This collaborative report between, Lokniti a programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung has attempted to look at women

The available literature on evolution of Indian culture and civilization reveals that although the ancient writers pretended to record their revered admiration for the womanhood yet in actual practice women have always been suppressed and exploited by the dominant male members of the society.

Hoardings put up by the traffic police at prominent places along Bangalore’s traffic-congested road exhort reckless drivers to go slow. Grim statistics loom over traffic snarls – 704 men and women died in traffic accidents in the city in 1997, 726 in 1998 and 168 until June 1999.

IT was once thought that fertility below a level could not be achieved without changes in the material conditions of the people.

In this report, we propose new measures of wanted and unwanted fertility based on actual and wanted parity progression ratios, and we apply these procedures to NFHS data for eight states in India.

On the World Population Day this year, there were two new features which are welcome: the first is the concern for environment in the context of population growth; and the second is the candid admission by the Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare that we must get rid of the tyranny of fami

Dowry has been a widespread social evil among the Hindus. Now it has spread to other communities also such as Muslims and Christians as well. The Parliament passed the Dowry Prohibition Act 1961 with a view of eradicate the rampant evil.

A number of recent studies [A] [D] have documented evidence to show that couples have a decided preference for a particular sex combination of children. For example, in many South Asian countries, including India, there is a strong preference for sons over daughters.

Prior to 1983, every form of violence committed within the family, either in the natal or the spousal home, was not considered an offence.

It is now common practice to infer the social status of women from their demographic characteristics. Yet it is not so easy to read through demographic progress, in terms of declines in mortality and fertility, to make unambiguous judgments about trends in women's social standing.