Advocating for Women's Rights and Security

Celebration of International Women’s Day - March 8, 2010

Mahila Adhikar Abhiyan (Women’s Rights Campaign) is a collective effort at advocating for women’s rights and security in Gujarat  initiated by more than 40 NGOs, CBOs across Gujarat. This process has been supported by Oxfam India and its partners in the VAW programme as an initiative to build a collective voice of women in Gujarat and open a dialogue between various groups and movements like dalit rights, minority rights. The focus is to bring the grassroots women leaders together to collectively talk about women as a group cutting across the different axes of social exclusion. 

A collective regional and state-level gathering to celebrate Women’s Day 2010 in Gujarat is being planned as a platform for grassroots women - rural and urban - from across Gujarat will come together moving beyond ethnic, linguistic, cultural, social, economic and political differences to celebrate womanhood and state their demands for their rights. Based within an inclusive women’s human rights framework, Gujarat’s grassroots women will collectively identify critical issues and converge on 8th March to convey a strong message to civil society, media and the State administration and concurrently increase political determination, public participation and awareness of women’s human rights issues and actions.

For this celebration the objectives are defined as mentioned below: 

1. Celebrate five decades of women’s struggles and achievements in Gujarat.
2. Make the Civil Society and the State Administration receptive to women’s issues in Gujarat.
3. Make the State Administration accountable to the status of women and their rights in Gujarat.
4. Establish grassroot women’s forum to carry forward women’s concerns in Gujarat.