Behan Box
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70 years after India enshrined “Right to Equality ” as a Fundamental Right in the Constitution, gender equality remains an unfinished agenda. While India ensured universal suffrage in 1950, women and transgender persons are underrepresented in India’s national parliament and state legislative assemblies. Only 14% of Members of Parliament are women. There are no transgender persons in India’s parliament. Only 8% ministerial positions are held by women across state governments.
Even as more women and transgender persons vote and run for public offices, they are systemically excluded from governance and policy making. Their ideas, voices and aspirations are almost entirely absent from political party manifestos. Women actively want to shape strategies, policies and laws on all critical issues from local to international level.
Women and gender diverse persons are also underrepresented in newsroom leadership, which influences what stories are told and how policies and laws that affect them are analysed and reported.
BehanBox (Voices of Sisters in Hindi) aims to correct this historical injustice by bringing the voices of women and gender diverse persons to the centre of public discourse. Our objective is to shine a spotlight on existing and widening gender gaps with a critical look at laws, policies and data with a gender lens from local to the national level.
As a women-led organisation, we platform local and women journalists, especially from historically marginalised communities, in our mission to transform journalism.
In times of the pandemic, when inequalities are increasing and freedoms gained by women in the past decades are being lost, our mission is to mainstream gender journalism with our in depth, evidence-based critical research and reportage. Source
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Media Outlet details
| Scope | Women |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Country | N/A |
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Recent Articles
Search Articles‘Partner Violence In Non-Marital Relationships Is Hard To Name And Address’
In this instalment of BehanBox Talkies, scholar Sundari Anitha says entering a relationship is itself an act of resistance for women and admitting that it has turned abusive therefore becomes difficult Illustration by Urvi Sawant In BehanBox Talkies, we explore ideas through the lens of scholars. Read our collection of interviews here. Until violence enters the picture, women’s intimate relationships are often treated as private matters.
The Many Double Standards Of India’s Maternity Benefits Policy
Maternity benefits for women in India’s unorganised sector are among the lowest in the world even as the organised sector compares favourably with developed countries. An excerpt from development economist Reetika Khera’s book, Freebies or Rights: Understanding Social Policy in India. MATERNITY BENEFITS Some Women Are More Equal Some years ago, I came across an infographic on X that plotted the duration of paid maternity leave for select countries. The infographic was attributed to UNICEF.
‘We Are In A Fight for Azaadi’: Notes From An ASHA Worker’s Diary
When does an ASHA worker’s day start, where does it end? A year ago we reached out to Lakshmi Kaurav, an ASHA facilitator, to document her work and record her footprints through the system in her voice, at her own pace. How much time and labour went into work the government termed “flexible” and “honorary”, grounded in the ideas of “seva”? From her vantage point what were the realities of the system? And what about her friendships, her idea of dignity? Lakshmi set out to chronicle her days.
Gig, Domestic Workers Are Absorbing the Economic Costs Of Heat Stress: BehanBox Survey
Seema Kaur, a 30-year-old Zomato worker in New Delhi, labours for more than eight hours every day, earning roughly Rs 25,000 in a month. But this June, as punishing heat and humidity dizzied her on the job, she managed to scrape together only Rs 15,000. Seema’s income fell. Other survival costs rose. And with no labour rights and protections gig workers like hers should be entitled to, she was left to absorb these costs alone.
BehanVox: A Kafkaesque Nightmare
Illustration by Urvi Sawant Subscribe to our weekly newsletter that brings you top stories, news from the world, and our team’s reading recommendations. Hello and welcome to BehanVox! What is better than black humour to describe the Kafkaesque nature of the SIR exercise?
From Dalit Child Bride To Landowner – How Fulo’s Life Changed In A Flood-Prone Bihar Village
The quarter acre farm Fulo owns yields rich harvests of maize and rice. But she had started small -- with a goat, a sewing machine and a kirana shop, all bought with loans from a state livelihood scheme Fulo Devi, 39, sits in the farm that she initially leased and later purchased in her own name/Photo by Jyoti Yadav and illustration by Urvi Sawant EACH FRIDAY AFTERNOON, Fulo disrupts the rhythm of her village, Alani, as she goes door to door, summoning women from their homes.
‘We Saw The Biases In The SIR Process But Were Too Overwhelmed To Do Anything About It’
A BLO from West Bengal talks about the confusion around the ever-changing rules of the SIR process, the relentless work pressure and voter anxiety that shaped their work for six long months Illustration by Urvi Sawant This article is part of our SIR coverage. You can read other stories here. For sharing leads, suggestions, and questions, write to us at editor@behanbox.com.
BehanVox: Gone In A Flash
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter that brings you top stories, news from the world, and our team’s reading recommendations. Hello and welcome to BehanVox! This week brought devastation. The visuals of flash floods from Nepal are unreal – one moment people are walking about and getting on with life and another a gush of water sweeps them by and obliterates them. The floods have so far claimed at least 600 lives and 2,000 people are missing by official estimates.
The Biases And Blinkers Of Big Tech’s Language Models
We spoke to researchers and practitioners across Bangladesh, India, and Bhutan to understand the promises and fallacies of linguistic diversity in AI, and the way ahead Illustration by Urvi Sawant Ask a chatbot a question in English and it will stun you with its eloquence. But ask the same question in Urdu or Bangla or any regional language, and it stumbles.
‘Only The Name Remains Unchanged’: How the NFSA Amendment is Yet Another Betrayal of People’s Right to Food
IN THE NEARLY 13 YEARS since its enactment, the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013 has been subject to frequent changes, recalibrations and exclusions, affecting the lives of those it promises to protect. Even today, people’s struggle has not ceased and the crisis will be worsened by the newly proposed amendment to the Act by the Department of Food and Public Distribution, experts working on people’s right to food security say.