Publication: How Did India Successfully Reform Women’s Rights? Part II: Answers from the Movement on Protection from Violence
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2025-04-17
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2025-04-17
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This two-part policy brief series traces the development and reform of law in India related to three critical areas that affect women’s rights and economic opportunities: women’s property rights, domestic violence, and sexual harassment in the workplace. It explores the underlying factors and driving forces that led to reforms as well as the broad processes and extensive timelines required for change. It also highlights remaining gaps, including the absence of robust implementation as well as how inadequate administrative and infrastructural support for reform hinder true gender equality in a deeply patriarchal society. The achievements in India, which are the result of years of concerted eff-orts and thought leadership by multiple governmental and nongovernmental players, private actors, and women’s rights activists, could function as a how to guide for other countries that may want to carry out similar reforms in the future. This second Brief in the series explores the decades-long journey that led to the adoption of the 2005 Domestic Violence Act and the 2013 Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, and highlights remaining legal and implementation gaps in the effective elimination of violence against women.
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“Braunmiller, Julia Constanze; Santagostino Recavarren, Isabel; Mittal, Aparna; Khatri, Tanvi. 2025. How Did India Successfully Reform Women’s Rights? Part II: Answers from the Movement on Protection from Violence. Global Indicators Briefs; No. 20. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/43081 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
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