New Delhi, Aug 26 Lashing out at the National Commission for Women (NCW) a day before Women Equality Day, two civil society groups Monday said that the pro-women, progressive legislations in the country were being misused, and demanded that the legislations be made gender neutral.
The Mothers and Sisters Initiative (MASI) and All India Forgotten Women (AIFW) in a joint statement said that the laws for the protection of women and their rights – like the legislations against rape and sexual harassment, adultery or domestic violence, divorce or child custody – should be made gender neutral.
The two organisations said that a Right to Information (RTI) application has revealed that information given by the NCW was false. NCW chairman Girija Vyas’s statement that in 70 percent divorce cases men try to escape from providing maintenance to their former wives by alleging adultery, in response to the RTI application was found to be completely false and far fetched, they said.
Sandeep Bhartia of Gender Human Rights society, which helped both these organisations in logistics, said that an RTI filed by them last month revealed surprising results.