All about Eve

Women politicians have often been accused of not paying attention to the needs of their gender. Well, guess who wants to be different? Vasundhara Raje, that?s who! In order to do something meaningful on completion of one year in power, this week the Rajasthan chief minister announced not one, not two, but three welfare and development schemes for women and children at a fair in Bhilwara. These are, Janani Yojna, a scheme to help pregnant women ? both financially and with non-fiscal assistance such as information pertaining to healthcare, Sishu Palana Grah Yojna, which is a care centre for the newborn, and Mahila Udhyam Byaj Anudan Yojna, a plan to provide subsidy for women entrepreneurs. ?The schemes will benefit lakhs of women in the state,? Raje assured everyone present. Let?s hope so.

What? Again?

The-33-per-cent-reservation-for-women-in-Parliament issue seems to have reared its head again! This time the one helping raise it is the Andhra Pradesh minister for higher education, Pennamaneni Venkateswara Rao. Earlier this week he announced that the Congress Party was ?committed to working for welfare of women in the country, including making provision of 33 per cent reservation for them in Parliament and state assemblies?. Yeah? Well, in that case, can everyone just stop talking about it and start doing something to actually have it implemented?

New year resolutions

The Andhra Pradesh Mahila Samakhya, as its name suggests, is a women?s rights organisation. This week, it held a conference at Vijayawada during which 25 resolutions were passed. These mainly highlighted the problems faced by women in the state, especially agriculture workers. One of the resolutions, for instance, demanded that every woman agriculture worker should be provided one hectare of land. With a little luck, the resolution will come into effect from January 2005.

Food for all

Poor women, as mothers, bear the brunt of malnutrition in children. With this belief, and to find possible ways of eradicating hunger and malnutrition, different NGOs and women?s groups across the world met at a convention on ?Food Sovereignty? at Dhaka in Bangladesh recently. Here, a workshop on ?Women and Rural Production? provided the space for discussing the different problems faced by women as ?food producers?. The participants reaffirmed their commitment to continue to work for the broader struggle for food sovereignty, freedom and justice. The slogan was, ?We are women, we will unite, we will fight!?

Why blame god?

A United Nations estimate shows that more than 5,000 women are murdered every year in ?honour-related? violence, but the number could be higher. Experts speaking at an international conference which ended in Stockholm on Wednesday, pointed out that men all over the world, belonging to different religions, distort the teachings of their holy books to justify abusing their wives and daughters and even killing them, with many courts providing them virtual impunity. Their narration of horror stories of women and even girls as young as seven being beheaded, burnt to death, maimed, beaten, raped, forced into suicide or mentally abused underscored that patriarchal violence against women pays no heed to religion.

Overheard... that the head of Amnesty International, Irene Khan, said recently, ?Women are raped and sexually tortured during war because they are viewed as ?the reproductive machinery of the enemy? and the embodiment of a community?s honour?