No New Year celebrations at IGNOU

The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) has cancelled its new-year celebration tomorrow in remembrance of the recent grave tragedy of the death of the victimized girl in the Delhi gang rape case. Instead, the University shall hold a candle procession tomorrow starting from the academic complex inside till the statue of Late Smt. Indira Gandhi at the main gate.
This is for the first time that the mega-giant university is taking such a measure which has its own IGNOU Committee Against Sexual Harassment (ICASH) in the capital as well as in all its 64 Regional Centres of the country. In compliance with the guidelines of the Supreme Court, IGNOU has adopted a policy that aims to prevent/prohibit/ punish sexual harassment of women at the workplace. Both academic and non-academic staff of the university come under this purview.

Also, the University has various programmes run by the School of Gender and Development Studies (SOGDS) like Ph.D. in Gender and Development Studies/Women Studies, Master of Arts in Gender and Development Studies, Master of Arts in Women and Gender Studies, Diploma in Women’s Empowerment and Development, Certificate in Empowering Women through Self Help Groups.

SOGDS also carries out gender mapping of IGNOU. It looks at the University’s multiple modes of teaching and reaching out to learners from varied contexts, analyzing the gender sensitivity components.