Amrita’s UNESCO Chair strives to promote international, inter-university cooperation and networking to enhance institutional capacities and collaborative work. In the fall of 2016, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (University) was conferred the UNESCO Chair for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment. The UN 2030 Agenda says: “Realizing gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls will make a crucial contribution to progress across all the Goals and targets”. Focus areas of the UNESCO Chair:
Design tools and methods for effective interventional strategies toward the empowerment of women and strengthening gender equality with the community’s active and inclusive participation.
Focus on six holistic dimensions of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals defined as safety and security, economic vitality, education, political, social and cultural environment, environmental quality, and health.
Understand and map the vulnerabilities in communities to finally support India’s progress towards achieving the UN’s 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development.
New beginnings: UNESCO Chair on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment conferred in 2016
Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi (Amma), Chancellor of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, has made outstanding and universally acknowledged global contributions in the areas of women’s empowerment and gender equality, having dedicated her entire life to the mission of serving humanity. Under the guidance of Chancellor Amma, the Amrita Center for Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality under the UNESCO Chair, has made significant collaborations with various international and grassroots partners around the world and has organized key events, conducted training programs and other impactful initiatives that furthered its goals. Chancellor Amma herself believes that the main purpose of education should be to impart a culture of the heart. All training and educational initiatives therefore work with the mission to impart ‘Education for Life’, rather than just ‘Education for living’.
In the fall of 2016, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham was awarded the UNESCO Chair on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment for India.
The official ceremony to commence the UNESCO Chair in Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment took place before an audience of 8,000 people during a spiritual programme of the institution’s Chancellor Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi in Paris, France on October 30, 2016. It was a remarkable event that would herald a new era for Amrita Vish- wa Vidyapeetham. Dr. Bhavani Rao was bestowed with the role of the UNESCO Chairholder on Gender Equality & Women’s Empowerment at the ceremony.
“Empowering women through building strength in numbers in her community is an inclusive approach that can bring about a great change for her and in the whole of society. This is a critical and exciting time for us to create communities of learning and practice in skill development that empower women to participate as a whole. Education is our birthright and should be accessible without barriers of gender, caste, economic status and geographic location.”
Dr. Bhavani Rao R., Chairholder
The mission of the Chair is to promote international, inter-university cooperation and networking to enhance institutional capacities and collaborative work.
Dr. Peter Wells said, “There is no greater force for development, resilience and peace in the world than girls’ education. Universities such as Amrita have a guiding and strategic role to play in this quest.”
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham Vice-Chancellor, Dr. P. Venkat Rangan, said that the Chair will identify vulnerabilities of women and girls in India and ways of addressing them over the next four years. “The Chair will focus on six holistic dimensions of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals defined as: safety and security, economic vitality, education, political, social and cultural environment, environmental quality and health,” he added.
At a different ceremony in India, the Government of India’s Minister for Human Resource Development, Prakash Javadekar, announced the establishment of the UNESCO Chair as a ground-breaking approach to addressing areas of women’s empowerment. Prakash Javadekar said: “Nothing is more noble than creating centres of excellence in education, and Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham is among the best in the country. The UNESCO Chair for Gender Equality and Women Empowerment will play a vital role in the future. It takes care of all the millennium development goals, as they are directly or indirectly linked to the health, welfare and upliftment of women, be it maternal health, education, sanitation or infant mortality.”
After a first successful term, the Chair was renewed in 2020.
The UNESCO Chair and the Center for Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality promote international, inter-university cooperation and networking to enhance institutional capacities and collaborative work. The UNESCO Chair and CWEGE support India’s progress towards achieving the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
We have collaborated closely with UNESCO New Delhi and UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, resulting in the publication of two books: “Transforming Mentalities: Gender Equality and Masculinities in India” (2019) and “Braided River: The Universe of Indian Women in Science” (2020). We also took part in the first-ever discussions on Gender and AI, participating in a groundbreaking workshop organized by UNESCO in Paris in 2019, which led to the report “Women Empowerment and Artificial Intelligence.”
