Heena Sharma Blog

  Child care demands at home skyrocketed during the pandemic, but men and women did not split the burden equally. Globally, women took on 173 additional hours of unpaid child care last year, compared to 59 additional hours for men, a study released Friday by the Center for Global Development, a poverty non-profit, found. The gap widened in low- and middle-income countries, where women cared for children for more than three times as many hours as men did. Women have felt many of the pandemic's worst economic effects, including an estimated $800 billion in lost income, in large part due to increased demands on their time at home. The Covid-19 recession unraveled gains in pay equality, female labor force participation and unemployment, particularly among Black and Latina women in the U.S. Global job loss rates among women were roughly 1.8 times larger than those among men, according to a McKinsey & Co. estimate. And as U.S. workers return to the office, mothers are more like...

  In the video, the woman lies dead, her body laid out on the railway platform at Muzaffarpur, Bihar. A toddler, presumably the woman's, plays by her side, tugging at the sheet that covers her. For weeks, a grim nation had watched migrant workers struggle to return home after they found themselves stranded in urban India with no means of survival, due to the abrupt imposition of the strict nationwide lockdown on March 24. Transportation services were suspended until, on May 1, Indian Railways began operating special 'Shramik' trains for stranded migrant workers. On May 23, Arvina Khatoon, the woman on the railway platform, and her family had boarded one such train in Ahmedabad. Early media reports suggested she subsequently died of hunger and dehydration. East Central Railways claimed Khatoon was already ill when she boarded the train. Read More      

Former porn star-turned-sports commentator Mia Khalifa is engaged to long-time boyfriend chef Robert Sandberg . Sandberg proposed to her in Chicago. Sandberg reportedly hid a ring in a bowl of dried ingredients and the Lebanese-American star almost ate the ring but he was on ground to warn her, and he proposed to her on the spot. She said yes, reports guardian.com. Sharing the news on his Instagram page, Sandberg wrote: "We went to Chicago this weekend and had a wonderful dinner at Smyth. I proposed to Mia Khalifa and she said yes! "The ring was hidden in a bowl of dried ingredients and came out as a 'new serving'. Mia was too curious and too eager to taste so she started to eat the inedible ingredients. I told her not do it and then I put the ring on the finger. I love you so much." Khalifa confirmed the news on her Instagram page. "Thank you a million times over for the entire team at Smyth Chicago for helping Robert Sandberg propose... Th...

Only last week I had written about Hardik Pandya being one of the hottest brand endorsement candidates among cricketers for 2019. In a blog in Campaign, I had written about how in 2018 Pandya featured in ads for Gulf Oil, Gillette, Zaggle, Sin Denim, D:FY, boAt and Oppo. He was also recently seen in an ad for Star TV alongside M S Dhoni that notched up over 6 million YouTube views in just over a week. Nothing, but nothing, could go wrong for the all-rounder who holds the record for scoring the most number of runs (26) in a single over of a Test innings for India. But now in just a week, Pandya has gone from hero to zero. Accused, trolled, crucified for being misogynistic. Shobhaa De in fact called him, “…vile, racist, sexist, immature, annoying, egotistic, narcissistic and more…”. Such venom! On Koffee with Karan on January 6, Hardik Pandya (who was on the show with K L Rahul) boasted about hooking up with multiple women and even spoke about how open he is with his parents. ...

As many as 50% of teenage Indian girls are underweight, 52% are anaemic, about 39% still defecate in the open and about 46% do not use hygienic methods of menstrual protection. These are the findings of a new survey report, the Teen Age Girls report (or the TAG report), released by Nanhi Kali, a project by the Naandi Foundation, which works with adolescent girls. As aspirations of teenage Indian girls soar, as we reported in the first part of the series, most of them struggle with gender norms and a lack of ‘new age skills’--such as travelling alone or typing out a document on a computer in English--as we reported in the second part of the series. This concluding part looks at the status of health and access to sanitation, at a time when 63.2 million teenage Indian girls are set to be first-time voters in 2019. The health of the teenage girl holds significance not only for her own life, but also for the health and well-being of the children she may have. The ...

After public transportation, local markets, private tuitions or roads leading to school were regarded as most unsafe among young girls Current Affairs News : India’s richest girls and young women, aged 11 to 18, felt the least safe among all income groups in public spaces, according to a new report that explored safety perceptions among adolescent girls. Across urban (47%) and rural (40%) areas, young girls reported feeling more susceptible to molestation or abuse while using public transport, said the report, Wings 2018: World Of India’s Girls, released by Save The Children in India, an international non-governmental organisation. This finding was particularly true for girls from higher income groups (53%), belonging to the other backward classes (OBC) and general castes (45%), according to the study Girls from medium and small towns (51%) reported feeling more unsafe than those in large cities (44%), small villages (42%) and large villages (39%). “A possible reaso...

The Supreme Court also said that an adult couple can live together even if they are not married Latest News  : An adult couple has a right to live together without marriage, the Supreme Court said, while asserting that a 20-year-old Kerala woman, whose marriage   had been annulled, could choose whom she wanted to live with. The top court held that  live-in relationships   were now even recognised by the Legislature and they had found a place under the provisions of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005. The observations came while the apex court was hearing a plea filed by one Nandakumar against a Kerala High Court order annulling his marriage   with Thushara on the ground that he had not attained the legal age of marriage. Prohibition of Child Marriage Act states that a girl can’t marry before the age of 18, and a boy before 21. Nandakumar, who had approached the top court, will turn 21 on May 30 this year. The high ...