Vandana Shiva is an Indian scholar, environmental activist, food sovereignty advocate, and alter-globalization author. Shiva, currently based in Delhi, has authored more than twenty books.
Female infanticide is the deliberate killing of newborn female children. In countries with a history of female infanticide, the modern practice of sex-selective abortion is often discussed as a closely related issue. Female infanticide is a major cause of concern in several nations such as China and India. It has been argued that the low status in which women are viewed in patriarchal societies creates a bias against females.
Bhikaiji Rustom Cama was one of the prominent figures in the Indian independence movement.
Kiran Bedi is a retired Indian Police Service officer, social activist, former tennis player and politician who is the current Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry. She is the first woman to join the Indian Police Service (IPS). She remained in service for 35 years before taking voluntary retirement in 2007 as Director General, Bureau of Police Research and Development.
Brinda Karat is a communist politician from India, elected to the Rajya Sabha as a Communist Party of India (Marxist) CPI(M) member, on 11 April 2005 for West Bengal.
Devaki Jain is an Indian economist and writer, who has worked mainly in the field of feminist economics. In 2006 she was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian award from Government of India, for her contribution to social justice and the empowerment of women.
Sarojini Sahoo is an Orissa Sahitya Academy Award winner Indian feminist writer, a columnist in The New Indian Express and an associate editor of Chennai-based English magazine Indian AGE. She has been enlisted among 25 Exceptional Women of India by Kindle Magazine of Kolkata.
Gail Omvedt is an American-born Indian scholar, sociologist and human rights activist. She is a prolific writer and has published numerous books on the anti-caste movement, Dalit politics, and women's struggles in India. Omvedt has been involved in Dalit and anti-caste movements, environmental, farmers' and women's movements, especially with rural women.
Feminism in India is a set of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for Indian women. It is the pursuit of women's rights within the society of India. Like their feminist counterparts all over the world, feminists in India seek gender equality: the right to work for equal wages, the right to equal access to health and education, and equal political rights. Indian feminists also have fought against culture-specific issues within India's patriarchal society, such as inheritance laws and the practice of widow immolation known as Sati.
Gender inequality in India refers to health, education, economic and political inequalities between men and women in India. Various international gender inequality indices rank India differently on each of these factors, as well as on a composite basis, and these indices are controversial.
Dr. Vina Mazumdar was an Indian academic, left-wing activist and feminist. A pioneer in women's studies in India, she was a leading figure of the Indian women's movement. She was amongst the first women academics to combine activism with scholarly research in women's studies. She was secretary of the first Committee on the Status of Women in India that brought out the first report on the condition of women in the country, Towards Equality (1974). She was the founding Director of the Centre for Women's Development Studies (CWDS), an autonomous organisation established in 1980, under the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR). She was a National Research Professor at the Centre for Women's Development Studies, Delhi.
Sujata Patel is an Indian sociologist, currently holding the position of National Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study. She is one of the world's leading sociologist, with an expertise in social theory and Urban Sociology. She extensively works on orienting sociology in India.
Shirin M. Rai, is a political scientist, known for her research on the intersections between globalisation, post-colonial governance, processes of democratisation and gender regimes. She is the Director of the Gendered Ceremony and Ritual in Parliament Programme, a four-year interdisciplinary project funded by the Leverhulme Trust that studies the performances of ritual, ceremony, symbolism and affect in the British, Indian and South African parliaments.
Renana Jhabvala is an Indian social worker based in Ahmedabad, India, who has been active for decades in organising women into organisations and trade unions in India, and has been extensively involved in policy issues relating to poor women and the informal economy. She is best known for her long association with the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), India, and for her writings on issues of women in the informal economy.
Female foeticide in India is the abortion of a female foetus outside of legal methods.
Lotika Sarkar was a noted Indian feminist, social worker, educator and lawyer, who was a pioneer in the field of women's studies and women's rights in India. She was a founding member of Centre for Women's Development Studies (CWDS), Delhi, established in 1980, and also Indian Association for Women Studies, established in 1982. Starting in 1951, she taught law at Faculty of Law, University of Delhi till 1983, and also remained the head of the Law Faculty, thereafter she taught at Indian Law Institute. She was the first Indian woman to graduate from Cambridge University, and later in 1951 she also became the first woman to receive a PhD degree in law from the university.
Nivedita Menon is a feminist writer and a professor of political thought at Jawaharlal Nehru University. She has previously taught at Lady Shri Ram College and the Department of Political Science at Delhi University. She is known for taking positions on several political issues, including nuclear power and the Kashmir conflict. Her involvement in the 2016 JNU protests led to her being criticized by members of the Bharatiya Janata Party and in the media, and led to her being seen as a symbol of resistance against the Hindutva movement.
Violence against women in India refers to physical or sexual violence committed against Indian women, typically by a man. Common forms of violence against women in India include acts such as domestic abuse, sexual assault, and murder. In order to be considered violence against women, the act must be committed solely because the victim is female. Most typically, these acts are committed by men as a result of the long-standing gender inequalities present in the country.
Violence against women in India is actually more present than it may appear at first glance, as many expressions of violence are not considered crimes, or may otherwise go unreported or undocumented due to certain Indian cultural values and beliefs. These reasons all contribute to India's Gender Inequality Index rating of 0.524 in 2017, putting it in the bottom 20% of ranked countries for that year.
Uma Chakravarti is an Indian historian and feminist who taught at the Miranda House, University of Delhi. Her scholarship focused on Buddhism, early Indian history, 19th century history, and contemporary issues. She has also been an activist associated with the women's movement and the movement for democratic rights, participating in several fact-finding committees including the `International Tribunal on Justice for Gujarat'. A leading scholar of feminist history-writing in India, she has been called the `founding mother' of the Indian women's movement.
Neera Desai was one of the leaders of Women's Studies in India and was noted for her contributions as a professor, researcher, academician, political activist, and social worker. She founded the first of its kind Research Centre for Women’s Studies and the Centre for Rural Development in 1974. She joined the SNDT Women's University in 1954 and was a part of various governing bodies as a professor and the Head of Department of Sociology (post-graduate).
