The Women’s Grievance Redressal Committee conducted a workshop ‘Lightening a Lamp in You’ on 9th September 2016. Mrs. Bijayalaxmi Nanda, an eminent Academician, Activist, Writer all together took the workshop.  In the inaugural function Dr. Remya Neelancherry, Chairperson WGRC welcomed one and all present there and invited Prof. R V Rajakumar, Director IIT Bhubaneswar to enlighten everyone. In his address the Director appreciated the effort of WGRC for conducting the workshop and empathized to the commitment of making IIT Bhubaneswar a gender-sensitized campus. After that our esteemed guest of honor Prof. Bijayalaxmi Nanda, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Delhi University, gave the inaugural address and highlighted the challenges that women face and gave a brief description about the whole day schedule of Workshop. Then Workshop was inaugurated with lightening of lamp by Director IIT Bhubaneswar, Guest of honor and Chairperson WGRC. Director presented a memento to Guest of honor. Dr. Amrita Satapathy Member, WGRC gave the Vote of Thanks. Then everyone proceeded for high tea.
The Workshop ‘Lightening the Lamp in You’ was held in two sessions.

Session I: Women’s Empowerment and legal awareness: conceptual and contextual analysis
The lecture focused on the theoretical principles of feminism and the significance of legal rights for women’s empowerment. It delved into the struggles of the women’s movements in India to create laws for women here and its impact on gender justice in the country. She depicted feminist scholarship in India as a traction to examine the contextual aspects of laws leading to women’s empowerment in the country. She also talked how honor killing is hampering the humanity and love.

Session II: Women and laws in India
This session provided a brief overview of women specific legislation in India with their specific provisions. It focused on the PCPNDT Act, the Dowry Prohibition Act, The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, the Protection of Women from Sexual Harassment Act and the Hindu Succession Act. At the end of workshop an interactive session was held in which students were divided into three groups and given a task to present how would they contribute in building gender sensitivity in and around IIT Bhubaneswar. Groups came up with several initiatives and they gave the name of their initiatives as Prerna, Jyoti, Jagriti.

At last Dr. Remya Neelancherry, Chairperson WGRC thanked everyone for attending the workshop and making it successful.