Women Uninterrupted is a podcast by The Hindu that brings you important conversations between women. In Season 6, we explore the stories of women working in the social sector.
On Episode 5, we talk to the woman who is “fighting one of the fastest growing criminal enterprises in the world.”
Host: Anna Thomas
Guest: Dr Sunitha Krishnan
Production: Anna Thomas – The Scribbling Pad
Empowering women leaders
Season 6 has been about tracing the stories and motivations of women who are in leadership positions at NGOs. We’d like to wrap with a discussion on women in the social sector with Subhashree Dutta, Managing Partner, Social Entrepreneurship at The/Nudge Institute.
Subhashree, you run an Incubator & Accelerator programme for nonprofit startups. What modules/programmes do you offer that particularly target women entrepreneurs? Are their challenges different?
Dutta: Our Social Entrepreneurship initiative works towards incubating and accelerating non-profits that are building resilient livelihoods for the bottom 30% of the population – these also include start-ups that are working in the areas of women entrepreneurship and to drive awareness and adoption of technology among women in India. 56% of the organisations that we have incubated and 74% of those accelerated (we have worked with 120+ nonprofit startups), have at least one female founder.
We have specifically supported women entrepreneurs through Pragati for Women Entrepreneurs, a CSR initiative by Meta powered by The/Nudge, that aims towards empowering women entrepreneurs to improve the livelihoods of under-resourced and vulnerable communities in India with a focus on women and enabling technology at the last mile. In all our incubator and accelerator cohorts as well, we provide access to resources, workshops, mentors, investors, knowledge and technology partners, and networking opportunities.
Women entrepreneurs do face challenges, such as gender biases, which can undermine their confidence or limit their access to funding. Research reveals that when women founders approach investors, they are perceived differently than men and are questioned differently. A Harvard study showed that men are asked more ‘promotion’ (upside and potential gains) based questions and women are asked more ‘prevention’ (potential losses and risk mitigation) ones.
What incentives does the government offer women social entrepreneurs in India?
Dutta: The Government of India has several schemes to support women entrepreneurs such as the Mudra Yojana Scheme, Annapurna Scheme, Standup India mission, Pradhan Mantri Rozgar Yojana, Udyogini Scheme, etc. The Atal Incubator also encourages women entrepreneurs through various programmes.
There are however challenges to accessing the credit available such as (i)Inability to provide collateral as property and assets are typically registered in the name of male family members (ii)lack of technical and digital skills and (iii)gender biases.
Subhashree Dutta
What percentage of social enterprises in India are led by women and how can we empower women to reach leadership positions in this sector? Dutta: As per Wisen, 25% of social enterprises in India are led by women.
To empower women in the social impact space and help them rise to leadership positions, it is crucial to first understand the unique challenges they face in a predominantly male-dominated environment. This requires not only educating and training women but also equipping them with leadership development opportunities and fostering active social networks. Creating a supportive community and connecting them with the right mentors are essential steps. Equally important is promoting work-life balance, addressing gender biases in the culture, and highlighting inspiring role models to pave the way for their success.
What percentage of NGOs in India are led by women?
Dutta: Despite making up 45% of the NGO staff in India, only 25-30% of leadership roles are held by women (DASRA).
To achieve our goals of prosperity, India cannot leave half of its population behind and must champion the cause of gender-inclusive innovation by women entrepreneurs.
Historically, women have faced limited access to education, patriarchal societal norms, unequal economic opportunities, and inadequate support systems at home, which have increased domestic chores limiting their earning and learning opportunities. The digital economy has opened opportunities for women to participate in the workforce while addressing their requirements for flexibility and lower mobility. Enabling women to take advantage of this opportunity can help unleash their untapped potential, as we also work towards societal shifts that empower women.
Podcast Transcript
Saanvi: You are listening to Season 6 of the Women Uninterrupted podcast brought to you by The Hindu. On this podcast, we host conversations that matter about women and between women. This season, we are talking to women who work for human rights.
