A Better World Volume 1

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Championing women:

All India Women’s Conference

Mythily Jagannathan, author, presenter and All India Women’s Conference Member; and

Chandraprabha Pandey, writer, translator and All India Women’s Conference Member for Art and Culture

ll India Women’s Conference (AIWC) is one of

the premier women’s voluntary organizations in

India, involved in the field of women’s education

and empowerment for the last 85 years. Its founder was

Margaret Cousins, an Irish woman who urged her Indian

compatriots to take heed of the changing world and the

new socialist movements that were auguring change and

equality of the sexes in the West. She wanted the same

new consciousness to permeate the Indian social fabric.

Pioneering, well-educated Indian women rose to the challenge.

AIWC was registered under the Societies Registration Act in

1930. From inception, AIWC has been deeply concerned

about the economic, social and legal needs of women and

has played a major role in the enactment and modification

of laws pertaining to dowry, child marriage and more. The

organization has always adopted a participatory approach in

the implementation of its programmes, focusing on women’s

education, health (physical and mental), capacity-building,

income generation and so on through its network of branches.

What we know today as the 17 Sustainable Development

Goals (SDGs) were actually targeted back in 1928 by AIWC.

Here are some examples of AIWC’s outreach on selected SDGs.

SDG 4: literacy and education

Education is key to gender equality and the overall empower-

ment of women. It has been a major concern of AIWC, which

was founded to target the education of girls and women. The

literacy rate of women in 1927 was very low. AIWC made

strenuous efforts to address different groups of girls and

women and adopted its education programmes to include

everyone so that ‘no one was left behind’.

Through its more than 520 branches, AIWC tried to make

education inclusive and address the needs of Indian women

in remote rural areas. Schools from primary class to 10+2

(equivalent to the International Baccalaureate and General

Certificate of Secondary Education levels in the west) benefit

countless students.

Some specially designed programmes are:

• Skill-based literacy programmes for women in remote

areas, slums etc

• Computer training centres and vocational courses run by

AIWC branches

• The AIWC Vocational Institute, affiliated with the

National Institute of Open Schooling, providing certificate

courses in computer science, beauty culture, textile block

printing, cutting and tailoring and Ayurveda for income-

generation and employability

• A three-month programme, ‘Home Health Care

Attendants’, for elderly persons in collaboration with the

Indian Red Cross Society.

SDG 5: gender equality

Gender equality is known as the stand-alone goal as it is dedi-

cated to the elimination of poverty, inequality, injustice and all

forms of violence against women and girls. Stark gender disparity

A computer class at the AIWC Vocational Institute

Students training in beauty culture at the AIWC Vocational Institute

Image: AIWC

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