3.1 Principles
The Indian National Green Party are committed to the following:
a) the protection of women’s rights to equal respect, opportunity and responsibility in society;
b) basing policies on ensuring equal access by women to all areas of political, social, intellectual and economic endeavour;
c) increased and equitable participation by women in all decision-making processes;
d) infrastructure changes to protect women from inequality, exploitation, poverty and violence; and to enable them to reach their full potential;
e) the right of women to make informed choices about their lives - lifestyle, sexual identity, health, whether to bear children, their reproductive process, etc. Discriminatory laws against women must be repealed. Women and men should be able to choose whether they participate in the areas of paid work and/or domestic responsibility.
f) women having equal access to all forms of education and training.
3.1.1 Women and Violence
All women have a right to safety at home, on the street and in the workplace, but violence against women is not only a women’s problem. Breaking the cycle of domestic violence in particular is a societal problem and the provision of shelter and refuge should be considered only a short-term solution. Any act of violence should be condemned publicly and privately as unacceptable. The Party’s long-term objective is to create an environment of nonviolence, and to provide care and protection for victims in the interim.
3.1.2 Women and Pornography
The Indian National Green Party oppose the production, performance, display and distribution of pornographic material which depicts women and children as suitable objects for violence and sexual exploitation.
3.1.3 Women and Education
The Indian National Green Party seek to ensure educational experience and outcomes for girls and women that enable full and equal participation in all aspects of economic and social life.
3.1.4 Women and the Environment
The environmental decision-making process has, to date, largely excluded women.
Some environmental planning and decision-making needs to be decentralised and devolved to local communities in such a way that the concerns of all people are heard.
The domestic sector and those industries where women predominate should have equal representation in environmental planning and decision-making.
3.1.5 Women and the Arts
The Indian National Green Party support greater recognition of women’s contribution to arts and acknowledge the role of women in shaping and representing cultural norms.
The Indian National Green Party will work towards ensuring that the views of women are represented, for example, through such avenues as representation of women on Arts Advisory Boards.
3.1.6 Women and Sport
The Indian National Green Party support equal access for women and men to recreation facilities, coaching, sports education, competition, media coverage and funding. The need for programme which encourage girls to continue sporting and recreational pursuits beyond early secondary schooling is a priority.
3.2 Goals
3.2.1 Political and Public Participation
The Indian National Green Party will work towards:
a) ensuring that any reform is consistent with India’s commitment to the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW);
b) ensuring equal representation of women in decision-making processes in the organisations of the Indian National Green Party at all levels, local, state and national; and
c) ensuring that all public boards and committees will have a statutory requirement for equal representation of women and men.
3.2.2 Women and Violence
The Indian National Green Party will work towards:
a) a review of all relevant laws which have bearing on violence against women, treatment of victims and perpetrators; and
b) ensuring women’s access to safe and secure accommodation through a comprehensive housing policy and the provision of adequate emergency housing.
3.2.3 Women and Pornography
The Indian National Green Party will work towards promoting the use of legal complaints procedures and processes.
3.2.4 Women and Health
The Indian National Green Party will work towards:
a) ensuring research and development funds are allocated both to women researchers and into women’s health problems;
b) ensuring changes to the education of health providers with regard to women’s health issues;
c) improving women’s access to information regarding their health in order that appropriate personal decisions can be made;
d) preventive health strategies targeting women and girls, including those which reduce the incidence of smoking amongst females;
e) providing strategies for more women medical practitioners to enter those specialisations where women are currently under-represented.
3.2.5 Women and the Workforce
The Indian National Green Party will work towards:
a) ensuring equal opportunities for people employed in the paid work force with family responsibilities;
b) ensuring the provision of adequate child care facilities in the workplace;
c) encouraging flexible working conditions to enable workers with family responsibilities (eg. parents minding young children, and adult children minding ageing parents) to fully participate in the workforce, and avail themselves of opportunities equally with those who do not have those responsibilities;
d) providing centres for continuing education and training for workers, including training and promotion opportunities for part-time and temporary workers;
e) taking steps to facilitate re-entry, without loss of occupational status, of people who leave the workforce for parental leave or family responsibilities leave;
f) ensuring changes brought about by strategies relating to the elimination of sexual discrimination will not place undue and unequal responsibility upon women and add to women’s workload;
g) ensuring that award restructuring includes the specific aim of upgrading and broadening the low-paid, low-status positions that have traditionally been work for a majority of women, particularly migrant women; and
h) ensuring that women enjoy the full benefits of enterprise bargaining arrangements, particularly in the traditional work areas such as the service industry, where there is low union representation.
3.2.6 Women and Education
The Indian National Green Party will work towards:
a) ensuring that a National Policy for the Education of Girls in Indian Schools is implemented at all levels, until national indicators on education outcomes are relatively equal for women and men;
b) the elimination of gender-based harassment in school and educational institutions and the establishment of Equal Opportunity offices to assess and consult about the effectiveness of programme and policies to achieve this;
c) ensuring that teacher training for new and continuing teachers critically examines the patterns of sex role stereotyping that occur in our society;
d) continuing Territory/State/Central programme to promote girls’ and women’s greater participation in access to school, and university education, especially in science and technology disciplines;
e) promoting policies to achieve a higher retention rate of women at higher degree level in universities; and
f) promoting policies to encourage a higher representation of women academics in all faculties of universities, and a higher proportion of women in senior academic positions.
