Namrata Jha (India)

“My journey began with working on domestic violence,” recalls Namrata Jha, about how she began working to improve the lives of women in India.

Namrata, a petite woman bursting with energy, explained how her region, Bihar State, has the highest rate of domestic violence in all of India. Nearly 60 percent of married women in Bihar report domestic abuse.

“That one year was an eye-opener for me because I could see women victims, and I could see the problem that they are facing. The physical problem, the emotional problem, the psychological, spiritual and the sexual problem they are facing.”

It comes down to the lack of women’s empowerment, she says.

Early marriage is common for rural girls in her region. Most are married by the age of 15. By the age of 19, they have two to three children because of social pressure to prove their fertility, she says.

Namrata knows this first hand. She says she was lucky because she came from an educated family. Her parents sent her to school, even though she was the fourth daughter, but when she finished, she was expected to get married.

“I remember after I did my graduation, my father wanted me to get married,” Namrata says. “And that is the time I really took the decision which I think was a really ‘breakthrough’ decision, not only for myself, but also for my family. I said I’m not going to get married. I’ll study, and I’ll have a career for myself.”

This was not an easy decision. “I had to face a lot of challenges, I must tell you,” she says. “I give credit to my mother, that she was behind me, and she stood as a backbone for me.”

Namrata is proud because her cousins followed in her footsteps.

“I think it’s very path-breaking because if one person takes that lead, the others follow and then it changes the scenario,” says Namrata. “That’s where my conviction for women’s leadership has kind of ingrained in. You have to give a chance to a woman to do something. If she does it, she makes a path for a lot of people and for the entire family.”

Today, Namrata manages the Leadership Development for Mobilizing Reproductive Health program for the Institute for International Education in Bihar. The program helps to train reproductive health leaders to advocate for improved health policies in their communities.

Though she worked in reproductive health for eight years, Namrata is relatively new to the advocacy arena. That’s why in 2009, she applied to attend CEDPA’s WomenLead in Repositioning Family Planning and Reproductive Health workshop, sponsored by the USAID | Health Policy Initiative.

Namrata says she valued coming together with the diverse training participants—women from Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tanzania and Uganda –in a forum for exchange of best practices and lessons learned.

“A lot of my concepts got clarified here, because every organization gives a different definition, every country has a different interpretation,” she says.

“For me, one of the objectives of coming here was to learn. It was a duty for me because I want to take this learning back and train my fellows. So I learned a lot of methodologies here which I’m going to duplicate there. So for me, this is really good.”

(Feb. 2010)