Women’s empowerment confined to papers only: NC’s Shameema Firdous

Srinagar : National Conference on Monday said that the gender-blind policies of the incumbent government have made women and girls in J&K more vulnerable than ever.
This was said by Party Women’s Wing President Shameema Firdous while addressing a meet of Women’s functionaries here at the Party headquarters Nawa-e-Subha, Srinagar.
“All these years, particularly since 2019, we have witnessed rolling back on women’s economic gains of past decades made by successive NC led governments. Our mothers and sisters are particularly losing from the incumbent administration’s systemic and structural cracks brought by the 2019 decisions of the Union government that cost the women and girls of the region the institutional support which was put in place by our party. Monday our mothers and sisters are running from pillar to post to have their problems addressed,” she said.
“Women and girls have largely remained absent from government policies. At first the government played a cruel joke with the people with its half-hearted Covid sustenance policy. Secondly, our mothers and sisters, who worked in the handicraft sector and others who worked as social health care activists, and SWDs were not just largely ignored but tormented as well. Far from ensuring the wellbeing of our mothers and sisters, the incumbent government chose to deprive them of their livelihood,” she added.
She said that NC, keeping up with its Naya Kashmir manifesto and centrality of welfarism and protectionism in its policy framework, will continue with its struggle to reverse the wrongs committed by successive governments since 2015.
Referring to how unending school closures have crippled the education of J&K children, she asked the incumbent JK administration to review the lock down strategy.