Smriti Irani, the Minister of Women and Child Development addressed the United Nations General Assembly on the 25th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women on Thursday. Iterating the steps taken by her government, Irani said under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has moved from a “paradigm of women’s development to women-led development.”

“In India, we recognise the centrality of gender equality and women’s empowerment in all aspects of our developmental journey,” Irani said at the high-level meeting, PTI reported.

The high-level meeting was convened during the 75th session of the UN General Assembly, with the overall theme of ‘Accelerating the realisation of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls’.

Heralding the steps taken for women during the coronavirus pandemic, the minister said, “Government of India took a series of measures for ensuring safety, security and wellbeing of women during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

These included ‘One Stop Crisis Centres’ providing medical, psychological, legal, police and shelter facilities to women under a common roof.

Additionally, during the pandemic all efforts are being made to ensure continuity of care for women, especially pregnant and lactating women and women in vulnerable situations, she said.

She further added that the ‘National Nutritional Mission’ launched to improve nutritional status of children, adolescent girls, pregnant women and lactating mothers seeks to make India malnutrition free by 2022.

Irani reiterated India’s commitment to the full and effective implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. “What we achieved 25 years ago at the Fourth World Conference on Women still remains our guiding light and source of inspiration,” she said adding that “India remains committed to building a just and equal post-COVlD-19 world for us and our daughters.”

Irani said India is now focused on inclusive growth and deep reforms that together are bringing about transformational changes.

She noted that reservation of seats for women in local government has ensured that more than 1.3 million elected women representatives provide leadership in formulating and implementing gender-sensitive public policies at the community level.

More than 200 million Indian women have been brought into the formal banking system through the Government’s Financial Inclusion Initiative.

Innovative use of digital technologies has provided equal opportunity for women to access insurance, loans, and social assistance.

Further, ‘Celebrating Girl Child and Enabling her Education’ is a multi-sectoral package of interventions and awareness campaigns that challenge gender stereotypes and realize girls’ right to education, she said.

“India today is attaching the highest priority to ensuring gender parity in all spheres of life and elimination of all forms of gender-based discrimination,” Irani said adding that several of the legislations in India such as those pertaining to sexual harassment of women at workplace, protection of women from domestic violence, protection of children from sexual offenses, and criminal laws’ amendments have been strong enablers of women empowerment and protection of children especially girls, over the past six years.