In 2018, we organized a three-day International Colloquium on Women’s Empowerment, Vulnerability Mapping, and Community-led Sanitation. This event brought together global experts but also women from 21 rural villages in India who had become “Champions of Change” through our empowerment programs. In 2021, we hosted a Global Summit of Gender-related UNESCO Chairs, gathering 300 participants from 46 countries, including 19 UNESCO Chairs who signed a declaration. In 2022, the International Conference on Systems Thinking & Women’s Empowerment (AWESOME Conference) gathered academics, policymakers, and practitioners who shared their expertise on multidisciplinary and holistic approaches to women’s empowerment. Looking ahead, we are organizing the first International Conference on Gender and Technology in collaboration with UNESCO and IEEE on January 16-19, 2025. This flagship event will explore emerging paradigms, opportunities, and vulnerabilities at the intersection of gender and technology, including AI, Robotics, AR/VR, Blockchain, and neuroscience, featuring paper presentations, keynote speakers, and a GenAI x Gender Tech hackathon, to explore how technology can be used to address critical issues faced by women worldwide.
In 2023, we coordinated the Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Working Group of Civil20, the official engagement group of the G20 focusing on civil society. We involved several UNESCO Chairs and strengthened South-South collaboration by organizing events with other Chairs in Africa. Over six months, we organized 60 policy dialogues with civil society organizations and 1,230 outreach activities in India, Europe, the US, Africa, and South-Korea, engaging more than 604,500 participants from 73 countries. This effort resulted in the collection of over 1,000 policy recommendations and 64 best practices from NGOs and other institutions.
In 2023, we organized mass outreach campaigns on women’s empowerment and gender equality (“One Million Lights Campaign” and “Gender Equality Pledge”) with over 1.2 million people participating worlwide, including 2,000 schools in Delhi and 4,000 schools in Uttar Pradesh. The same year, we launched UNESCO’s campaign on Menstrual Health and Hygiene Management Campaign in multiple states of India (“Spotlight Red”).
Our Chair offers pivotal gender-related programs within Amrita’s School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, spanning from Bachelor’s to Ph.D. levels. We publish in top-ranked journals, focusing on innovative topics such as our data-driven systems-thinking approach to mapping women’s vulnerabilities. The “AWESOME” framework (Advancing Women’s Empowerment through Systems Oriented Model Expansion) that we developed integrates a holistic perspective with advanced data collection tools and AI technologies. Additionally, we pioneer data and technology solutions (such as apps and field operation trackers) aimed at tackling systemic and structural inequalities faced by women.
Our Chair’s commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals 4 (Education) and 5 (Gender Equality) is realized through impactful field projects in rural India and Africa. These initiatives aim to empower women, girls, and transgender individuals by providing vocational and life skills training. Over the years, we have positively impacted more than 239,000 beneficiaries across 23 states in India, and 3 countries in Africa. We collaborate closely with local communities to address all areas of vulnerabilities, including education, economic and livelihoods opportunities, health, societal norms and culture, environmental sustainability, and safety and security. Our curriculum emphasize technology-driven approaches and focuses on areas like sustainable fashion, the blue and green economy (such as seaweed cultivation, beekeeping, agroecology), and women in non-traditional trades (such as plumbing or two-wheeler repair).
We actively engage men and boys for gender equality and women’s empowerment. Over the past two years, we have provided mental health and gender-related training to over 27,000 police personnel, including the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in Srinagar Sector, Kashmir, CRPF Southern Sector Hyderabad, Telangana, and the Telangana State Special Police (TSSP). This training will soon extend to 17 CRPF training centers in 11 states of India.
Our initiatives received recognition from UN Agencies and from the Government of India. In 2017, the Hon. President of India, Sri Ram Nath Kovind, personally gave Open Free Defecation Village Certificates to women we had trained in plumbing and toilet building. In 2023, the Hon. Minister of State of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, Tamil Nadu, Dr. L. Murugan, invited us to attend the opening of the new seaweed park in the Gulf of Mannar, along with training beneficiaries. More recently, in 2024, India’s Hon. Minister of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Sri Dharmendra Pradhan, invited women trained to meet him during Republic Day celebrations in Delhi, thus recognizing their achievements.
For more information, please visit the following link
https://www.amrita.edu/events/gender-technology-conference-2025
