there is no insurance cover for wild animal attacks,” said Sunita Kashyap of Mahila Umang Producer Company.
“Women are actually ending up in their fields guarding their crop day in and day out. It has increased our work tremendously and added to our losses in agriculture. This has to be addressed immediately,” she said.
She also pointed out that income tax and the new Goods and Services Taxes (GST) regime were dealing a severe blow to the profitability of collectives of women farmers.
“We make jams and pickles as well as wool-based products as a Farmer Producer Organisation (FPO). However, there is no tax exemption for us, and now GST means that we have to pay taxes upwards of 12 per cent, which can’t always be passed on to end consumers,” she added.
Amrithamdurai of Tamil Nadu added that no compensation cheques were provided to women “since men are invariably the ones who possess land titles”.
“Moreover, current trends are making things worse for us. When land is being acquired in the name of development projects, our legitimate rights are completely ignored and our abilities to provide even the basic needs are rendered vulnerable,” she said.
She complained that land rights of women even as per the existing laws like Hindu Succession Act were not being implemented.
She gave her own example to explain that even when men die, including in instances of farm suicides due to agrarian distress, women do not get to own land due to a failure of implementation of law.
She explained how landless Dalit households like hers were affected, as there was no public policy in place to address land distribution in the name of women.
Talking about climate change and the need for more resilient farming, Nageswaramma of Mallaiahgaripalli Women Farmers’ FPO in Andhra Pradesh urged for some of the progressive schemes running in her state, centered around diversity-based non-chemical farming, to be extended to other states.
“We need to reduce costs and prevent indebtedness. It is often seen that women farmers are left out of various schemes and services just because they don’t have land titles in their names,” she said.
—IANS
