Union Minister For Women, Maneka Gandhi Fired Up For International Women’s Day

The Ministry of Women and Child Development has proposed the setting up of a Women’s Entrepreneurship Council to deal with the problems businesswomen of India face. If the council is commissioned it will act as the medium between the government and women entrepreneur diaspora.

This council will be modelled after the chambers of commerce like FICCI, and will seek to resolve issues through policy changes. A note to this effect will be sent to the Union Cabinet for approval soon, said Maneka Gandhi, Union Minister for Women and Child Development at the Proactive Well-Being Conclave celebrating International Women’s Day (falling on March 8th) organized by FICCI Ladies Organization (FLO), Young FLO (YFLO) and the Sleepwell Foundation.

The fiery Ms. Gandhi, a long proponent of women’s rights said, “FICCI Ladies Organization was initially the wives of some important men. They were like the female leftovers, while the men got on with the important, “real jobs” like policy reforms and making the rules.”

All that is changing now. The Union Minister intends for this Women Entrepreneurship Council to be set up so that businesswomen will be taken seriously. “We won’t stop until our voices are heard, we won’t stop until we become as important as everyone else and there is equal gender budgeting.”

Ms. Gandhi said that the Women’s Entrepreneurship Council should be up and running within a year. Her ministry also runs an online platform called Mahila E-haat to promote financial inclusion of women entrepreneurs. The initiative has already partnered with ecomm marketplace giant, Amazon to get women made goods sold faster.

She further said her Ministry was working on an app to curb harassment of women in any form. The app, named the ‘Shouting App’ would allow the victim to reach out to 10 people near her to keep the perpetrators at bay before the arrival of the police. The app is expected to be functional by end of March 2017.

The minister, who is also in charge of child development, spoke about a zero tolerance policy for employing children for street begging. To this end, an anti-trafficking bill is to be posed before the Parliament shortly.