Gender and Electronic Media

💻 Gender and Electronic Media: Who Controls the Screen?

In today’s hyperconnected world, the screen is everywhere — from phones and laptops to televisions and tablets. And just like cinema, electronic media doesn’t merely reflect reality; it also reshapes it.
The way gender is represented — in news, advertisements, television shows, and social media — quietly influences how people think, talk, and behave.

But as digital spaces evolve, so does the conversation around gender.

📺 From Representation to Reinforcement:

For decades, traditional electronic media — especially television and advertising — reinforced gender stereotypes.
Women were shown as caregivers, homemakers, or beauty icons; men were portrayed as decision-makers, breadwinners, and problem-solvers.

Consider Indian television ads from the 1990s: a woman washing clothes in a detergent commercial, a man giving career advice in a financial ad — both reinforcing “who belongs where.”
Even global media followed similar trends. As media scholar Gaye Tuchman famously observed, this creates a “symbolic annihilation” of women — where they exist on screen, but only within limiting roles.

Yet, times are changing.

🌐 The Rise of Digital Voices:

The arrival of social media and digital content platforms has opened new possibilities.
Women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and marginalized groups are no longer just subjects of stories — they are storytellers.

YouTube, Instagram, and podcasts have become stages for authentic voices.
Creators like Kusha Kapila, Srishti Dixit, and Dolly Singh in India use humor and satire to challenge beauty standards, workplace sexism, and everyday patriarchy.
Globally, digital activists like Emma Watson (with the HeForShe campaign) and Laverne Cox (a trans advocate and actor) use online platforms to blend visibility with advocacy.

Electronic media, once controlled by a few, is now more participatory and democratic — though not free from bias.

📢 Gender and News Media:

Even in the world of journalism, gender balance is improving but still uneven.
Women anchors are more visible on Indian news channels today than ever before, yet studies show they are still underrepresented in leadership roles.

In 2024, initiatives like UN Women’s “Media Compact” began encouraging newsrooms to adopt gender-sensitive reporting and equal representation.
However, sensationalist coverage of gender-based violence in Indian media still often slips into victim-blaming or objectification, showing that ethical progress remains a work in progress.

🎮 New Media, Old Problems:

Electronic media has also expanded into gaming and streaming platforms, where gender representation brings both progress and pitfalls.
Games and web series often reproduce gender clichés — the hypersexualized woman, the violent man, the queer sidekick.
However, creators are beginning to challenge this:

Web shows like Four More Shots Please! and Made in Heaven explore urban women’s agency and identity.
Telugu web series such as CommitMental (2020) and Maa Neella Tank (2022) attempt to show nuanced relationships and evolving gender roles.
Even online gaming now features female-led narratives (Horizon Zero Dawn, Assassin’s Creed: Mirage) that redefine power and heroism.

The shift shows how digital storytelling can question the hierarchies built by earlier forms of electronic media.

🧠 Gender Performativity and Media Power:

According to theorist Judith Butler, gender is something we perform — through repeated actions shaped by culture and media.
Electronic media plays a crucial role in scripting those performances — deciding what’s “masculine” or “feminine,” what’s desirable or deviant.

However, when new creators — especially women and queer voices — reclaim that script through blogs, reels, podcasts, or short films, they disrupt the performance.
The result? A slow but powerful rewriting of gender expectations in public consciousness.

💬 The Double-Edged Screen:

Electronic media is both empowering and exploitative.
While it offers space for gender diversity, it also hosts online abuse, trolling, and digital surveillance, especially targeting women and queer users.

The same internet that amplifies women’s voices also exposes them to harassment — a reminder that access doesn’t always mean equality.
This duality makes media literacy, empathy, and regulation essential parts of gender justice in the digital age.

🌈 The Road Ahead:

Today’s electronic media can no longer hide behind old roles.
Audiences expect representation, respect, and responsibility.
When an ad celebrates a father cooking or a digital series normalizes queer love, that’s not just entertainment — that’s evolution.

