This was the theme of the seminar “Engendering Development: Issues and Challenges” organised by the Centre for Women's Studies and Development, Panjab University. The seminar was inaugurated by former Chief Secretary, Haryana Promilla Issar. She asserted that the development process must take into account the role of women under different circumstances.

“A woman has been liberated in certain roles , but overall she still remains shackled. A woman must be given choices.”

Presiding over the inaugural session, Prof B S Ghuman, Dean Faculty of Arts emphasised that the crux of development lay in engendering agricultural development.

He identified certain characteristics of women's employment in the agricultural sector, which revealed that women are still marginalised in this sector.

Earlier, Prof Aruna Goel, Director of the Centre for Women’s Studies, stated that there is a critical need to focus on development policies and plans and to include women in the development process.

Dr Ameer Sultana looked into the conceptual aspects of the development. Citing UN statistics, she said that 70 per cent of the world’s poor are women. Women perform two-third of the world’s work and have only one per cent of the resources.

In another event, IT Business School, Banur, organised a seminar on Women Empowerment followed by the inter-Business School Declamation contest —-Aprajita 2008.

Six teams from different B-Schools participated in the contest. Former chairperson of Department of Psychology, PU, Prof Promila Vasudev was the chief guest.