The Hindu : New Delhi News : Women advocacy group to lobby for rights

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Feb 24, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

Women advocacy group to lobby for rights

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, FEB. 23. Using the power of connecting, women across the country are coming together to lobby for their rights. A relatively new concept in India, the advocacy group -- WomenPowerConnect (WPC) -- aims to complete the missing link between needs at the grassroots level and the laws framed in Parliament, by bridging the divide through dialogue.

"The advocacy group will bring in major coalitions groups of women together to represent the voices to the legislature. While there have been women coalitions before, the legislative co-ordination has not been the main agenda. We have already held six regional meetings across to country to find out what issues WPC should prioritise,'' stated president, WomenPowerConnect, Ranjana Kumari.

On similar lines as the European Women's Lobby that has become the voice of women on various issues, the WPC hopes to use the strength of a collective to leverage for political gains for empowerment of women. While there are plenty of women's groups in India that work to empower women, they unfortunately have not been able to gain enough clout to actually influence policies decided by the Government like business interest groups like FICCI.

"The whole approach will be a bottom up approach. The mandate of WPC has been decided by the meetings we have had with women in Goa, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, Karnataka and Chandigarh. We had about 500 participants who attended these meetings. We will get approval from women across the country for issues,'' she stated.

Besides, using WPC as a group to lobby for causes, WPC is also ultimately about train ordinary women to become strong advocates so that they can influence change. "We will train them to monitor debates and discussions that happen in Parliament. Women have been kept out of the Parliament discussions. The problem is they sometimes ignorant or don't understand issues. We will also keep feeding the Government information about issues that concern women in easy readable form, so that they are aware too,'' Ms. Kumari stated. Holding its Founding Convention later this week, the WPC hopes to be able to be able to represent the voices of rural women in the Capital.

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