The Project
Funded through the British Academy's Youth Futures Scheme (GCRF).
This project addresses socially embedded discrimination towards young women by addressing six key UN sustainable self-development goals: ending poverty, access to a quality education ; gender equality; decent work and economic growth; industry, innovation, and infrastructure and reduction of inequalities.
Inequalities are reflected in India’s employment statistics, where women’s employment has fallen from 45% in 2005 to less than 34% in 2015. For rural women, the female labour force participation rate has declined from 42.5% in 1987-1988 to 18% in 2011-2012. When employed, Indian women, using a median average, earn 25% less than their male counterparts.
A key aim of project is to address young women's self-identified issues affecting their well-being and in doing so address issues arising from the systemic nature of socio-cultural prejudices and arising inequalities, individual agency, and policy issues. Central to this is hearing, supporting and working with young women in building their self-confidence, belief, employment opportunities, and heightening their sense of belonging to a wider global sense of citizenship.
This project, therefore, looks to develop young Indian women’s agency and advocacy by empowering them to engage in wider Indian society through seeking and securing employment with the necessary life skills to thrive, and through this engagement, increase their social mobility - heightening their sense of global belonging.
To achieve these aims, the project looks to co-create an employment and life skills training course to develop and empower young women in making employment and life decisions to address discrimination encounters, thereby creating a greater sense of inclusion in Indian society and a wider sense of global citizenship. This training course will be supported by a social marketing campaign encouraging participation and wider societal change in attitudes and behaviours towards young women and their employment.
We believe all women can embrace who they are,
can define their future, can challenge convention
and can change the world.
Bharati College
New Delhi
The project is being undertaken with students at our partner institution, Bharati College - a women's college in Janakpuri, New Delhi.
A constituent college with permanent affiliation to the University of Delhi, Bharati College was founded by the Delhi Administration as Bharati Mahila College in September 1971.
When it began, the college offered courses only in the B.A. Programme (then known as B.A. Pass) and a few vocational courses like Office Management and Tailoring & Dress Designing. It has since expanded to include honours courses in English, Hindi, Sanskrit, History, Political Science, Economics, Mathematics and Commerce