Host: This is your host, Anna Thomas, on Women Uninterrupted. And with me, I have Padma Shri Dr Sunitha Krishnan, an activist, an author, and film producer; also, the founder of Prajwala, an institution that combats sex trafficking. And I like this most of all – that she was one of Newsweek’s 150 Fearless Women in the world. Welcome to Women Uninterrupted, Sunitha.
Sunitha: Thank you so much, Anna, for having me on your fantastic show. I’m so, so pleased to do it with you today.
Host: Glad to have you here too. Sunitha, as a co-founder of Prajwala, you have been creating a safe space for victims of sex trafficking, and you also have been instrumental in drafting anti-trafficking policies in India. Since 1996 – correct me if I’m wrong – Prajwala has rescued 28,900 and rehabilitated 26,900 survivors. And you have also rescued about 20,000 children from entering the sex trade. One could probably call this a rather dangerous profession. What grounds you; what and who helped you to become fearless?
Dr Sunitha Krishnan
Sunitha: I’m fighting a mafia. I’m fighting an organised crime, Anna. I’m fighting one of the fastest growing criminal enterprises in the world. And therefore, you can definitely call it as a dangerous mission. What makes me fearless is my immense conviction in my beliefs, my deep-rooted conviction that what I’m doing and how I’m doing is moving towards ending a very large organised crime. And somewhere, that gives me a lot of sense of groundedness in terms of what I’m doing. But most importantly, the rightness of what I’m doing is what makes me feel that there’s no question of fear.
Host: Sunitha, you published your book, I Am What I Am, in 2024, in which you talk about the beginning of your activism, that you started really young. Could you summarise the roots of that transformation for our listeners who have not yet read your book?
Sunitha: So, I Am What I Am is my memoir and I have chronicled my life mostly from the perspective of my journey in the space of activism. I don’t think there was any kind of a transformative time that I can look at. I was like that and I am like that. From very, very early age, my internal compass was already moving towards – as early as three years when I started – the compass within me was towards doing something, changing something. And so very early in my life, meaning at the age of 11, 12, I was actually running a school for deprived children, and there were more than 100 children in that school.
Maybe certain incidents happened in my mid-teens, which gave me a different direction in terms of, okay, now I should relook at what I need to do for the rest of my life. So, when I was 15, I think being sexually assaulted by eight men got me thinking in terms of the world of sex crime and the world of sex slavery. Perhaps you could call it as my…one of my first transformative moments because…for the simple reason that it gave me a particular direction. Not that it would have been, you know, very different otherwise, in terms of…I would have been in the space of change and social change anyway. But that particular incident perhaps directed me towards which part of the social dimension is something that I’m going to be addressing for the rest of my life. So, I think that was an incident that transformed me in multiple ways because for the first time I understood what a victim goes through,
how the world views a victim and how a whole body of people across us, from our families to our communities, you know, put in all their effort to make the person who is victim as if she is the criminal.
Host: Sunitha, you have played a crucial role in drafting the first ever anti-trafficking policy in India and other policies like the policy for Minimum Standards of Care, sex offenders’ registry, introducing video conferencing to record evidence for a trafficked victim. What future goals are you looking at to enable an environment in which a Prajwala will not need to exist? A world which is free of sex trafficking and sex crime.
Sunitha: That’s our goal, Anna. A day or future for us is a day when we can close shop…we can close Prajwala completely. But to reach there, what we are trying to do is attack the problem in multiple ways. At one end, we are trying to prevent the problem. And we are trying…like, I call Prajwala as a laboratory, experimenting on different interventions and possibilities and coming out with some solutions. So, one of the experiments has been to kind of break an intergenerational chain; stop another generation from entering the trade. And so, the 20,000 children that you spoke of are those 20,000 children who are children of women in prostitution, where we have tried to prevent and or rather, we have prevented them from entering the sex trade market by means of educating them. So, providing education as a second-generation prevention programme is one way that we have tried to prevent the problem.
