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January 24, 2021 News

#MeToo: India’s domestic workers are sending Smriti Irani postcards demanding safe workplaces

Sexual harassment laws to protect women in the informal sector are poorly implemented.

“As a woman domestic worker, I want a safe workplace.” Nearly 3,000 domestic workers in India mailed postcards with this request over the last few weeks to Smriti Irani, India’s minister in charge of women and child development. With…

Illustration of woman who's mouth is covered by hands

November 1, 2019 News

The Devil Is in the Details

Why India’s Database of Sex Offenders May Do More Harm Than Good

In response to “stranger danger” fears, India has become the ninth country to adopt a sex offenders’ database, with personal details of those convicted for rape and sexual assault. The year-old database contains 500,000 names and will…

May 1, 2019 News

How to Fight Sexual Harassment at Work? Empower Women Workers through Trade Unions

No-one was within earshot, but Roja (not her real name), a garment worker, spoke in whispers as we walked in a park on a Sunday, her day off, in Mysore city in southern India. She described how her line supervisor constantly called her after work…

April 29, 2019 News

Indian Court Decides In Favor of Informed Consent Rights for Intersex People

A court in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu has ordered the local government to prohibit medically unnecessary “normalizing” surgeries on children born with intersex variations until the patients themselves can consent. “Intersex” refers to the…

February 23, 2019 News

Women, Not Weapons: India's Survivors All Deserve Justice

28 years after Kunan and Poshpora, abuses still persist

February 23 sticks in my mind the way a birthday does for most people. After my first 10 years of Bharatanatyam training, I performed my arangetram — a classical dancer’s debut full-length solo recital — on that day in 2013. In telling…

February 12, 2019 News

Combating Sexual Harassment in the Garment Industry

Sexual Harassment in Garment Factories Eleven women garment workers from a factory in southern India sent a hand-written letter to a local union in late 2016.[1] They wrote: “The plight of women workers … we don’t have anyone who would…

January 17, 2019 News

Court Decisions on LGBT Rights Echo ‘A Wild Wish’

More than two centuries ago Mary Wollstonecraft laid the foundations for feminist thought with a simple premise: lack of equal opportunity diminished individual self-worth and hobbled social progress. In A Vindication of the Rights of…

Indian members and supporters of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) community celebrate the Supreme Court decision to strike down a colonial-era ban on gay sex, in Kolkata on September 6, 2018.

November 8, 2018 News

When #MeToo Meets the Architecture of Intimidation in India

India is witnessing the latest advance in women’s fight for workplace equality and dignity. Women in India have furiously taken to social media using the #MeToo hashtag to publicize accounts of workplace sexual harassment. Some of…

People hold a candlelight vigil in Bengaluru, India, to protest the rape of an 8-year-old girl in Kathua and a teenager in Unnao, April 13, 2018.

July 5, 2018 News

Clothing Brands Need to Step Up and Keep Women Safe in Their Factories

In a recent survey of experts, countries were ranked according to how safe they are for women. India came out as the most dangerous, followed by Afghanistan and Syria. Leaving aside the survey’s obvious challenges – including its attempt to use six…

“A garment worker sews clothing in a building near the site of the Rana Plaza building collapse” © 2014 G.M.B. Akash/Panos.

April 30, 2018 News

Cambodia’s Imaginary Enemies

Jorge Luis Borges’s Book of Imaginary Beings has a real-world equivalent in Cambodia. Call it the Book of Imaginary Enemies. This imagined book would tell tales of government attacks against rights activists, journalists and other peaceful critics…

April 27, 2018 News

Asaram Case Highlights Need for Witness and Victim Protection in India

“During night, I get no sleep as I am in constant fear of death by the accused’s firing squad…I want to live at least till I complete my testimony,” stated Rahul Sachan, a former personal assistant to Asumal Harpalani (known as Asaram), in an…

Policemen rest as they guard inside Asaram Bapu's ashram, before a court convicted him for raping a teenage girl, in Ahmedabad, India, April 25, 2018. REUTERS/Amit Dave

December 19, 2017 News

Why India Needs a Victim and Witness Protection Law

Could Delhi’s Witness Protection Scheme Be a Template for a Nationwide Law?

A 22-year-old Dalit woman from Lalitpur district in Uttar Pradesh, reported being raped in January 2016. The police were reluctant to act because the man accused was a local leader of a political party with powerful caste affiliations.…

A close-up photo showing the hands of a sexual violence victim in India.

December 11, 2017 News

Tackling Sexual Harassment in the Garment Industry

“Whore.... Do you think this is a brothel? You must meet the production demand here. If you want to continue to work here, listen to us.” This nasty threat is a snapshot of the harassment that supervisors and managers heap on many Bangladeshi…

November 10, 2017 News

One-Stop Centres for Rape Survivors in India Are Now Resolving Marital Disputes

Created in the aftermath of the 2012 Delhi gangrape, the Nirbhaya Fund remains underused and the centres lack resources.

“Rape victims don’t really come here,” a woman counsellor from the non-governmental organisation tasked with running the one stop centre in Jaipur said. “They go to the hospital that is connected to the police station where they registered a…

November 9, 2017 News

Doctors in India Continue to Traumatise Rape Survivors with the Two-Finger Test

Only nine states have adopted the 2014 guidelines on medico-legal care for survivors of sexual violence.

"The doctor said to my daughter ‘If they had forced themselves on you, there should have been marks on your body – but you don’t have any. You must have done this of your own free will.’” Palak’s mother said that her daughter, already…

November 8, 2017 News

How the Police Pressured a Young Woman into Taking Back Her Rape Complaint

Despite reforms after 2012 Delhi gang rape, India’s police continue to let down survivors of sexual violence.

“The police beat me up, detained my father, and threatened to lock him up under false charges if I didn’t tell the magistrate that I had filed a false complaint of rape, so I did as they said,” Kajal said of her ordeal after she reported…

May 5, 2017 News

Indian Women Have Right to Live Without Fearing Sexual Assault

Effective Strategy Needed to Prevent and Respond to Sexual Violence

On Friday, May 5, 2017, the Indian Supreme Court upheld the death sentences of four men convicted of rape in the brutal 2012 gang-rape of a 23-year-old student in Delhi that garnered outrage both in India and abroad. Women’s rights…

Demonstrators hold candles during a candlelight vigil for Jyoti Singh, who was gang raped on December 16, 2012 and subsequently died. © 2012 Reuters

February 28, 2017 News

The Australian Government Should Stand by Women Impacted by Global Gag Rule

Cambodian mothers might not know it yet, but they are likely to be among those harmed by new Trump administration policies. Access to health care for women in Cambodia has improved drastically in the last decade with the support of donor…

People gather for the Women's March in Washington U.S., January 21, 2017.

October 24, 2016 News

The Secret Underbelly of the Cambodian Garment Industry

“That’s the Rat Trap Door factory,” a garment worker told me, pointing to a little blue door on a windowless wall along National Road 4 in Phnom Penh. “The door is so small it looks like only rats can get in.” It didn’…

Women in the sewing division of a factory in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. Women constitute about 90 percent of the workforce in Cambodia’s garment industry.

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