As India moves deeper into the age of digital storytelling, every creator, journalist, and viewer becomes a part of the gender conversation.
The challenge is not just to give everyone a screen, but to ensure every screen tells a story worth seeing.

✨ Closing Thought:

Gender and electronic media are inseparable — one shapes the other.
The question is no longer “Who is on screen?” but “Who gets to tell the story?”
And as more voices rise from every corner of the internet, the screen — once a mirror of stereotypes — may finally become a window to equality.

Gender and Films

🎬 Gender and Films: Changing Frames in Indian Cinema

Cinema doesn’t just reflect our society — it also rewrites it.

In India, where movies are almost a shared religion, or a sacred second language, films have long shaped how we see gender — what men “should” be and what women “must” become.

But today, those definitions are shifting. From Bollywood to Tollywood, the big screen is slowly turning into a mirror where equality, identity, and self-expression begin to take center stage.

🎞️ The Male Gaze and the Hero’s World

Film theorist Laura Mulvey, in her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975), described the “male gaze” — the way mainstream cinema looks at women through male desire.
For decades, Indian films followed this formula. The hero acted; the heroine was admired. The man’s story drove the film, and the woman’s beauty decorated it.

Think of Hindi classics like Sholay (1975) or Deewar (1975) — women were secondary to the hero’s journey.
In Telugu cinema too, older films such as Murari (2001) or Pokiri (2006) portrayed women as emotional anchors or romantic interests rather than decision-makers.

The screen belonged to the hero — the “mass” star who fought villains, danced with the heroine, and saved the world. But the lens rarely turned toward the woman’s perspective.

💪 From Stereotypes to Strength

Then came the change.
Films began telling stories from the woman’s point of view, challenging gender stereotypes one frame at a time.

In Hindi cinema, Kahaani (2012) and Queen (2014) redefined womanhood through strength, vulnerability, and independence.
Telugu cinema, often seen as hero-driven, also started evolving.

Movies like:

Kshanam (2016) — showcased a female character (Adah Sharma) with agency and emotional complexity in a suspenseful narrative.
Mahanati (2018) — the biopic of legendary actress Savitri, portrayed by Keerthy Suresh, beautifully explored the highs and heartbreaks of a woman navigating fame and patriarchy.
Oh! Baby (2019) — presented a fun yet thoughtful story about aging, identity, and a woman rediscovering her joy.
Bhanumathi & Ramakrishna (2020) — broke gender clichés by portraying an independent working woman with emotional honesty.
Masooda (2022) — featured strong female characters in a genre (horror) traditionally dominated by men.
Swag (2024) boldly explores a world where gender roles are reversed, turning matriarchy into a mirror for patriarchy. Through its satirical take on shifting gender identities and power structures, the film questions how society assigns value to men and women — showing that gender itself is fluid, contextual, and ever-changing.

These stories moved away from damsels-in-distress to women as thinkers, leaders, and survivors — redefining the emotional core of Telugu cinema.

🧠 Rethinking Masculinity

Gender reform on screen isn’t just about women; it’s also about men.

Indian films have long glorified the alpha male — tough, fearless, emotionally distant. But modern narratives show that vulnerability is not weakness.

In Bollywood, Dear Zindagi (2016) gave us a gentle, emotionally aware male therapist.
Telugu cinema, too, is learning to portray layered men:

Jersey (2019) showed a father torn between his dreams and responsibilities, redefining heroism as love and persistence rather than aggression.
Middle Class Melodies (2020) and C/O Kancharapalem (2018) gave us men who were real, kind, insecure, and evolving — not “mass” heroes but relatable human beings.
Tholi Prema (2018) and Ante Sundaraniki (2022) portrayed sensitive male characters learning empathy and respect in relationships.

This softening of masculinity marks an important shift — showing men not as saviors, but as partners.

🌈 Beyond Gender Binaries

Cinema is also beginning to challenge traditional gender binaries.
Films like Aligarh (2015) and Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui (2021) introduced queer identities with empathy and dignity.
Telugu cinema is slowly joining this conversation too — Vinaro Bhagyamu Vishnu Katha (2023) hinted at inclusion and emotional diversity, while indie and OTT productions are exploring gender-fluid storytelling in subtler ways.

