Women and girl child empowerment has been a concern of nations across the world since, ages. India is no exception carrying an alarming male to female ratio i.e. 1000:933 as per Census Report 2001. Ironically though, India has the distinction of having the world’s largest number of professionally qualified women. India takes pride in having more number of women doctors, surgeons, scientists and professors than the United States has. India is also proud of Kalpana Chawlas, Indira Nooyis, Sania Mirzas, PT Ushas, Kiran Bedis to name a few. Yet again, a lot of women face discrimination beginning at her home, from womb to tomb.

From medieval period to present day world, women have been suffering as the vital statistics testify. Among various women related issues in India, the female foeticide and female infanticide has become one of the major problems. The advent of technology and misuse of pre-natal sex detection and also attitude of the unscrupulous medical practitioners, who are facilitating the female foeticide through induced abortions. There are strict laws and penal actions against violators, but the laws have not worked. Over 10 million female foetuses have been aborted in India in the past two decades.

India cannot afford to wait till the next census in 2011 to determine whether the growing practice of female foeticide and the girl child mortality rate had gone up. According to a recent report by the United Nations Children's Fund, up to 50 million girls and women are missing from India's population as a result of systematic gender discrimination in India. According to National Crime Records Bureau (2008), the statistics related to Crimes against women have been devastating as dowry deaths in the year 2008 stands to be 8172. To add further, there have been 22,939 cases of kidnapping and abduction of women and girls, 40,413 cases of molestation 12,214 cases of sexual harassment and 81,344 cases of women facing cruelty at the hands of their husbands.

In the midst of disheartening scenario, Swabhiman, a girl child and women empowerment initiative of Smile Foundation started in 2005 when we realized that lot of girls get dropped out of education either due to gender discrimination or lack of economic resources. In urban slums, this phenomenon is more so common due to migratory nature of population where the women and adolescent girls often get neglected. Swabhiman completed its 5 years of journey in the year 2010 and it was time for relooking at the programme. We realized Swabhiman is not just about bringing pride and dignity as a right but a programme aimed at achieving complete empowerment for both privileged as well as the underprivileged women and girl child.

The programme has moved into Phase –II with 4 major components – Advocacy for privileged youth in reputed colleges and educational institutes, achieving excellence in education for underprivileged girl child, community based health and educational interventions for girl child and women and aligning with like-minded institutions, individuals, corporate, organizations, colleges and schools for the cause. Today, the programme takes pride in benefitting more than 1.5 lakh population through its interventions in urban slums, colleges, schools, institutions, corporates and other like-minded government and non-government organizations.