How India’s Employee State Insurance Scheme Lets Down Low-Wage Women Workers

Long distances to medical facilities, shortage of women doctors and frustrating bureaucratic hurdles discourage women workers in the garment sector from accessing the Employees’ State Insurance Scheme


What Afreen’s Story Says About Poor Healthcare Funding In India

Two of Delhi’s biggest government hospitals are right in Afreen’s backyard. But her struggle to access healthcare for her husband when he had a stroke underlines why the government needs to spend more on health


When Women Have Cancer: Navigating Families, Society and Medicine

When women are diagnosed with cancer, a common concern is this — how will they cope with the needs of both care and caregiving? They also have to face the possibility of neglect and abandonment


Exploitative Wages, Backbreaking Work: The Home Workers Behind Jalandhar’s Mega Sports Goods Industry

Rs 4 to feather a dozen shuttlecocks, Rs 35 to stitch a football, Rs 62 to tack together six panels of a rugby ball – that is what home-based women workers are paid to keep the booming sports good industry of the city in business.


More Women, Adivasis, Dalits and Muslims Died During COVID-19 First Wave

Unlike the rest of the world, women’s life expectancy fell by more years than men’s and that of marginalised communities fell more sharply in the first year of the pandemic. This skew, say, researchers can be traced to social inequalities


How Fertility Preferences Are Killing Women In India

Pregnancy can exacerbate pre existing health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, autoimmune conditions and cancer. But even women in vulnerable health are often pressured to conceive, especially if they have yet to deliver a son


Blockades Are Putting Lives Of Women, Children At Risk In Manipur’s Relief Camps

The blockades mounted by community vigilantes in Manipur make it hard for critical relief material, especially medicines, to reach relief camps. It is the women and the children who suffer the most


A Dream Deferred: How The NEET PG Crisis Has Hurt Women Aspirants

A doctor and a once-NEET aspirant provides an insider perspective on what the ongoing exam crisis means for the healthcare system and especially for women aspirants who have to constantly deal with the pressure to start family life


Ignorance and Apathy: Why One Indian Woman Dies of Cervical Cancer Every 7 mins

This story is supported by the Pulitzer CenterThe flow of patients is incessant at the outpatient departments of the Gujarat Cancer Research Institute (GCRI). The tertiary […]


‘My Income Hasn’t Changed In Ten Years, And We Have No Savings’: An ASHA Worker’s Story

Whether it is putting off an urgent surgery or making do with 250 gm of fish for her family of four once a month, Lakhya Hira Phukon, like most other poorly-paid ASHA workers, has to balance her domestic budget with extreme care


In Govt’s Maternal Health Scheme, Big Gap Between Intent And Reality

Initiatives to make the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana more effective has not quite worked out the way it should, we find


Budget 2024: Empty Declarations, Insufficient Allocations For Key Schemes

Schemes aimed at women did not get the big push they needed, we find


Assam’s Family Size Norm For New Initiative Could Hit Its Marginalised Women Most

Linking economic welfare schemes for women to their family size will further limit women’s participation in work and increase their vulnerabilities, argue experts


One In Two Trans Men Struggle To Access Basic Healthcare: Study

Most trans men and transmasculine individuals in India end up seeking private medical care because of multiple hurdles to government schemes, says a study


‘Queer Affirmative Medical Education Should Begin At School, Not College’

Medical education has remained largely binary, focusing on male/female bodies, heterosexuality and Cis-gendered lives. There are nascent efforts now to make medical education – and the […]


‘How will you manage?’ How Disabled Women Are Forced Into Surgical Procedures

Nearly a decade ago, Smitha*, who lives with cerebral palsy,  underwent a surgery to remove fibroids from her uterus. The doctors, at the time, asked if […]


India’s Laws Fail To Uphold Abortion Rights Of Women With Disabilities

Arpita Roy Sengupta was 22 years old when her parents, much against her wishes, arranged her marriage in 2007 with Alok*, a deaf person like her. […]


How Kerala is A Long Way Off In Gender Affirmative Healthcare For Trans Persons

Anuradha Govindan of Kannur, 38, waited for thirty years to embrace her identity as a transwoman. Before she was able to live the life she wanted, […]


Underpaid ASHA Workers Tackle Covid and Vaccine Hesitancy In Kashmir

ASHA workers in Kashmir have been instrumental in countering misinformation and addressing vaccine hesitancy. But chronic delays in honorariums have forced many into debt and financial instability.


ASHAs Within the ‘Kerala Model’ Lead Covid-19 Response, Get Little in Return

Our 16-state survey found that in Kerala, women health workers at the frontlines of India’s resistance to Covid-19 feel empowered and respected. Yet, their demands of being treated as a regularised workforce are ignored.