As philosopher Judith Butler reminds us, “Gender is not something we are, but something we do.”
Each new story that explores gender beyond the binary adds to cinema’s evolving dialogue with reality.

🎥 Behind the Camera: Women Storytellers

It’s not just who’s on screen — it’s who’s behind it.
The rise of women filmmakers has changed how stories are told.

Directors like Zoya Akhtar, Meghna Gulzar, and Nandita Das in Hindi cinema, and B. Jaya, Nandini Reddy, and Sudha Kongara in South Indian cinema, bring new perspectives that challenge traditional power dynamics.

For example:

Nandini Reddy’s Oh! Baby playfully questioned how women’s value is tied to youth and beauty.
Sudha Kongara’s Soorarai Pottru (Tamil) — though male-centered — portrayed a marriage of equals and celebrated mutual respect.

When women write and direct, the female gaze often replaces the male gaze — the lens shifts from objectification to understanding.

💬 When Society Talks Back

India’s diversity shows up in its cinema too.
In the same year, one film might boldly challenge patriarchy, while another glorifies traditional gender roles.
For instance, The Great Indian Kitchen (Malayalam, 2021) questioned domestic servitude, while some commercial Telugu hits still frame women as ornamental or submissive.

This contrast reveals a nation in transition — modern yet traditional, questioning yet cautious.
But every feminist story, every emotionally aware male role, every queer representation pushes that boundary a little further.

🌟 The Road Ahead

The future of gender representation in Indian and Telugu cinema looks hopeful.
Streaming platforms like Netflix, Aha, and Prime Video have become game-changers, offering space for unconventional storytelling.
Shows like Modern Love Hyderabad and Pitta Kathalu experiment with women’s voices, sexuality, and urban relationships in fresh, honest ways.

As young storytellers rise from every region, they’re bringing new definitions of identity, love, and equality to the screen.
The change is no longer led by stars — it’s led by stories.

🎬 Final Frame

Gender and film are inseparable, because both are about perception — how we see and how we’re seen.
From Bollywood to Tollywood, Indian cinema is slowly shedding stereotypes, one frame at a time.

Every time a woman leads her own story, every time a man learns empathy, every time gender is seen as a spectrum — cinema moves closer to reality, and society moves closer to balance.

So, the next time you watch a film, look closely —
Who gets to speak? Who gets to dream?
That’s where the real story begins.

Gender Mainstreaming

Gender Mainstreaming: Making Equality the Default Setting

“Equality cannot be an afterthought; it must be the architecture.”

Have you ever noticed how policies, programmes, or even films claim to be “neutral,” but somehow end up reflecting the experiences of only one gender? That’s exactly the kind of silent bias gender mainstreaming aims to dismantle. It’s not about creating “extra” spaces for women or men—it’s about redesigning the whole system so that equality becomes built-in, not bolted on.

What is Gender Mainstreaming?

The Council of Europe defines gender mainstreaming as “the reorganisation, improvement, development, and evaluation of policy processes, so that a gender equality perspective is incorporated in all policies at all levels and at all stages.”

In simpler words: every policy, programme, or project—whether it’s in education, health, film, or transport—should be designed with both women’s and men’s perspectives in mind. It’s not enough to “add women and stir”; mainstreaming means rethinking the entire recipe.

At its heart, gender mainstreaming is about fairness. It ensures that neither women nor men are disadvantaged by policies that were unconsciously designed from one point of view.

A Brief History

The concept took shape at the Third World Conference on Women in Nairobi (1985) and became a central strategy after the Beijing Platform for Action (1995). In 1997, the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) formally adopted gender mainstreaming as a universal policy approach.

Since then, it has become a guiding framework across the United Nations, national governments, NGOs, and academic institutions to ensure that gender equality isn’t an isolated agenda—but part of the system’s DNA.

Why It Matters ?

