Building on the success of the first National Convention on Women in India, O.P. Jindal Global University is hosting the Second National Convention, March 8-10, on its campus in Sonipat, Haryana. The convention aims to foster rigorous, inclusive, and action-oriented discussions on gender equality.
Inspired by the International Women’s Day 2026 theme "Give to Gain," JGU's second Women's Convention will highlight the idea that investing in women's knowledge, creativity, leadership, and labor generates long-term collective social, cultural, and democratic benefits.
While decades of advocacy and reform have brought significant progress to women's lives in India, gender-based discrimination persists and affects women across regions and cultural contexts, as well as in homes, workplaces, creative endeavors, and educational institutions. The convention brings together academics, scholars, practitioners, advocates, policymakers, institution builders, diplomats, civil servants, and grassroots workers to create a shared space for reflection, dialogue, and collective imagination. The convention is committed to identifying concrete pathways for meaningful social, institutional, and structural transformation, and to addressing emerging forms of inequality in a rapidly changing social and economic landscape.
This year, the convention is further enhanced by the inaugural Jindal Interdisciplinary Art and Literature Festival 2026. The festival aims to broaden and deepen the engagement envisioned by the convention, bringing feminist perspectives into dialogue with literature, art, cinema, performance, and other cultural expressions. The festival recognizes that the pursuit of gender equality is not limited to policy frameworks or institutional reform alone; it is equally shaped by stories told, images created, and worlds imagined. Creative practices have long served as sites of resistance, critique, healing, and reimagining, spaces where silences are broken, alternative futures are envisioned, and lived experiences find expression.
Prof (Dr) C. Raj Kumar, the Founding Vice Chancellor of O.P. Jindal Global University, said, "Women are the cornerstone of JGU's academic and institutional ethos. The empowerment of women, their choices, opportunities, and participation in academic and administrative duties are central to our culture. With more than 55 percent of the workforce at JGU being women, we are proud to be a women-centric organization, and we will continue to strengthen their presence and participation in all our activities. This commitment is further expressed in the inaugural Jindal Interdisciplinary Arts and Literature Festival, which brings feminist perspectives into dialogue with literature and the arts, affirming that inclusive cultural spaces are essential to how equality is imagined, articulated, and advanced."
Prof (Dr) Upasana Mahanta, Dean of Admissions and Outreach and a member of the organizing committee of the Women's Convention, said: "The convention brings us together with a shared purpose, catalyzing ideas and inspiring action. Its true significance lies in the steps we take each day—through sustained institutional commitments, thoughtful pedagogical practices, mentorship, everyday solidarities, and the spaces we consciously create to shape our lived realities."
The multiple panels across three days of deliberations will begin with an inaugural session, and the keynote address will focus on feminist legacies in India. Several other panel discussions will cover topics such as: Women's perspectives: seeing, feeling, and knowing; Women and translation: who speaks for women? Translation, gender, and literary circulation in India and beyond; Feminization of aging, gender diversity, and public health; Pathways to better economic and social outcomes; Female voices in the humanities and the preservation of truth; Women at work: understanding barriers and advancing equality; Media and publishing ecologies; Women building the digital future; Women's power in policy-making: from agenda to inclusive action; and Women in leadership roles in the media, among others.
By placing artistic and literary conversations alongside scholarly and policy deliberations, the festival affirms that struggles for equality and emancipation must be imagined, articulated, and sustained across disciplines and forms. It invites writers, artists, filmmakers, poets, performers, and thinkers to engage with themes of identity, labor, care, embodiment, memory, and power, and to illuminate how cultural production both reflects and shapes social realities. In doing so, the festival complements the convention's deliberative focus with a creative and reflective dimension, encouraging participants to see feminist engagement not only as a matter of reform, but as an ongoing intellectual and cultural project.
"The Office of Student Life and Cultural Engagement (SLCE) envisions the Jindal Interdisciplinary Arts and Literature Festival (JIALF) as a flagship cultural-academic platform for fostering meaningful and substantial conversations about the arts from the perspective of an interdisciplinary university. The festival seeks to engage a dynamic student population by showcasing a diverse range of genres, voices, and ideas that animate contemporary cultural and literary discourse," said Prof Dr Gargi Bharadwaj, Director, Office of Student Life and cultural engagement and Associate Professor (theatre, performance and cultural studies).