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Namita Bhandare

Namita Bhandare

hindustantimes

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The weighty business of words (and why they matter)

The Centre for Law and Policy Research has a draft bill called The Freedom of Marriage and Association and Prohibition of Honour Crimes bill.

06.05.2025 10

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

Justifying caste killings in the name of family honour

Even when cases are reported, conviction is a problem with witnesses turning hostile.

04.05.2025 10

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

Who is a woman? UK Supreme Court ruling is a setback to transgender rights

The UK Supreme Court has defined ‘woman’ as someone who is biologically born female. What does this mean for the rights of transgender women?

29.04.2025 10

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

How Donald Trump’s tariff policies could impact women workers

Trade has been a powerful instrument for gender equality over the last few decades – especially in low income and emerging economies.

22.04.2025 30

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

In rape cases, stop victim-blaming and morality talk

The temptation by judges to attach moral homilies when adjudicating on rape cases goes back all the way to the 1974 Mathura judgment of a sessions...

20.04.2025 10

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

“We will see change only if we keep talking”

For 23 years, Khabar Lahariya has been reporting the news from Bundelkhand, a hilly region between northern Madhya Pradesh and southern Uttar Pradesh.

15.04.2025 20

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Namita Bhandare

Why ASHA workers in Kerala are angry

On the 50th day of the protest, Padmajam from Trivandrum decided to join the other women in chopping off her hair. 

08.04.2025 9

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

Abuse of anti-dowry law: Separating myths and facts

In the surround sound of misuse narratives, women who most desperately need the law’s protections are in the greatest danger of losing them

06.04.2025 10

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

Mind the Gap: “I dig black,” Kerala's top buereaucrat questions beauty norms

By challenging beauty norms, Kerala’s chief secretary reopens an old conversation: why should anyone have the right to comment on a woman’s...

01.04.2025 10

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

Mardangi reloaded: Why we need to change the narrative on ‘masculinity’

A 14-year-old boy was arrested in Bagalkot, Karnataka for raping a 12-year-old girl. 

25.03.2025 10

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Namita Bhandare

Adolescence in the age of incel culture

In its simplest form, Adolescence shows us what is evident in plain sight. The kids are not all right

24.03.2025 20

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

The Wrestling Federation of India is back.

The sports ministry has revoked the suspension of the Wrestling Federation of India. What does this mean for Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh?

18.03.2025 10

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Namita Bhandare

Mind the Gap: The Great Return

Feminist economists have a neat phrase for what is an everyday life for far too many women around the world.

11.03.2025 20

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

International Women’s Day: A day to celebrate, and heed the warnings

Aspirational India gives cause for hope. The ASER (annual status of education report) released earlier this year lists the reasons why.

03.03.2025 30

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

Our continuing love affair with the sari

Across generations, regions, religions, and socio-economic status, this unstitched garment has endured for 5,000 years

02.03.2025 30

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

The death of a KIIT student leads to the question: Are our institutions failing

Institutions should be the first rank of redress and it's their duty to initiate inhouse or police proceedings against the perpetrator.

24.02.2025 10

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

Mind the Gap: The work-from-home conversation raging all over the world

Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu said he is advocating WFH to get more women into the workforce. The statement is welcome but will not be enough.

17.02.2025 30

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

Marital rape can’t remain an exception to rape law

Why does the government have any interest in preserving an abusive marriage; one where the wife is the property of her husband and her consent is...

16.02.2025 10

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

Mind the Gap: The red carpet’s “naked dress” is a tired and tried trope

Kanye West’s wife, Bianca Censori grabbed headlines all over the world. But the nude female body has in the past been used for protest and...

10.02.2025 40

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Namita Bhandare

Mind the Gap: ASER survey finds the kids are (more than) alright

Girls are surging ahead of boys in some subjects. Government schools are doing better than private schools. And everyone has better reading and...

03.02.2025 20

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

When law seeks to make the State the Big Brother

Interfaith couples who already find it tough to marry because of existing so-called anti-conversion laws will now find even living together impossibly...

02.02.2025 20

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Namita Bhandare

Mary Ellen Iskenderian: Why the financial inclusion of women matters

One billion women around the world are estimated to be out of the purview of the financial sector.

27.01.2025 20

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Namita Bhandare

Mind the Gap: Why American companies are wrong to roll back DEI policies.

In Donald Trump’s USA, companies that have promoted DEI are rolling back their programmesIn India, corporates have, fortunately not lost their...

20.01.2025 10

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

Why we need to talk to boys about rape

The malaise of violence, including sexual violence against women and girls, cuts across geographic borders, age of victim, educational level, and...

18.01.2025 40

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

The year-ender gender quiz: Heroes, villains and the year in gender

How closely did you follow the gender news of 2024? Take my year-ender gender quiz to find out.

