 Hello everyone, my name is Deeksha Jain and I have secured 22nd Rankin Civil Services examination 2018. In this video, I will be talking on the topics role of women and women's movement and organizations in India. So, first let us talk about the role of women. Now the role of women would ideally be as role of anybody else, but there have been certain specific areas in which women have contributed disproportionately and immensely. So, now we will try to look at all the diverse ways in which women have contributed to the society and the country. So, the first role of women is I would like to talk about the economic contribution. Now here it is basically all those women who are directly contributed in the contributing in the economy, whether it is in terms of agriculture, wage labour, in terms of service sector, manufacturing, teaching etc. So, the economic contribution of women in the society has been immense and it is growing now as more and more women are coming into work life like many women have now started taking up work outside their homes. So, this economic contribution is increasing. The second very important role that women have played is of care economy, which is non-economised or non-monetised actually, but the role that our mothers and sisters and everybody has played by just taking care of the family, by taking care of the children, being the support system behind the members of the family who works with this care economy. Care economy contribution has been a very major contribution of women. Another would be source of education and values. Women are the closest, women as mothers, as sisters, are the closest to young children and they are one of the major sources through which values, etiquettes and education transpires from one generation to other. So, here also they play a major role. Another major contribution would be environmental contribution. In our Indian history, women have played an immense role in protecting the environment. The movements like Narmada Bachao, Chibko, Andul and women were at the forefront. They have hugged trees in the face of death and they have also, there are many tribal societies where women have played an active role in conserving the environment. So, here too women have contributed. Another one would be role of women as centre of family and familial ties. So, women often acquire, women often hold positions in the family which hold the family together, familial relations are negotiated by them. So, to that extent in the families they have a major role. There is political contribution of women also. Right from in the freedom movement we had leaders like Sarojini and Aido. Later we had the women politicians like Indra Gandhi, Sushma Swaraj, Shila Dixit. Many others are current defence minister, no our previous defence minister, Nirmala Sitaraman was also a woman. So, their political contribution has been immense. Later of course the 33% reservation for women at local bodies. This contribution in governance and governance is also increased. Next would be agriculture and animal husbandry. So of course agriculture, economic contribution is there. A lot of women in rural India work as manual labour in agricultural fields. One can often see them along the road, sewing paddy in the fields. Apart from that in animal husbandry taking care of the cattle women play a very important role. In addition to their domestic responsibilities in the house they have taken care of animals and that has also contributed to the economy and it has a lot of cultural importance as well. And of course other many contributions in terms of art, literature, activism, even feminist activism, activism for various other causes. Women have contributed immensely and in all these respects women have played a major role and they are increasingly playing a bigger role in the society. So from role of women we will now move to the importance of women's movement and organisations. The main women's organisations in India are All India Women's Conference, National Federation of Indian Women, All India Democratic Women's Association and their major thrust is for empowerment of women and fighting for a gender-just society basically so that everybody can enjoy their right to equality. So let us go a little bit into how the women's movement has developed in India. So what is known as the first wave of feminism or women's movement in India would be during the national movement. So in the first movement there was mass mobilisation and their organisations like National Council for Women in India were formed in 1923. All India Women's Conference was also formed during the same period and during this time these women also participated in the non-cooperation movement, civil disobedience movement, Quit India movement etc. So not only were our national movement as many would know but did not just mean expelling the British but we were also fighting for a just society. Even Gandhi ji and many leaders like Jyotoba Phoolay, Gandhi ji Ambedkar, everybody believed in a gender-just society and one of their major agendas was to empower women. So many women leaders were part of these organisations. Women learnt to come out of the house, to picket shops, to agitate for their rights as well as the nation's rights. So this was the first wave of women's movement in India. So the second wave commenced from the 1960s onwards and it marked a resurgence in political activity by women and many women's organisations again were divided like all India Women's Conference and YWCA, Young Women's Christian Association which had become completely defunded was again it was re-invigorated by the energy of new women activists. The self-employed women's association SEVA which worked for the women in the unorganised sector also came into being during this time and it is one of the organisations which has supported women working as unorganised labour, provided them with better wages and gave them a sense of identity and self-hood. So the focus during the second wave was attacking the sources of oppression in the