Demonstrators shout during a Jan. 16 protest on behalf of a gang rape victim assaulted in New Delhi Dec. 16. Photo by: Adnan Abidi/Reuters
Women Making a Difference: Three stories on how women are influencing change around the world
Nonprofits respond to the Delhi gang-rape case
‘Solar Mamas’” Barefoot College women turn on the lights in off-grid villages
Rachel Goble helps stop sex trafficking of impoverished children
Graphic by: Rich Clabaugh/The Christian Science Monitor
Global Gender Gap: This week the Pentagon announced American women will be allowed in combat, and in India, court proceedings began for the five men charged in the controversial Delhi gang rape case.
The Monitor examines how views about women are changing around the world.
Beyond rape trial, a bigger question about women’s status in India
Women allowed in combat: Will that mean it’s less safe for men?
Women and language: When young women find their ‘creaky’ voice
Gwladys Bernard (l.) and Clémentine Pirlot of La Barbe (The Beard), a French feminist group, pose by a Paris subway wearing the group’s trademark fake beards. Photo by Bastien Inzaurralde/The Christian Science Monitor
Women Around the World: Three stories of politics, women’s rights, and efforts at change in Kenya, France, and India
Instead of relying on moonlight or dangerous and smoky kerosene lamps, midwives now use solar-powered lamps to make childbirth safer in remote regions of Kenya that are off the electric grid.
Working French women, backed by generous government policies, enjoy a reputation for ‘having it all.’ But that may not mean what Americans might think.
India has no ‘Good Samaritan Law’ to give legal protection to people who step in, and Indians tend to avoid getting tangled with police.
After a gap of 24 years, the Dalai Lama is visiting the Kashmir Valley – a region, as with the Tibetan spiritual leader’s homeland, where many yearn for independence.
What counts as a “megacity” by today’s UN standards?
James Anaya, United Nations expert on land acquisition for wind development in the developing world.
Ben Arnoldy writes this week cover story, encapsulating India’s tough challenge - building 50,000 schools in the next 10 years to educate up to 100 million students.
Schools are already springing up across the landscape – from big campuses in suburban fields to one-room boutiques in teeming malls. As they do, Americans who feel inadequate about their education system can take solace in at least one fact: Indians are looking at US institutions as models. In the five-star hotels of New Delhi, delegations of presidents and deans from various American universities meet regularly with teams of Indian officials and administrators to set up partnerships, faculty mentoring, and study-abroad programs.
And yet – as in other sectors of rapidly developing countries – India isn’t looking just to mimic the West in education. It is hoping to leapfrog it. In some ways, the country has no choice. “The way education is today in the global market is not scalable,” says Sam Pitroda, an education adviser to the government. “The cost of education has really increased substantially, mainly because IT has not been used effectively the world over in education.”
This means that India is not just trying to build thousands of American-style campuses with neat quads. Many of its new schools will be virtual, for-profit, and integrated closely with workplaces. It may, in fact, end up pushing the concept of online education further than any other country. As a result, what India comes up with will not only affect its economic competitiveness in the 21st century. It may become a petri dish for how to build an educational system in the Information Age.
Yet questions loom. Is India on the verge of a new renaissance or is this effort an overreaching bound to fall of its own ambition? How do you maintain any kind of quality control in such a massive scale-up of schools? Will the legendary bureaucracy of India stifle its quest to be the world’s new cerebellum?
(Source: csmonitor.com)
From the latest weekly cover and online special series - Future Focus: Life After Oil.
Kashmir – torn by nuclear rivals India and Pakistan – hopes new trekking business will divert timber smugglers and help revive the economy.