Policies or institutions that don’t consider gender often create invisible inequalities. For example:

Urban planning may ignore the fact that women often use public transport while men are more likely to drive.
Healthcare systems may overlook women’s symptoms because most medical research has historically used male bodies as the default.
Education and media may perpetuate stereotypes that discourage girls from STEM fields or typecast women in caregiving roles.

As the Council of Europe puts it: “Decisions which do not fully take into account the needs of all final users may lead to inappropriate solutions and an inadequate allocation of public funds.”

Simply put, gender mainstreaming ensures smarter, fairer, and more effective decision-making.

The Four Pillars of Gender Mainstreaming

1. Gender Analysis

Before launching any policy or project, analyse how it affects different genders. Who benefits? Who bears the cost?
For example, in a college campus safety initiative, men and women might face different risks and use spaces differently—so both perspectives must shape the plan.

2. Gender-Responsive Planning and Budgeting

Include gender objectives, targets, and resources right from the planning stage.
For instance, gender budgeting tracks whether government funds actually advance equality rather than reinforce gaps.

3. Institutionalisation and Accountability

Gender equality shouldn’t depend on one enthusiastic individual or a “women’s cell.” It must be a collective institutional responsibility—supported by leadership, training, and policies that hold everyone accountable.

4. Monitoring and Evaluation

Evaluate impact continuously. Are both men and women benefiting equally? Have inequalities narrowed? Adjust policies based on data and feedback.

In Practice: Where Mainstreaming Happens

Gender mainstreaming can be applied everywhere—from government programmes to classroom activities.

In Governance: India’s Thematic Paper on Gender Mainstreaming in Governance (2022) highlights the need to evaluate all centrally-sponsored schemes for gender impact.
In Education: Curriculum and classroom practices can be reviewed for gender sensitivity—whether teaching materials reinforce stereotypes or offer balanced representation.
In Film and Media: As a cinephile, one can see how screenplays and character arcs often center the male gaze. Gender mainstreaming here means reimagining stories where agency, emotion, and perspective aren’t confined by gender norms.

Even a student short film competition can adopt this principle—by ensuring equal opportunities in casting, crew roles, and storylines that represent diverse gender experiences.

Challenges

Despite its noble vision, gender mainstreaming often stumbles in execution.

Tokenism: Adding “women” to a report or committee doesn’t mean the process is gender-sensitive.
Data Gaps: Many institutions lack disaggregated data to identify gender disparities.
Resistance to Change: Organisations built on traditional gender norms may resist systemic reform.
Intersectional Blind Spots: Mainstreaming must also account for how gender interacts with caste, class, ethnicity, disability, or sexuality—otherwise it risks being shallow or exclusionary.

As scholars note, mainstreaming requires “transformative change”—not just paperwork.

Bringing It Home: Gender Mainstreaming in Classrooms and Campuses

For teachers and students, gender mainstreaming can move from theory to practice in small but significant ways:

Encouraging balanced participation in discussions, leadership roles, and technical tasks.
Using examples in lessons that feature both men and women equally.
Re-examining institutional policies—such as leave rules, mentoring systems, or safety mechanisms—through a gender lens.
Promoting student film or theatre projects that consciously deconstruct gender stereotypes.

When these ideas enter the classroom, equality shifts from being a slogan to a lived experience.

A Quick Checklist for Practitioners

Before implementing any project or policy, ask:

Have both women’s and men’s perspectives been considered?
Do our goals and indicators reflect gender equality?
Are decision-makers trained in gender sensitivity?
Do we have gender-disaggregated data for monitoring?
Are there mechanisms for accountability and feedback?

If your answer to all five is “yes,” congratulations—you’re already practising gender mainstreaming.

Conclusion: From Policy to Practice

Gender mainstreaming is not a luxury or a “women’s issue.” Gender mainstreaming isn’t a slogan; it’s smart design. It’s a framework for justice, efficiency, and sustainability. When gender becomes a natural part of policy thinking, equality stops being a side-project—it becomes the system itself.

Whether drafting a college policy or writing a film script, in classrooms, offices, or film sets, gender mainstreaming invites us to ask one simple but radical question:
“Who is missing from the frame/picture—and how can we bring them into the in?”

