Nearly 65% of adults in the Arab region remain excluded from formal financial systems, according to a new report by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA). The Annual SDG Review 2025 paints a sobering picture of persistent financial exclusion that is undermining the region’s ability …
DESPITE sex-role conditioning by teachers and traditional attitudes that rule out floor and site jobs for women, the number of Indian women taking to engineering has increased manifold in the period between 1975 and 1990. The percentage of women enrolled in engineering degree courses has increased rapidly from 1.3 per …
THAT LITERACY is liberation may be rhetoric in many parts of the country, but not in Tamil Nadu's Pudukkottai district. Total literacy was reported in this granite quarry region in August 1992, and it brought with it, for the scores of women workers, freedom from bondage and penury. Today, a …
THE INDIAN women's movement faced several challenges last year: continued violence against women; the effects of the new structural adjustment policies on women's status; the question of political power for women; issues of health and population policies; and the threats posed by religious revivalism to women's rights. Protest against violence …
THE WIDOWS of Vrindavan -- heads shaven, white sari-clad, their devotional routine veiling the indignity of penury and starvation -- have long been an emotive subject for photographers the world over. But who are they? What does their plight say for the status of women in rural Bengal -- where …
THE FIRST all-India household survey of medical care shows some interesting results. The survey, which was conducted in 1990 in 21 states and Union territories and covered 18,000 households, found that in the perception of these households, males tended to fall ill more than females. As the study puts it, …
"The Raindrop" is about a village near Chandigarh in Haryana. The book tells the story how this village was able to transform itself from a drought prone one to a food exporting one through community efforts and scientific watershed management.
This book is about a people's movement to save their forests and trees. Chipko movement started in 1970s in the Chamoli district of Uttar Pradesh and saw active participation of women in the forefront.
THIS RESOURCE guide to environmental action by women's groups and communities in the Asian Pacific region offers an excellent introduction to the issues involved, addressing all readers and not just women. A result of elaborate networking and coordination between women from different countries in the region, the book focusses on …
SCIENCE may have conquered smallpox, but as far as AIDS is concerned, education may be a better weapon. According to WHO estimates, there are 10 million people infected with the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) worldwide. Two-thirds of the infected persons live in developing countries, of which three million are …
THIS REMARKABLE book transcends the crucial limitations of both Marxist social theory and conventional anthropology by consciously avoiding "economism" and "culturism". While recognising "the independent transformative power of capitalism", Ram places "culture and sexuality at the centre of capitalist transformation and the new division of labour between men and women". …
NOVEMBER 28 was the 102nd death anniversary of Jotiba Phule. Though his centenary was not celebrated with the same national fervor as B R Ambedkar's, mass rallies were held to renew the realisation of the importance of Phule as a social radical, especially among the awakening dalit and low-caste masses. …
IN HIS Independence Day address this year, prime minister P V Narasimha Rao vowed to eliminate scavenging from the country within a year. But mere administrative fiats will not make life easier for people like Rameshwari, who estimates she is 35 and has been a scavenger for 15 years in …
In 1981, there were 181.03 million illiterate females in India. By 1991, this figure reached 197.34 million -- an increase of about 16.31 million in just one decade. And, this occurred though the literacy rate for Indian females aged seven and above increased during the same decade from 29.75 per …
THE LITERACY level of a country both reflects and influences its economic and social status. It also has a close bearing with a country's population growth rate. In India, the Kerala example shows the correlation clearly. Generally speaking, those states that have low female literacy levels have high growth rates, …
I WONDER how many people know that practically none of the country's forest departments has any women field staff? A few women have got into the Indian Forest Service by passing the all- India entrance tests, but they belong to the elite officer cadre, and do not ordinarily interact with …
AT A RALLY of 300,000 people in Shegaon, Maharashtra, last November, the Shetkari Sanghatana put forward a new farm programme called chaturang sheti (four-pronged agriculture). Sanghatana leader Sharad Joshi argued the economic crises and the collapse of statist development models have resulted in the state being unable to extract surpluses …
"ONE BY one each of the girls answered my questions. What was their name and age? What do they do during the day? What do their parents do? Had they ever been to school and for how long? The children were remarkably articulate. Half of the children had been to …
Women are prescribed twice more psychotropic drugs than men, a discovery that has led to much debate in Britain. Is it because women tend to consult psychiatrists whereas men pour their hearts out to their favourite bartenders? Are women more forthcoming than men to doctors? Data suggests men are less …
THIS BOOK focusses on poor women of the Third World and recommends a particular approach for poverty alleviation. After a brief, but commonplace critique of current strategies, including Arthur Lewis' growth model in which benefits supposedly trickle down to the masses, Wignaraja discusses an "alternative approach" -- Participatory Action-Research (PAR). …
I'VE JUST made a rather chastening, even humiliating, discovery. To prepare for this piece, I glanced through the two huge files of yellowing cuttings, which record my 70 months or so of subcontinental reporting for The Guardian. And in all that time, I've written only a couple of dozen longish …