society. The United Women's Anti-Price-Rise Front was formed in 1973 in Maharashtra and it was against the skyrocketing prices during that period of time, a front of which the women had to face. During the third wave in the 1970s, the major thrust issues of the women's movement widened, family violence, men-women relations, unequal distribution of work, education all of them were covered under the women's movement. Here the struggle again the larger focus of the struggle was the same but now the basically the multiple focuses of the movement were developed during this period. And in the 1980s, the idea of struggle changed into the idea of development. Wherever in the development process women were being left behind, now they were taking up those issues that how can women be made more mainstream beneficiaries of the development that India was going through. In the 1990s, the key issue of women's movement was linked up with work, environment, ecology, civil rights, human rights, gender specific issues and emphasis was on the poor toiling women who was issues of daily survival, caste issues within the gender issues. So women's empowerment was a key focus area of this movement and this movement somewhere one of the great victories of this movement was the increase in political participation of women and it was during this time that through the 73rd and the it was during this movement that through the 73rd and the 74th constitutional amendments women were given 33% reservation in all local body elections. So that led to a greater participation, a political participation by women. So in the 1990s the women's movement gained even more momentum and in later years with the coming of globalization more awareness about gender rights more and more initiatives were taken to institutionalize and protect the rights of women. Some of the major organizations that have been working in India for the rights of women are All India Women's Conference. This was started by Margaret Cousins and many important personalities like Vijay Lakshmi Pandit, Kamala Devi, Chattopadhyay etc. have been a part of this organization. And these talked about a lot of legislative reforms and issues like monogamy in family, inter-community marriage, adoption, women's rights for divorce etc. and they have achieved a lot in this regard. All India Democratic Women's Association is another one, Centre of Women's Development Studies, the Young Women's Christian Association, Centre for Health Education Training and Nutrition Awareness. This is the Chetna initiative, Chetna Mission and it is with this title it focuses on health education and training and nutrition of women. The SEVA organization which I have already talked about, so all these organizations have played a key role in taking the women's movement forward in India. Now we will talk about the key issues which were the focus of women's movement. The first is the social and economic issues, social economic issues pertaining to development, demographic decline, the right of women to have a choice over their reproduction, sex ratio, child marriage. In terms of sex ratio, for example, India has been fighting to increase the sex ratio so that to make it a more gendered just society and Betibhacha or Betibhata or Andolan has been a major initiative in this regard. Low literacy rates, violence against women, domestic violence, sexual harassment, all these have been there and dowry deaths, eve teasing, molestation and with the changing times now cybercrime and cyberbullying, pornography, child rape victims etcetera all have come into the sphere of socioeconomic violence against which women are speaking out. There have been employment related issues also in terms of equality in pay because there is a pay gap between the salaries of men and women working at the same level and India does not score very well on the gender gap report which is taken out by the World Economic Forum. So apart from this having a safe and secure work environment for women to work at has also been a focus. So the sexual harassment of women at workplaces at 2013 was passed to institutionalize that every organization should have an internal complaints committee. Another source of struggle has been the reservation for women in representative institutions. Although we have reservation in local bodies there has been a demand and recently Odisha assembly has promoted this that women should have reservation in the Lok Sabha as well so that there are more women political representatives who are able to contribute to more gender just policies and more gender just representation in the parliament. So all these have been the focal areas of agitation as well as focus of women's organizations in India. Recently I would also say that now with you know globalization turning into hyper globalization and a lot of social media in our lives me too movement was one movement of women empowerment which sort of percolated to India and a lot of women spoke against sexual harassment. So sexual harassment it has been one of the key agendas of women empowerment in India because without safety of course women would not be able to come out of their houses and contribute to the society and economy as they can. And apart from these various acts like abolition of dowry, abolition of child marriage, sexual harassment at workplace act the government has also created the national commission for women in 1922 which has the responsibility to oversee the working of constitutional safeguards for women, reviewing laws and regulations and interviewing few in individual cases of violation of women's right. So all these the institutional framework that the government has created and the rights based approach that the women's movement has taken has managed to empower women and now the focus is also to make sure that even in this empowerment it is not just focused on urban areas but women of all places whether it's rural tribal or and all societies are taken together in the journey towards a more gender just society. Thank you that would be all.