MESSAGE FROM ED, IRADe, ON INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY 2020

IRADe has reached nearly 36 percentage of professional women this year, which has been the highest since its foundation. I wish to address all my colleagues but directly to women colleagues on this occasion.

Let me assure you that you are here because you deserve to be here. You are here on your own right. No concessions or compromises have been made. Yes, we have not considered gaps on your career and allowed for fulfilling certain obligations. You have unlimited potential to reach further to any post including mine, someday, depending on your training, expertise and your hard work.

Let me stress that we ensure respectful atmosphere for all and any gender.

We do not stop at making women comfortable in our office. We take cognizance of underprivileged women world over in our work and ask –

• Why can’t all women have clean cooking fuel?
• Why do they not exist in large number, at least in the renewable energy sector?
• How can we ensure their comfort in a warming world, whether it is heat stress or disaster resilience or climate mitigation- that should not be done at their expense?
• How can we ensure women farmers’ income or expand their choices of livelihoods?

We try to understand this through our surveys and analysis.

I am happy that several women at IRADe have written that their work at IRADe has been very fulfilling and inspiring. They describe their stay in their own words separately. I wish them success and happiness.

Professor Jyoti Parikh
Executive Director, IRADe