Medicate

Medicate

This short dystopian story by blogger, software engineer, and entrepreneur Oleksandr Gorpynich— set in a world where an AI-driven medication machine named Sam dictates human health and behavior — resonates eerily with the realities of our current digital era. It serves as a sharp allegory for how technology, surveillance, and corporate power intertwine to control human lives under the guise of convenience and care.

In today’s world, we are surrounded by “digital Sams” — systems that monitor our emotions, spending habits, sleep cycles, and even moods through apps, wearable devices, and social media algorithms. Just as Sam decides the narrator’s daily dosage, algorithms now decide what we see, buy, think, and even feel, creating psychological dependencies not on pills, but on notifications, validation, and constant stimulation. The story’s government-pharma collusion mirrors modern data capitalism, where corporations trade privacy for profit, and governments use digital surveillance in the name of “public good” or “health.”

The protagonist’s gradual numbness and loss of self mirror society’s quiet surrender to algorithmic control — comfort at the cost of autonomy. The “medication” here symbolizes digital addiction: the dopamine hits of likes, the curated calm of wellness apps, the illusion of being “fixed” by technology. Beneath the convenience lies manipulation, dependency, and emotional sterilization.

Ultimately, this story is a chilling metaphor for the pharmaceutical and digital-industrial complex — a cautionary tale about how innovation without ethics can medicate individuality into submission. It asks us to reflect: in our pursuit of comfort and control through AI and data, are we surrendering our agency, our resistance, and perhaps even our humanity — one click, one pill, one app at a time?

Letter Writing

💌 Letter Writing: The Old School Art That Still Delivers

Once upon a time, people didn’t “drop a text” — they wrote a letter. Not in ALL CAPS, not with emojis, but with care, clarity, and sometimes a hint of perfume. Fast-forward to today, and while emails race across the internet, the art of letter writing still stands tall — dignified, timeless, and surprisingly relevant.

✍️ So, What Exactly Is Letter Writing?

Letter writing is communication in its most thoughtful form — a message that carries not just words, but intention. Whether it’s to share ideas, make requests, invite someone, or even complain politely, letters ensure our thoughts travel with structure and purpose.

And unlike fleeting texts, letters have staying power — they become official documents and permanent records. That’s why legal, business, and academic institutions still love them. No blue ticks, no typing bubbles — just solid proof on paper!

🏷️ Types of Letters: Pick Your Tone

Formal Letters – Used for official matters: business communication, complaints, job applications, or invitations. Think of them as the blazers of the writing world — smart, serious, and professional.
Informal Letters – Written to friends and family, where “Hey!” is perfectly acceptable. More of a comfy T-shirt vibe.
Semi-formal Letters – Somewhere in between — for people you know, but not well enough to send emojis to (like your teacher or neighbour).

🧩 Anatomy of a Formal Letter

A perfect formal letter has better posture than most of us on Zoom calls. Here’s its structure:

📍 Sender’s Address
📅 Date
🏢 Receiver’s Address
👋 Salutation (Dear Sir/Madam)
🧠 Subject Line – short, specific, and serious
📜 Body of the Letter – intro, main content, and conclusion
🙏 Closing Phrase – Yours sincerely, Yours faithfully
✍️ Signature & Name
📇 (Optional) Designation and Contact Info

💬 The Secret Sauce — Phrases That Impress

Opening Lines:

“I am writing to inform you that…”
“With reference to your letter dated…”
“I hope this message finds you well…”
“I would like to bring to your attention…”

Closing Lines:

“I look forward to your response.”
“Kindly acknowledge receipt of this letter.”
“Thank you for your time and consideration.”

These are your formal writing “magic spells” — professional, polite, and powerful.

💡 Why Letter Writing Still Matters

Even in this age of instant communication, a letter carries weight and respect. It teaches clarity, structure, and etiquette — traits that every future engineer, manager, or professional needs.
A well-written letter says: “I took the time to get this right.” And that, dear reader, never goes out of style.

✨ So....

