Innovative Approach to Promoting Gendered Rights

Gender has always been mainstreamed in all our programmes since 1985. From the first SIDA assisted women’s self help group in 1986 to an RI programme in 2007 it has been a long but fulfilling journey.

As mentioned earlier SMRC’s advocacy programme has been very strong at the national level and international. Besides including it in the National level IAWS platform, it also promoted women’s rights in the UN Convention on the Rights of persons with disabilities and has taken it up as a major programme in its implementation.
 
One of the important methods of doing this has been using media and research. As such in 1999 it brought women from across India together in an interface with the media. Anuradha Mohit, Sandhya Limaye all well known activists joined in the venture as did leading media houses such as NDTV, ZEE, etc.,

RI and SMRC have recently joined forces to implement a project through a rural business school aimed at building the capacity of women with disabilities in four states in eastern India. SMRC is assisting the women with disabilities as they set up their small businesses, such as cyber cafes, video services, mobile phone repair and rental booths, by helping them join self-help organizations and acquire loans in hi tech business. In addition to the encouragement of economic independence for women with disabilities, the program will also support the women in their self-advocacy efforts for their inclusion in the Indian Government’s Reproductive Health Care program. This SMRC-RI project takes a multi-faceted approach to promoting the women’s rights to work and health, and will hopefully achieve the aim of greater inclusion of women with disabilities in the community.

Research has included bringing out India’s first book on women and Disability (Sage 2003 by Asha Hans and Annie Patri our physiotherapist). UNDP sponsored a study on the status of women with disabilities in India in which Dr. S.B. Agnihotri, a high level bureaucrat and a feminist writer assisted. One new initiative was the inclusion of looking budgets where the women were concerned in which Amrita Patel of Utkal University did a creditable job.

Our pioneering work on women has also included their needs in disasters.