Stating that women’s growing participation in public life and their actual representation in legislatures are two separate things, Dr Manali Kshirsagar, Vice Chancellor, Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University (RTMNU), on Friday opined that they do necessarily move together and policy intervention is sometimes the only way to bridge that gap. VC Dr Kshirsagar was speaking on the topic of the Nari Shakti Vandana Bill at the Mahila Buddhijivi Sammelan organised by Nagrik Vikas Samiti at Suresh Bhatt hall. She noted that the question at the core of the law was not just one of equality or representation but of what kind of society India intended to build. She shared that closing of the gender gap could add approximately seven trillion dollars to the global economy.

 

City Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) President Dayashankar Tiwari, State BJP President Ravindra Chavan, City Mayor Neeta Thakre, Social Activist Amruta Fadnavis, Noted Writer Vijaya Marotkar, were present on the dias. City Mayor Neeta Thakre, expressed that the city had already achieved full implementation as a city committed to women’s dignity even before the law passage. She noted that India was perhaps the only nation that addresses its land specifically as ‘Mother’ and said the law was a long overdue recognition of that sentiment in legislative form.

 

Social activist Amruta Fadnavis asserted that the law’s passage in the Lok Sabha was fundamentally a matter of social justice. Writer Vijaya Marotkar delivered an address tracing women’s struggle from the era of Savitribai Phule through Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar’s introduction of the Hindu Code Bill and into the present. She acknowledged the existence of patriarchal structures in India’s past but said the current generation had staked its claim in every domain without exception. “From driving rickshaws to venturing into space, our women have not lagged in any field,” she expressed.