The draft of the new National Policy on Women will be ready by this month-end or July after the National Commission for Women holds country-wide discussions, said its Chairperson Lalitha Kumaramangalam in Coimbatore on Tuesday.
The draft had a separate chapter dealing with issues and challenges faced by ‘single women’, she said delivering the inaugural address at the ‘National Workshop on Issues and Difficulties of Women Headed Families While Carrying out Their Responsibilities’, organised by the Department of Social Work of Amrita University in association with the Commission.
The Commission was keen on including ‘single women’ because their problems had never been addressed. For instance, in Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand there were ‘half widows’ – women who did not know the fate of their husbands. Army or Air Force declared the men as missing in action.
The women continued to live as single women, without being eligible under government schemes targeted at such persons.
To help such women get the benefit of governments schemes and programmes, the Commission had planned to include ‘half widows’ by expanding the meaning of ‘single women’. This would also include women who were never married.
Ms. Kumaramangalam said the Commission also wanted to address the issues faced by working women who most often left promising careers to bring up children and take care of family.
There had been a sharp increase in the number of such women in the 25 to 38 age group in the organised sector.
Compendium of schemes
To address the issue the Commission was looking at bringing about a national crèche policy. At present, it was still on the drawing board and had a long way to go, she also said.
Another initiative that the Commission was working on was a compendium of government schemes, programmes available so that women could effectively use those. At present, not many were aware of the schemes available across ministries and departments.
If such a compendium was brought out, it would help women tap those. The Commission would bring it out in English and Hindi first and then in other languages.