3.2.7 Women and the Law
The Indian National Green Party will work towards:
a) remedying existing discrimination by ensuring a higher representation of women on legislative and judicial bodies;
b) examining ways women could be encouraged to enter private practice and the bar;
c) encouraging women to enter all areas of the legal profession,
d) reviewing all laws which have a bearing on violence against women;
e) developing further options for the protection of victims, and for the naming of perpetrators;
f) addressing the myth of ‘victim-blaming’ by promoting change in societal attitudes to violence;
g) removing sexist language from existing laws, and ensure future legislation is non-sexist and does not assume assignment of roles according to sex ;
h) repealing laws relating to sex work.
3.2.8 Women and the Environment
The Indian National Green Party will work towards:
a) implementing strategies to ensure that all environmental assessments include consideration of impact on health, community and women; and
b) implementing strategies to ensure that women’s needs and advice are considered in the area of urban planning.
3.2.9 Women and Sport
The Indian National Green Party will work towards:
a) developing monitoring strategies for equal opportunity and anti-discrimination principles to be applied to the administration of all sporting organisations; and
b) ensuring allocation of funding and awards will not be discriminatory and will allow equal opportunity for women.
3.3 Short Term Targets
3.3.1 Political and Public Participation
The Indian National Green Party will work towards developing programmes and strategies to provide women with the skills to be effective candidates and members of parliament and to actively promote women to stand as candidates for election.
3.3.2 Women and Violence
The Indian National Green Party will work towards:
a) establishing a national enquiry into sexual assault and uniform sexual assault laws. Specifically, the Party want recognition of sexual assault within marriage and relationships;
b) providing education from early primary school level on non-violent conflict resolution;
c) addressing the health effects, both physical and emotional, of violence against women, through adequately funded, appropriate health and education programme;
d) using publicity and educational campaigns to bring about a change in the way violence is viewed in our society, which includes a strategy to educate men that violence against women is a crime;
e) expanding crisis services for women, with and without children. These include refuges, and services in areas such as rape crisis, abortion counselling, incest and domestic violence. Special provision needs to be made for geographically remote locations.
3.3.3 Women and Pornography
The Indian National Green Party will work towards:
a) extending classification systems to include video games, live performances and other leisure technologies;
b) strengthening regulation on the display of advertising of material which includes violence against and sexual exploitation of women and children;
c) instituting an education programme to encourage critical examination of the role that the entertainment industry and the media play in the portrayal of women and children as victims of violent and sexual exploitation;
3.3.4 Women and Health
The Indian National Green Party will work towards:
a) ensuring access to safe contraception on demand for all women, and information on options available;
b) ensuring that women have a choice of where and how to give birth and information on available options;
c) repealing all laws which restrict the right of women to choose abortion and which restrict access to services; and
d) ensuring access to legal, affordable, humane and safe abortion for all women, and provision of counselling pre and post-termination.
3.3.5 Women and the Workforce
The Indian National Green Party will work towards:
a) ensuring that apprenticeships and training programmes have positive discrimination towards women to ensure that opportunities are not denied to women because of inaccurate evaluation of women’s ability;
b) giving the provision of maternity and paternity leave equal status in order to encourage the sharing of the parenting roles and equality of gender in the workplace;
c) undertaking programmes to raise awareness on issues of gender equity in the workplace and in education;
d) ensuring that women have access to adequate retirement income, including superannuation; and
e) ensuring continuation of superannuation during parental leave.
3.3.6 Women and Education
The Indian National Green Party will work towards:
a) providing adequate funding for the support structures and the support personnel necessary to implement national policy;
b) ensuring that affirmative action is practised in schools to overcome the attitudes inherent in our society that result in different expectations for girls and boys. Such action would include changing school curricula and increasing girls’ participation in areas of maths, science, technology and trades;
c) the application of affirmative action to increase the number of women in senior, policy and decision-making positions in educational systems;
d) providing bridging courses for women to facilitate their entry into the formal education arena;
e) expanding women’s participation in science and technology to ensure that the introduction of new technology does not further the advantage of men; and
f) increasing women’s access to training and education in the use and understanding of computers and computer technology.
3.3.7 Women and the Law
The Indian National Green Party will work towards:
a) applying affirmative action to ensure that more women hold senior level positions within the Public Service departments responsible for policy, administration and enforcement of the law;
b) applying affirmative action to ensure that more women hold senior faculty positions within Schools of Law;
c) strengthening laws which prohibit portrayal of women or children as objects of violence or sexual exploitation; and
3.3.8 Women and the Environment
The Indian National Green Party will work towards:
a) ensuring equal representation of women on environmental decision-making bodies; and
b) applying affirmative action principles to ensure women are able to participate at all levels of planning, implementation and assessment of environmental policy.
3.3.9 Women and Sport
The Indian National Green Party will work towards:
a) providing public education to raise awareness of women’s rights to equal recreation and the importance of this; and
b) providing public education to change attitudes towards women in sport.

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