Patriarchal and societal conditioning has prioritised medicine over nursing and midwifery, creating an unjust, unequal, and exploitative relationship between doctors and nurse-midwives.
Pakistan’s women are marching against patriarchy, but what is their destination and who is standing in their way? TheAurat March of 2019 faced severe backlash from both conservative as well as like-minded quarters, on account of some hard-hitting slogans and jabs raised against prevalent masculinist social norms. These have brought to the fore some paradoxes within feminist politics, which merit resolution for the sake of the emergence of stronger feminist politics in Pakistan.
Girls and women’s access to and experience of education is obstructed by male-preferencing power structures that guide perceptions about domestic labour, marriage, and safety.
The most important factor in increasing women’s employment is access to safe transport. In India, women often have no choice but to decline job opportunities that are far from home or that do not have proper transport connectivity. Forced immobility of women is a consequence of the violence and insecurity faced daily during the commute to and from work.
The intrinsic commitment of the accredited social health activists towards the well-being of the community is unduly exploited by the state in the name of “volunteerism.” It is high time a wholesome definition of work is adopted to understand the inconspicuous contributions made by these front-line healthcare workers, who form a key link in the public health system in India.
India’s sex ratio at birth has worsened considerably since 1951; however, successive governments have not taken urgent and comprehensive measures to address the issues of female infanticide (FI) and sex-selective abortion.
Waste belongs to households and then to the municipality once it enters the public collection/disposal system. What does this mean for informal waste pickers? Despite their numbers and importance, they lack a “right to waste” and are vulnerable to processes of accumulation. This paper presents the counter-narrative of Solid Waste Collection and Handling, India’s first wholly self-owned cooperative of waste pickers, which has been contracted by the Pune Municipal Corporation for door-to-door waste collection. The initiative legitimises a “right to waste” for waste pickers by allowing them direct access to waste from households, and has reconceptualised waste and work for waste pickers, while altering their engagement with other stakeholders.
