IE Thinc session today, to focus on women’s collectives

That women can drive a result-oriented mission was proven by the success of India’s ASHA workers, who have won the WHO’s Global Health Leader award for their frontline stewardship of COVID-19 management. In fact, India has proven that women’s collectives can change the social, economic and cultural indices of a nation. Our self-help groups and women cooperative-led movements have led to their financial inclusion, economic stakeholdership and restoration of land rights. Such collectives are the perfect examples of the trickle-down effect and women taking the lead in writing their own story.

In communities around the world, women are seizing their own destiny through self-help groups (SHGs), mothers’ and adolescent girls’ groups and cooperatives. The idea is reaching many women at once with resources, information and training. By harnessing the collective power of their members, the groups can achieve positive impacts that would be harder or impossible to achieve through interventions that focus on individuals. It is to understand the transformative power of women who choose to rewrite their destinies that The Indian Express is hosting the third edition of the IE Thinc Gender series, “Women Collectives: Change makers from the ground up.” It will focus on self-starter women’s collectives that are bringing about a change and forcing a redrawing of policies, entrepreneurship collectives that have set up brands of their own as well as micro-financing collectives that have powered their independence.

This edition will feature a keynote address by Giriraj Singh, Minister of Rural Development & Panchayati Raj, who will focus on how the DAY-NRLM mission, the largest government programme, is working exclusively with rural women to rework gender equality in systemic processes of local governance and institutions, in stakeholdership in the economy and rights-based access to social justice.

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The address will be followed by a panel discussion featuring Nita Kejrewal who is Joint Secretary, National Rural Livelihood Mission, Ministry of Rural Development, Chetna Sinha, Founder and Chairperson of Mann Deshi Bank and Mann Deshi Foundation, Anjini Kochar, Senior Research Fellow from 3ie, Bijal Brahmbhatt, Director, Mahila Housing SEWA Trust, Hasina Kharbhih, Founder and Chairperson of Impulse NGO Network and Madhu Krishna, Deputy Director, Gender Equality, Water, Sanitation & Hygiene, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The discussion will be moderated by Rinku Ghosh, Editor, Special Projects.

Presented by IWWAGE, this series of webinars aims to have a solutions-oriented discussion and throw up some suggestions on policy enablers between some of the brightest minds across academia, industry, civil society and, of course, the government.