The other way that we have tried to prevent the problem is by awakening the community – and awakening them and making them see the reality of the problem. Take ownership for it. You know, Prajwala or Sunitha Krishnan cannot solve this problem. The problem can be solved when all of us come together. And I believe this problem is as much a problem of Sunitha Krishna as much of the world at large.
I don’t use the word aware. I use the word awakening because I believe that people have – aware is just like a lot of information that you have, you get and you know about this issue – but I don’t want that. I want people to be compelled to act and that is why we use the term awakening. So, awakening the community, equipping the community to handle this problem. How do you identify a potential victim? How do you know that this could be a trafficker? What do you do? What is it – one, two, three – that you need to do if you see a potential case? Who do you report to? What are the next steps you need to take? This is one of our major programmes, Anna. We have directly interacted with more than three million people in the last few years, one-to-one, to awaken them and make them aware, you know, take responsibility for this problem.
The third way that we’re trying to prevent is by demand reduction: engaging with men and boys. Men and boys form the demand for sex trade. Talking to them about their role in perpetuating the problem and what they can do by becoming the solution is the third way that we have explored – very successfully explored, I must say.
The fourth way is by using the multimedia, by using media as an instrument to reach out to a huge number of people. And that is something which has its own benefits, but it’s kind of a double-edged sword. We need to work on it carefully.
At another end is if a problem has to end, one: no new entrant should enter, so we have to prevent the problem. Two is: those who have entered have to be removed from that place, provided a healing space so that they can gain back their dignity and start living in this same world as any other normal person is doing. And for that, we have to create a whole lot of processes, processes that are trauma-informed, processes that kind of upheld the dignity of a person, and processes that heal and
empower a person. A holistic trauma-informed rehabilitation programme that we run after removing the person because just removing the person has no relevance, but the removed persons also have to be ensured that they don’t go back to the same situation. And the third vertical that we need to work on to end this problem is prosecution of those who are committing these crimes. Until and unless there is a deterrence in the society, you know, the fear factor coming in: if we commit such a crime, it is not going to be accepted; you’re going to be punished for it; you’re going to be paying for committing this crime, you know; there are going to be consequences for it. These three verticals together combined: prevention, protection and prosecution – that forms the fundamental or the basic strategies under which Prajwala interventions are all designed.
Host: You also started the #ShametheRapist campaign in 2015. And well, it’s particularly relevant now…
Sunitha: Anna, #ShametheRapist campaign came out of so much of anger – I happened in 2015 to find videos of rape being circulated on WhatsApp and YouTube and all other social media. Not only you commit the crime, but you also flaunt the crime. And there are people who consume it. You know, sometime in your life, you have to say enough is enough. For me, that was the watershed moment: I’m going to do a public campaign where I’m going to expose these guys, their pictures and request the community: anyway, these guys are exposing themselves – they have no shame in exposing themselves through the videos that they are…so now I’m exposing them in a different way. And I’m telling, you know, here are these guys who are rapists. Help me identify them and, you know, we will report them.
It became a very controversial campaign, but led to several, several extraordinary pathbreaking, I would say, historical things in this country. It changed the course of cybercrime in India. For the first time, cybercrime portal has been established – www.cybercrime.com, where any human being anywhere in the country can report an incident without becoming a complainant. So, you can actually anonymously report. For the first time in India, you know, the Supreme Court/the government questioned the accountability of technological firms, the kind of content; so, the first time intermediary guidelines were looked at, intermediaries were questioned and they were made to understand that you cannot allow this kind of content. And I do hope that more people come out and shame genuinely people who are perpetrators, people who are paedophiles, people who are abusers – because only when we report, the impunity in a criminal is challenged.
Host: Thank you, Sunitha, for all that you do, with Prajwala, with sharing your story through books and through the films that you have been making.
Saanvi: Signing off from Women Uninterrupted, a podcast by women brought to you by The Hindu.
Published – December 29, 2024 12:14 pm IST
