In the second blog in the series, Dr. Kanchana Lanzet of UN Women discusses the role of caste in promoting bias against women. According to the caste system, women, by nature of their biological processes, are “impure.”

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For women in India to walk with dignity and freedom, a social transformation as well as a change in the values, attitudes and male perceptions of women, by men and women, is needed. Dr. Kanchana Lanzet, member of the board of directors at UN Women in Bonn, gives us an expert opinion on why being a woman in India is so problematic and whether one can really do much about it. This is Dr. Lanzet’s first blog in the series.

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This is a global invitation to dance! On February 14, 2013, women around the world are commemorating the 15th anniversary of V-Day, to end violence against women and girls. Women in Bonn are also part of the “One Billion Rising” movement to activate men and women across the world and sensitize them towards women’s issues. Join the flash mob at Bonn, Münsterplatz on 14 February, Thursday at 16:30.  Check out the choreography video so we can all match our steps :).

One Billion Rising in your city: for more details click here.

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I met them at a coffee shop. They were already waiting for me when I entered. The steam from the four cups of coffee on their table made patterns in the air. Coffee  had just been served and I knew I wasn’t late.

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As a journalist you often read and write about crime and a point comes when writing the number of dead becomes a routine and you do not feel the loss anymore. In fact you do not find it interesting enough or you do not even consider it a story worth mentioning, if the number of casualties were too low or if the violence was not too brutal. But also there comes a time when words fail you, something so horrendous happens that it does not just touch you; rather it shakes you

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There is a lot common between Pakistan and India, after all the two nations have hundreds of years of shared history. But while partition of British India in 1947 gave India and Pakistan separate identities, 65 years later, the two nations are still striving to achieve a major goal: the protection of their women citizens from rape.

While activists in Pakistan mourned the recent killing of nurses carrying out a polio vaccination programme, the gang-rape of a 23-year-old medical student in a Delhi bus on December 16 has shaken the Indian nation and touched what the International Herald Tribune called the “deepest chord of discontent”.

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As the nation mourned the killing of at least six female polio workers in the north-western and southern provinces, the Pakistani government celebrated its National Working Women’s Day on December 22. At least two women escaped target killing in the southern Punjab province a few days later.

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