Women
Dr. Priya Ranjan Trivedi staying at A 15, Paryavaran Complex,
New Delhi 110030 (INDIA), Mobile : +91-9818097247 has designed a Masterplan Paradigm for the overall development of Housing in the
following manner :
3.1 Principles
We are committed to the following:
a) the protection of women’s rights to equal respect,
opportunity and responsibility in society;
b) basing policies on ensuring equal access by women to
all areas of political, social, intellectual and economic
endeavour;
c) increased and equitable participation by women in all
decision-making processes;
d) infrastructure changes to protect women from
inequality, exploitation, poverty and violence; sexual
abuse, harassment, exploitation and discrimination and to
enable them to reach their full potential;
e) the right of women to make informed choices about
their lives - lifestyle, sexual identity, health, whether to
bear children, their reproductive process, etc.
Discriminatory laws against women must be repealed. Women
and men should be able to choose whether they participate in
the areas of paid work and/or domestic responsibility.
f) women having equal access to all forms of education
and training.
3.1.1 Women and Violence
All women have a right to safety at home, on the street
and in the workplace, but violence against women is not only
a women’s problem. Breaking the cycle of domestic violence
in particular is a societal problem and the provision of
shelter and refuge should be considered only a short-term
solution. Any act of violence should be condemned publicly
and privately as unacceptable. Our long-term objective is to
create an environment of nonviolence, and to provide care
and protection for victims in the interim. Adquate number of
family courts should be established to resolve family,
conjugal, dowery and property right disputes.
3.1.2 Women and Pornography
We oppose the production, performance, display and
distribution of pornographic material which depicts women
and children as suitable objects for violence and sexual
exploitation.
3.1.3 Women and Education
We seek to ensure educational experience and outcomes for
girls and women that enable their full and equal
participation in all aspects of economic and social life.
3.1.4 Women and the Environment
The environmental decision-making process has, to date,
largely excluded women.
Some environmental planning and decision-making needs to be
decentralised and devolved to local communities in such a
way that the concerns of all people are heard.
The domestic sector and those industries where women
predominate should have equal representation in
environmental planning and decision-making.
3.1.5 Women and the Arts
We support greater recognition of women’s contribution to
arts and acknowledge the role of women in shaping and
representing cultural norms.
We will work towards ensuring that the views of women are
represented, for example, through such avenues as
representation of women on Arts Advisory Boards.
3.1.6 Women and Sport
We support equal access for women and men to recreation
facilities, coaching, sports education, competition, media
coverage and funding. The need for programme which encourage
girls to continue sporting and recreational pursuits beyond
early secondary schooling is a priority.
3.2 Goals
3.2.1 Political and Public Participation
We will work towards:
a) ensuring that any reform is consistent with India’s
commitment to the UN Convention on the Elimination of all
forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW);
b) ensuring equal representation of women in
decision-making processes at all levels, local, state and
national; and
c) ensuring that all public boards and committees will
have a statutory requirement for equal representation of
women and men.
3.2.2 Women and Violence
We will work towards:
a) a review of all relevant laws which have bearing on
violence against women, treatment of victims and
perpetrators; and
b) ensuring women’s access to safe and secure
accommodation through a comprehensive housing policy and the
provision of adequate emergency housing.
3.2.3 Women and Pornography
We will work towards promoting the use of legal
complaints procedures and processes.
3.2.4 Women and Health
We will work towards:
a) ensuring research and development funds are allocated
both to women researchers and into women’s health problems;
b) ensuring changes to the education of health providers
with regard to women’s health issues;
c) improving women’s access to information regarding
their health in order that appropriate personal decisions
can be made;
d) preventive health strategies targeting women and
girls, including those which reduce the incidence of smoking
amongst females;
e) providing strategies for more women medical
practitioners to enter those specialisations where women are
currently under-represented.
3.2.5 Women and the Workforce
We will work towards:
a) ensuring equal opportunities for people employed in
the paid work force with family responsibilities;
b) ensuring the provision of adequate child care
facilities in the workplace;
c) encouraging flexible working conditions to enable
workers with family responsibilities (eg. parents minding
young children, and adult children minding ageing parents)
to fully participate in the workforce, and avail themselves
of opportunities equally with those who do not have those
responsibilities;
d) providing centres for continuing education and
training for workers, including training and promotion
opportunities for part-time and temporary workers;
e) taking steps to facilitate re-entry, without loss of
occupational status, of people who leave the workforce for
parental leave or family responsibilities leave;
f) ensuring changes brought about by strategies relating
to the elimination of sexual discrimination will not place
undue and unequal responsibility upon women and add to
women’s workload;
g) ensuring that award restructuring includes the
specific aim of upgrading and broadening the low-paid,
low-status positions that have traditionally been work for a
majority of women, particularly migrant women; and
h) ensuring that women enjoy the full benefits of
enterprise bargaining arrangements, particularly in the
traditional work areas such as the service industry, where
there is low union representation.
3.2.6 Women and Education
We will work towards:
a) ensuring that a National Policy for the Education of
Girls in Indian Schools is implemented at all levels, until
national indicators on education outcomes are relatively
equal for women and men;
b) the elimination of gender-based harassment in school
and educational institutions and the establishment of Equal
Opportunity offices to assess and consult about the
effectiveness of programme and policies to achieve this;
c) ensuring that teacher training for new and continuing
teachers critically examines the patterns of sex role
stereotyping that occur in our society;
d) continuing Territory/State/Central programme to
promote girls’ and women’s greater participation in access
to school, and university education, especially in science
and technology disciplines;
e) promoting policies to achieve a higher retention rate
of women at higher degree level in universities; and
f) promoting policies to encourage a higher
representation of women academics in all faculties of
universities, and a higher proportion of women in senior
academic positions.