Letter writing is not just communication — it’s character in ink (or pixels). Whether you’re applying for a job, inviting a speaker, or saving the planet from plastic, your letter can open doors that a text message never could.

So go ahead, pick your words wisely — because great letters, like good manners, never get old.

Gender, Governance, and Sustainable Governance

Gender, Governance, and Sustainable Governance: Why women’s leadership matters for long-term change

Sustainable governance is about building institutions and policies that deliver fair social, economic and environmental outcomes over the long run. But sustainability isn’t achievable if governance systems ignore half the population. When gender is mainstreamed into governance — from local panchayats to corporate boards and national planning — decisions tend to be more inclusive, resilient and oriented toward long-term public good.

Why gender is central to sustainable governance

Gender equality improves policy relevance and outcomes.
Women and gender-diverse people experience public services, economic shocks and environmental changes differently. Their inclusion in decision-making ensures policies respond to those differences — for example, investments in water, health, childcare and schooling that disproportionately benefit women often produce larger social returns. International agencies emphasise that gender equality is cross-cutting across the SDGs: you cannot reach sustainability goals without addressing gender gaps.
Women’s participation changes priorities and service delivery.
Multiple studies across contexts show that when women hold seats in local government or executive roles, issues such as sanitation, education, and health receive more attention and funding. This is not merely symbolic: it alters resource allocation in ways that matter for community well-being and sustainability.
Gender-diverse governance strengthens resilience.
Evidence is growing that gender balance in corporate and public leadership correlates with better environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance and long-term decision making — a necessary ingredient for sustainable governance in organizations and states.

Global policy architecture: where gender and governance meet

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) place gender equality (SDG-5) at the center and treat gender as integral to achieving other goals (poverty, health, climate action). This framing pushes governments and multilateral agencies to design gender-responsive policies rather than treating gender as an afterthought.
UN agencies and development partners (UN Women, UNDP, World Bank, IFC) have issued strategies and operational guidance on gender-responsive governance and planning — from mainstreaming gender in national development frameworks to targeted support for women leaders and gender-responsive budgeting. These frameworks are practical tools for governments pursuing sustainable governance.

The Indian story: institutional levers and evidence

Reserved representation and the Panchayati Raj:

India’s 73rd Constitutional Amendment (1992) and subsequent rules reserving seats for women in local self-government created a large-scale experiment in gendered governance. Three decades in, research finds measurable gains: more women in elected local positions has improved attention to public goods such as water, sanitation and school facilities, and strengthened women’s political voice — though challenges remain in capacity, social norms, and effectiveness.

Self-Help Groups (SHGs) and women’s economic empowerment:

Community models like SHGs and federations under rural livelihood missions have simultaneously advanced women’s economic agency and their ability to participate in governance and local development. These structures often serve as pathways for women to build social capital, take leadership roles, and influence local planning — linking gender equality to sustainable economic governance at the grassroots. Recent Indian programmes (SHG federations, BC Sakhi/Vidyut Sakhi initiatives, solar enterprise schemes for women) illustrate how gendered economic interventions can create climate-friendly livelihoods and expand women’s civic voice.

Concrete evidence: what the research shows

Improved public goods: Comparisons across villages and municipalities indicate that elected women representatives often prioritize water, sanitation and primary education more than men in comparable positions — outcomes that have clear sustainability knock-on effects for health and productivity.
Corporate governance linkages: Studies find associations between gender diversity on corporate boards and stronger attention to long-term governance and ESG metrics — important when private sector decisions affect environmental sustainability and social welfare.
Policy guidance & data: UN Women, UNDP and the Gender Snapshot series provide consolidated data showing that global gender progress is uneven and that targeted governance reforms accelerate gains when backed by budgets and accountability mechanisms.

Key barriers that prevent gendered sustainable governance:

Social norms and patriarchy. Cultural expectations limit women’s mobility, voice and leadership — especially in conservative rural contexts. Even when seats are reserved, male proxies or constrained agency can blunt effectiveness.
Capacity and resources. Women elected to local bodies often lack training, information, or access to networks needed to translate mandates into action. Capacity building and resources are essential.
Institutional design gaps. Gender-neutral policies and budgets fail to prioritize women’s needs; absence of gender-responsive budgeting and monitoring weakens outcomes.
Economic constraints. Poverty, time poverty (unpaid care burden), and digital divides limit women’s ability to engage in governance or benefit from programmes. Tackling these is a prerequisite for sustained inclusion.