30.12.2024 4

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Namita Bhandare

The Challengers: Women who shook the status quo in 2024

BBC has a list of 100. Financial Times has just 25. But writing from an Indian perspective, viewing India from within, who were the women who made...

23.12.2024 3

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

Breaking the gender glass ceiling across disciplines

Looking at the year gone by there is reason to believe the tide has changed. That the girls will save themselves—and us. That there is hope...

22.12.2024 3

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Namita Bhandare

Death, tragedy and serious accusations in Bengaluru

India’s dowry death statistic is a disgrace; 18 women killed every single day.

16.12.2024 6

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Namita Bhandare

Absolutely the best books by women in 2024

Wars and genocide raging and women’s rights from Afghanistan to the US under attack.

09.12.2024 3

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

The misguided debate over declining fertility

There is anxiety about the economic impact of dwindling numbers. But that cross cannot be borne by women alone.

06.12.2024 7

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

General’s F grade for women commanding officers

Women have had to fight to serve in the Indian army. Now, a three-star general’s scathing letter indicting women commanding officers is causing a...

01.12.2024 10

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

Understanding the law that criminalises sex based on a false promise to marry

The Supreme Court noted this week that every consensual relationship that doesn’t end in marriage cannot be criminalised.

24.11.2024 2

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

A double whammy for women in informal sector

Apart from the health effects of breathing toxic, polluted air, women in the informal sector have to suffer income loss, too

22.11.2024 3

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

Workers not volunteers says Gujarat high court about anganwadi workers

The Gujarat high court has ruled that anganwadi workers and helpers perform a vital task and can’t be treated as ‘volunteers’.

19.11.2024 7

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

What Donald Trump’s decisive win says about gender in America

In the end, it wasn’t a close contest as predicted, but a big bang decisive win for Trump, a convicted felon accused of sexual assault by over two...

11.11.2024 6

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

The 1984 Anti-Sikh riots: India’s unhealed wound

“Are we not citizens of the country who deserve justice?” asks Darshan Kaur. “But society just forgot about us.”

08.11.2024 5

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

Why 2024 is America’s most gendered election in history

Hours from now Americans will decide between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris as their next president.

03.11.2024 10

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

The incredible courage of Sakshi Malik

In July 2016, Sakshi Malik got on to a 14-hour flight to New York City. From there she connected to another four-hour haul to Rio de Janeiro.

27.10.2024 3

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

Fertility cross is not for women to carry

The solution is not to ask women to have more kids; a better idea might be just to accept an inevitable reality and prepare for it.

26.10.2024 10

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

The government will not recognise marital rape as a crime

The government’s affidavit to the Supreme Court that “violating a wife’s consent” is wrong, but to call it rape is “excessive”

06.10.2024 2

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

Supreme Court cracks down child pornography

Child pornography is illegal even if stored on your private device and watched in your personal space, rules the Supreme Court.

29.09.2024 2

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

Gisele Pelicot is changing the way we talk about rape

By refusing to be anonymous, Gisele has taken control of the narrative of her life and is reminding the world that the shame of rape does not fall...

28.09.2024 4

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Namita Bhandare

India’s resounding paralympic success must lead to a wider conversation

The euphoria of India’s spectacular performance at the Paralympics is still to die down, but beyond the medals, I've a simple question: Are we...

22.09.2024 3

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

Why Kamala Harris is the voice the world needs

Global woman icon? Hardly. Flawed? Definitely. And yet Kamala Harris might just be the voice the world needs right now.

13.09.2024 2

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

The death penalty cannot fix India’s rape problem. Here’s why

By unanimous vote, the West Bengal assembly on Tuesday cleared a bill that makes the death penalty mandatory in cases involving rape and murder.

08.09.2024 4

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

Neha Dixit on gender, the informal economy and the invisible work of women

I’ve been meaning to talk to Neha Dixit about her wonderful debut book, The Many Lives of Syeda X: The story of an unknown Indian

01.09.2024 3

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

What after the Hema panel report? Answer lies with us

If the rot is systemic, the answer cannot be piecemeal — a resignation here, a committee there. We have to stop responding to sexual assault as...

31.08.2024 5

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

Women@Work: The Malayalam film industry’s dirty, not-so-little, secret

The Hema Committee report on the Malayalam film industry, released this week, is shocking in its account of the rampant sexual exploitation of women.

25.08.2024 5

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

This ends now: How to fight rape culture

News of yet another horrific rape and murder, A 31-year-old doctor at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata has led to massive protests.

18.08.2024 10

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare

Flawed responses to rape underpin Kolkata case

Beyond the details of this crime, there is a horrible sense of déjà vu. Already, they’re calling the 32-year-old postgraduate doctor the “second...

16.08.2024 1

hindustantimes

Namita Bhandare