3.2.7 Women and the Law
We will work towards:
a) remedying existing discrimination by ensuring a higher
representation of women on legislative and judicial bodies;
b) examining ways women could be encouraged to enter
private practice and the bar;
c) encouraging women to enter all areas of the legal
profession,
d) reviewing all laws which have a bearing on violence
against women;
e) developing further options for the protection of
victims, and for the naming of perpetrators;
f) addressing the myth of ‘victim-blaming’ by promoting
change in societal attitudes to violence;
g) removing sexist language from existing laws, and
ensure future legislation is non-sexist and does not assume
assignment of roles according to sex ;
h) repealing laws relating to sex work.
3.2.8 Women and the Environment
We will work towards:
a) implementing strategies to ensure that all
environmental assessments include consideration of impact on
health, community and women; and
b) implementing strategies to ensure that women’s needs
and advice are considered in the area of urban planning.
3.2.9 Women and Sport
We will work towards:
a) developing monitoring strategies for equal opportunity
and anti-discrimination principles to be applied to the
administration of all sporting organisations; and
b) ensuring allocation of funding and awards will not be
discriminatory and will allow equal opportunity for women.
3.3 Short Term Targets
3.3.1 Political and Public Participation
We will work towards developing programmes and strategies
to provide women with the skills to be effective candidates
and members of parliament, state legislatures,
self-government organisations including panchayats and to
actively promote women to stand as candidates for election.
3.3.2 Women and Violence
We will work towards:
a) establishing a national enquiry into sexual assault
and uniform sexual assault laws, specifically, the party
that wants recognition of sexual assault within marriage and
relationships;
b) providing education from early primary school level on
non-violent conflict resolution;
c) addressing the health effects, both physical and
emotional, of violence against women, through adequately
funded, appropriate health and education programme;
d) using publicity and educational campaigns to bring
about a change in the way violence is viewed in our society,
which includes a strategy to educate men that violence
against women is a crime;
e) expanding crisis services for women, with and without
children. These include refuges, and services in areas such
as rape crisis, abortion counselling, incest and domestic
violence. Special provision needs to be made for
geographically remote locations.
3.3.3 Women and Pornography
We will work towards:
a) extending classification systems to include video
games, live performances and other leisure technologies;
b) strengthening regulation on the display of advertising
of material which includes violence against and sexual
exploitation of women and children;
c) instituting an education programme to encourage
critical examination of the role that the entertainment
industry and the media play in the portrayal of women and
children as victims of violent and sexual exploitation;
3.3.4 Women and Health
We will work towards:
a) ensuring access to safe contraception on demand for
all women, and information on options available;
b) ensuring that women have a choice of where and how to
give birth and information on available options;
c) repealing all laws which restrict the right of women
to choose abortion and which restrict access to services;
and
d) ensuring access to legal, affordable, humane and safe
abortion for all women, and provision of counselling pre and
post-termination.
3.3.5 Women and the Workforce
We will work towards:
a) ensuring that apprenticeships and training programmes
have positive discrimination towards women to ensure that
opportunities are not denied to women because of inaccurate
evaluation of women’s ability;
b) giving the provision of maternity and paternity leave
equal status in order to encourage the sharing of the
parenting roles and equality of gender in the workplace;
c) undertaking programmes to raise awareness on issues of
gender equity in the workplace and in education;
d) ensuring that women have access to adequate retirement
income, including superannuation; and
e) ensuring continuation of superannuation during
parental leave.
3.3.6 Women and Education
We will work towards:
a) providing adequate funding for the support structures
and the support personnel necessary to implement national
policy;
b) ensuring that affirmative action is practised in
schools to overcome the attitudes inherent in our society
that result in different expectations for girls and boys.
Such action would include changing school curricula and
increasing girls’ participation in areas of maths, science,
technology and trades;
c) the application of affirmative action to increase the
number of women in senior, policy and decision-making
positions in educational systems;
d) providing bridging courses for women to facilitate
their entry into the formal education arena;
e) expanding women’s participation in science and
technology to ensure that the introduction of new technology
does not further the advantage of men; and
f) increasing women’s access to training and education in
the use and understanding of computers and computer
technology.
3.3.7 Women and the Law
We will work towards:
a) applying affirmative action to ensure that more women
hold senior level positions within the Public Service
departments responsible for policy, administration and
enforcement of the law;
b) applying affirmative action to ensure that more women
hold senior faculty positions within Schools of Law;
c) strengthening laws which prohibit portrayal of women
or children as objects of violence or sexual exploitation.
3.3.8 Women and the Environment
We will work towards:
a) ensuring equal representation of women on
environmental decision-making bodies; and
b) applying affirmative action principles to ensure women
are able to participate at all levels of planning,
implementation and assessment of environmental policy.
3.3.9 Women and Sport
We will work towards:
a) providing public education to raise awareness of women’s
rights to equal recreation and the importance of this; and
b) providing public education to change attitudes towards
women in sport.
