Australia Awards South and West Asia

In the lead-up to International Women’s Day, Australia Awards – South Asia & Mongolia has launched a podcast series called ‘Spotlight on Gender Equality and Social Inclusion’. The series aims to inspire ideas about how every individual can apply a gender equality and social inclusion lens to their work. In each episode, Australia Awards alumni will be sharing the innovative ways they are building gender equality and social inclusion into their projects. The entire series is available to listen to for free on the Australia Awards – South Asia & Mongolia website and Spotify.

The sixth episode features Gayatri Pande, an Australia Awards alumna from India. You can listen to it here:

Alternatively, you may be able to access it on Spotify:

Gayatri completed a Master of Environmental and Resource Economics at the Australian National University with the support of an Australia Awards Scholarship. She works for NITI Aayog, a public policy think tank of the Government of India. She drafts public policies that will help India realise its development aspirations, such becoming a developed nation by 2047 and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

She also received an Australia Awards Regional Women in Leadership grant that she used to build female farmers’ resilience to the impacts of climate change. This project highlighted the importance of a gender equality and social inclusion lens, as she realised that certain policies did not adequately represent the concerns of the community. Worse, they were reinforcing and compounding the exclusion that already marginalised sections of society faced. She now recognises that public policies must account for diverse experiences, diverse values and needs specific to marginalised communities.

Gayatri (far right) conducting a field visit in the Central Himalayan Region as part of her Australia Awards Regional Women in Leadership grant.

In the podcast, Gayatri discusses how she integrates gender equality and social inclusion into her work. For example, her first step when designing a policy, particularly in her field of climate change, is to visit the community and engage with stakeholders at the grassroots level, ensuring that she takes on board suggestions in a bottom-up manner.

Listen to the episode to hear her tips for considering gender equality and social inclusion in your own work, such as undertaking extensive needs assessment before taking any action. Gayatri emphasises that different people have different needs, and we can only create a just society when we consider all these needs equally.

Listen to the series in full via [insert link]