Amrita had a long desire to become a woman and underwent gender affirmation surgery. Challenges arose following the surgery when Amrita struggled to change her name and sex on her official documents. Amrita had to leave her identity documents and was given a certificate to use instead. It did not work and it gave me a lot of problems – I could no longer travel or attend to anything that needed identity documents.
Amrita also shared that mental health is a serious issue and rarely spoken about Discrimination from my family and schoolmates was the worst. As a teenager, I would be called names at school. I however did not want to miss out on the chance of having an education and so I pushed on.
Amrita is part of the Women4GlobalFund (W4GF) Accountability Toolkit Implementation Group in India. The training brought us together as diverse women in India to ensure we are speaking in the same voice and we can work together irrespective of our gender roles and identities. Through community led monitoring we can advocate for what is important to us. We must no longer working in silos. Click here to read the full workshop report.
Amrita is not sitting around and waiting for change. Amrita works together with other transgender women to advocate for policies in India that respect the human rights of all transgender women and men and to ensure that the Global Fund is addressing some of these key challenges in their support to countries. We must end the stigma and structural violence faced by my community which is a growing barrier to accessing services.
W4GF is honoured to be connected to Amrita as part of this work where women are collecting and building the evidence base of what works for all women and to hold implementers and leaders accountable. Together we can hold the Global Fund and countries accountable on how they invest their resources and where they can have the greatest impact for all women.
Thank you for joining us as we work together to advance gender equality for women and girls. Click to find out more about W4GF’s Accountability Toolkit, the work in India, Cameroon and Tanzania and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.