‘Samam’ campaign, launched by Kerala’s Culture Department, seeks to achieve gender equality

Wide-ranging, year-long drive aims at tapping the power of cultural media to generate awareness

The Culture Department on Saturday launched Samam, a wide-ranging, year-long awareness campaign focussing on gender equality. The drive, initiated at a time of increasing reports of dowry deaths and violence against women, aims at carrying the message to the grass-roots by tapping the power of visual media, literature, music and art. Addressing a gathering at the Mascot Hotel here through videoconferencing, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who inaugurated the campaign, said: "Our reform movements came to a partial halt somewhere along the way. Many had assumed that all social inequalities will end with the achievement of independence. However, regressive, communal forces, wishing to send women back to the kitchen have always been working in the background. With the implementation of neo-liberal reforms in the 1990s, wealth became the hallmark of respect in society, giving respectability to practices such as dowry and turning women into commodities in the marriage market."