Prerna
While Egypt lost one of its Feminist icons, a female safety app is providing comfort to commuting women and UNDP has launched its Sahi Disha initiative. More on how this week fared for women:
1. Safetipin: A Pin to Safety
In a bid to make the roads safer for women, Kalpana Vishwanath founded Safetipin: an app where users can give and find useful location information. The goal of the app is to provide essential information about the roads and streets, users can log in and submit key information such as the lights, footpath conditions, mobility, visibility, transportation, crowd, and the number of women and children, as well as share photographs and their own experiences to better inform other users.
2. Egypt’s Feminist Icon, Nawal El Saadawi, Dies Aged 89
Author of more than 55 books and an iconic feminist personality of Egypt, Nawal El Saadawi, breathed her last at a Cairo Hospital. She was one of the most vocal voices against female genital mutilation and inequality in Islamic inheritance rights between men and women. She was also a columnist, university professor, and psychiatrist, who dedicated her life fighting for women’s rights. The author was jailed for over two months in 1981 under a political crackdown, where she famously wrote her memoir on toilet paper using an eyebrow pencil. El Saadawi was honoured with the Inana International Prize in Belgium in 2005. In 2020, Time Magazine also named her on their 100 Women of the Year list.
3. ‘Sahi Disha’ Campaign Celebrating Women’s Livelihood
UNDP’s latest initiative ‘Sahi Disha’ is a step towards celebrating rural women and their livelihoods. This initiative is a five-year partnership between UNDP and IKEA Foundation and currently covers 5 Indian states: Delhi NCR, Haryana, Telangana, Karnataka, and Maharashtra. The main aim of the program is to upskill over 1 million rural women in marketing and income opportunities. According to UNDP, the Disha initiative apart from providing job opportunities to women also provided the psycho-social support to empower and mentor women in starting their own business and enterprises.
