A group of activists belonging to different organisations across the State has appealed to the government to extend the window for providing feedback on the draft Tamil Nadu State New Policy for Women released in the last week of December.
Pointing to the delay in releasing the draft version of the policy, they said that it was necessary to obtain feedback from a wider section of the population.
Welcoming the release of such a policy and lauding many of its aspects, the activists, however, stressed the need to articulate clearly the aspects of implementation with time-bound targets, verifiable milestones, and independent monitoring mechanisms. The activists have also submitted their detailed feedback to the government on the policy.
Highlighting the importance provided to the welfare of rural women through interventions in programmes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), their feedback stressed on similar focus on urban women, women with disabilities and gender non-conforming persons.
They pointed out to the mention of ‘transgender’ persons in the English version of the draft while the Tamil version only mentioned ‘Thirunangai’, which referred to transfeminine persons. They said that the Tamil version can instead use the term ‘Thirunar,’ which can refer to both transfeminine and transmasculine persons.
Support for researchers
Appreciating the proposal to support 1,000 women researchers every year in the STEM fields, they said that support must be extended to researchers in other fields such as law, medicine and social sciences.
The draft policy said that social, economic, political and emotional will the four pillars upon which the guiding principles of the policy would be based. The activists suggested the inclusion of the cultural aspect and rephrasing emotion to psychological.
They demanded changes in the configuration of the High-level Women Empowerment Committee, which they said had included only representatives from the government and international organisations such as the United Nations and the World Bank. They said that the committee must include representatives from grassroots organisations.
Similarly, they said that the policy must also suggest adequate representation of women in all the committees constituted by different departments of the government for various purposes.
The team of activists included Bimla Chandrasekhar of Ekta Resource Centre for Women, Sheelu Francis of Tamil Nadu Women’s Collective, Vanessa Peter of Information and Resource Centre for the Deprived Urban Communities, Kamatchi of Social Watch - Tamil Nadu, Meenakshi Balasubramaniyan of Equals, Josephine Amala Valarmathi of Domestic Workers Movement and few others.
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