While public policy is being shaped, women’s voices are often ignored in parliamentary committees and bureaucratic think-tanks. This means decisions on issues that affect half the population are made without meaningful input from those who experience them most deeply. Recognising this representation gap, India’s National Commission for Women (NCW) has launched a timely initiative aimed at empowering the next generation of women researchers and, through them, building a stronger base for policy that truly reflects women’s realities.
The SHAKTI Scholars Programme
Recently, the NCW introduced the SHAKTI Scholars: Young Research Fellowship, a national fellowship for emerging scholars and independent researchers aged 21–30, aimed at producing policy-oriented research on women’s issues. The fellowship offers a six-month grant of ₹1 lakh to selected applicants to investigate topics ranging from women’s safety, dignity and access to justice, to leadership, political participation, health and nutrition, economic empowerment, and work-life balance. Preference is given to post-graduates and those with research experience.
In a country as diverse and populous as India, where social realities differ vastly across regions, castes, classes, and communities, policy solutions must be rooted in rigorous, context-sensitive research. The SHAKTI Scholars programme is designed to do exactly that. It encourages young women to turn their observations, experiences, and questions into data-driven studies that can inform legislation, implementation and public discourse.
Why Women Researchers Matter In Policymaking
Public policy research has historically been dominated by men, both globally and in India. Whether it’s economics, technology, health, or labour markets, male perspectives have shaped questions, methods, interpretations, and solutions. Yet research shows this gender imbalance in research authorship and leadership has real consequences. It can skew priorities, overlook issues that disproportionately affect women, and underrepresent women’s lived experiences in data and analysis.
Studies from fields as diverse as medical research and computer systems find that women are underrepresented in research roles, publication bylines, conference speaking slots, and collaboration networks. This is not because of lack of talent, but due to structural barriers such as implicit bias, unequal access to funding, and disproportionate caregiving responsibilities.
The Gap Between Policy And Reality
The consequences of this gap are visible across domains:
Unpaid care work: Women globally and in India spend significantly more time on household labour and caregiving than men, yet public policy rarely recognises or compensates this. Innovative research highlights how failing to account for this can perpetuate gender inequality and restrict women’s economic participation.
Digital harassment: As the NCW itself has highlighted, the digital world presents new threats such as cyberbullying and deepfakes that disproportionately target women. NCW’s recommendations to reform cyber laws reflect the need for gender-sensitive legal frameworks that take women’s experiences into account.
Period poverty and health access: Around the world, research increasingly shows that lack of access to menstrual products, sanitation facilities, and healthcare impacts girls’ education, participation, and dignity. These are not niche women’s issues but barriers to equality that demand policy attention supported by robust research.
Access to healthcare: Women’s specific health needs such as maternal care have historically been understudied. The healthcare research gap illustrates how ignoring women’s pain and health patterns leads to worse outcomes and policies that fail to protect half the population.
Injecting women’s voices into research is not just a matter of representation. It is a matter of effectiveness. Diverse research teams produce richer analyses, challenge assumptions, invite new questions, and drive better policy outcomes.
From Personal Struggles To Policy Insights
Across India and the world, women are increasingly turning personal experiences into research insights that drive societal change. Stories of navigating unpaid labour, combating digital abuse, or seeking healthcare access are no longer merely personal narratives. They are data in a wider body of evidence that challenge policymakers to act.
For young women especially, this trend marks a shift. Frustrated by insufficient policy responses, they are documenting lived realities, gathering evidence, and advocating through research. The NCW’s fellowship supports exactly this kind of work, where lived experience meets academic rigour.
In grassroots organisations, universities, and civil society groups, women are unpacking issues like period poverty, which affects attendance and participation in school and work., sexual harassment and workplace discrimination, barriers to healthcare, and digital insecurity. By funding young researchers to study these themes, the SHAKTI programme fills knowledge gaps and creates evidence that can be used in policy briefs, legislative consultations, and public advocacy.
The ultimate goal is clear – to strengthen women-focused policymaking through evidence. Policymakers cannot craft effective laws without understanding the problems they aim to solve. Yet, too often, policy debates are driven by assumptions or anecdotes rather than authentic data. By supporting research, the NCW is investing in knowledge infrastructure. This doesn’t just benefit women, but also society.
The SHAKTI Scholars fellowship may be small in scale, but its implications are far-reaching. It signals a shift from viewing women’s issues as secondary concerns to recognising them as central to national development. It also opens doors for young women whose voices may have gone unheard in research and policy circles until now. For aspiring researchers, this is an invitation to produce work that changes lives.