Women in Bengaluru, if you are looking forward to travelling the Metro, we suggest you get used to peeing against walls. There are going to be no toilets at the Metro stations, you see. The reasoning seems to be that it takes very little time to travel from station to station and one wouldn’t need to spend more than a few minutes at the stations as well (Public transport, yes. Public toilet, no., Citizen Matters). So if you are on a slightly long trip from one end of the city to another on a cold and rainy day, drink no water.

Just Femme takes a pick at news from around the world that is worth a read.

Apparently, more women in US are now buying guns for the feeling of security they bring. "It's like putting on lipstick.  It's just part of my make-up,” says a gun-owner.

Women Taking Aim: More Women Buying Guns

Sajana J sums up the results of a recent study on gender equity in media organisations from across the world.

A random survey of news channels in India usually throws up a few known women faces. Barkha Dutt, Sagarika Ghosh et all, grace the TV most evenings. Newspapers too have their familiar names. And going by the number of female students passing out from media schools around the country, one might be fooled into thinking that women are well represented in the media. Unfortunately, that thought is just wide off the mark.

As the entries come in for Mother’s day special, I am wondering if my post will sound cynical. The thing is, Amma and I are not the best of friends. We never were. We fight all the time. Not a single week goes by without one of us hanging up on the other. But the frequency of this happening has come down drastically after I became a mother. So what changed?

Each day is a roller-coaster of sorts. Forget the last two and a half years, let’s just talk about the last 24 hours of my motherhood. I have laughed my head off, scolded till it hurt my forehead to frown, pulled out bits of paper from the little imp’s mouth, saved her from falling off the table, sang at the top of my voice, repeated the same story four times in half an hour, worried about the cough, comforted, played silly, and what not.

Let’s start with my ever-evolving perception of my amma. I suppose during the early days amma was amma — nothing more, nothing less. Then she became the nosey-parker sorts. Ever wondering what I’m up to; where I’m at; who I’m with… Not that I didn’t have anything to hide from her — I did, and how!

So much for prejudices that a bar is not a safe place for a girl to be, let alone be working at. Just listen to Shatbhi Basu, India’s first woman bartender, saying the safest place in the world is behind a bar counter. The same goes for the woman DJ, playing her music amidst a massive crowd of dancers. Bangalore-based journalist Gita Aravamudan, who has been writing on gender for decades, finds such gems of enlightenment in her new book on the new-age working women in India.

`In conforming to regressive practices that surround a woman’s menstrual period, basic hygiene takes a back seat. From having no access to sanitary pads to being unable to dry menstrual cloths outdoors – women have several taboos to fight to ensure their good health. Rina Mukherji reports on the recent conference on sanitation.