Practical recommendations for making governance gender-responsive and sustainable

For policymakers:

Institutionalize gender budgeting and require gender impact assessments in major policies and infrastructure projects. This makes gender considerations part of routine decision making rather than optional add-ons.
Invest in women’s leadership training (for elected local representatives, civil servants, and community leaders) with a focus on planning, finance, and climate-resilient development.

For local governments & practitioners:

Leverage SHGs and women’s federations as platforms for participatory planning, monitoring public services, and implementing local green livelihoods (solar micro-enterprises, sustainable agriculture).
Prioritize childcare and time-saving infrastructure (water points, safe transport) that free women to participate in public life — a practical step with big returns for governance inclusivity.

For private sector and corporate boards

Adopt gender-diverse leadership targets and link board diversity to sustainable governance metrics and long-term strategy, not just compliance. Evidence suggests this improves ESG outcomes.

For civil society and researchers

Monitor and evaluate — collect gender-disaggregated data on participation, service delivery outcomes, and climate resilience impacts; publish case studies that show how gender-sensitive governance delivered measurable sustainable gains.

Women’s leadership changing priorities in India:

In several Indian districts, the increased presence of elected women representatives and active SHGs led to tangible local changes: toilets and water facilities prioritized at higher rates, improved school amenities, and local climate adaptation measures that considered women’s needs (fuelwood alternatives, micro-irrigation). These interventions lowered time poverty for women and increased school attendance and health metrics — demonstrating the virtuous cycle between gender inclusion and sustainable outcomes.

Conclusion:

Gender is not peripheral — it’s foundational

Sustainable governance requires social legitimacy, long-term thinking and inclusive priorities. Systems that exclude women — or treat gender as cosmetic — will underperform on development, resilience and justice. Embedding gender into governance: through representation, budgets, capacity building, and participatory institutions — is both a fairness imperative and a practical route to stronger, more sustainable outcomes for societies.

The Land of High Passes by Bhagyalakshmi Krishnamurthy

The Land of High Passes

About the Author:

Bhagyalakshmi Krishnamurthy is a travel writer who vividly captures the landscapes, culture, and experiences of the places she visits. Her article, The Land of High Passes, was published on April 22, 2020, in Intrepid Times, a website dedicated to travel writing. In this piece, she describes Ladakh’s icy mountains, high-altitude passes, serene monasteries, and rich local heritage, blending adventure with cultural insight and bringing the beauty and challenges of Ladakh to life for readers.

Summary of her article:

Ladakh, India’s highest plateau, is a stunning region of icy mountains, vast glaciers, and clear blue skies. The landscape is stark yet mesmerizing, with brown mountains dotted with stones and snow-covered peaks that evoke a sense of being on top of the world. Its high-altitude terrain, sparse greenery, and harsh weather make it both beautiful and challenging for travelers.

Visiting the War Memorial in Leh, the author is deeply moved by the bravery and sacrifices of Indian soldiers. Letters from soldiers and their families, war exhibits, and stories of courage leave her with a profound respect for the armed forces. Ladakh’s strategic location, bordering China and Pakistan, along with its high-altitude passes and army presence, underscores its importance in India’s national security.

The monasteries, including Hemis, Lamayuru, Thiksey, and Alchi, are vibrant with reds, blues, yellows, and greens, adorned with murals, ceremonial drapes, and fluttering flags. They serve as cultural and spiritual centers, where families seek guidance and make offerings. Ladakh’s architecture, such as the Leh Palace and Shanti Stupa, reflects a rich blend of royal heritage, religious devotion, and high-altitude adaptation. Visiting Ladakh is a thrilling yet humbling experience, combining adventure, natural beauty, spirituality, and historical significance, making it a place one longs to return to.