Raveena Tandon wants to highlight women security at W20: Our laws are supportive towards women, but often, they don’t get implemented

Actor Raveena Tandon is honoured to be the first participant from the entertainment industry to be a delegate at the W20, and admits that the role comes with a lot of responsibility to be the voice for the women and address all the concerns.

Tandon has been chosen by the ministry to be a delegate at the prestigious W20, the Women’s Empowerment engagement wing at G20 India’s Presidency.

“It does come with a lot of responsibility. At the summit, we do have to bring to the forefront the issues faced by women, pan-India across all spectrums and fields that they work in, from the entertainment industry to corporate sectors to the basic fieldwork. So, there is a lot of added responsibility along with that,” Tandon admits.

The Women 20 (W20) is an official G20 engagement group, established during the Turkish presidency in 2015. The objective is to ensure that the gender considerations are mainstreamed into G20 discussions and are translated into the G20 Leaders Declaration as policies and commitments that foster gender equality and women’s economic empowerment.

In fact, the 48-year-old is proud to take on the added responsibility, and hopes to address all the concerns.

“First and foremost, I’m very proud that I’m born in India, which gives umpteen amount of opportunities to women. In our country, women have literally broken glass ceilings, from being truck drivers to pilots to working in the Army or Air Force, to working in fields, railways to even becoming bus drivers. Women are actually making progress leaps and bounds. I’m very, very proud that I live in a country which gives this kind of freedom and kinds of opportunities to women,” asserts the actor, who has been tirelessly working for the girl child, with various organisations, like UNICEF, Cry, White Ribbon Alliance for safe motherhood, Spina Bifida Association and Smile foundation.

Giving words to her feelings, the KGF actor shares, “Sex holds no bar, you can just decide and choose your own career options. These are the main things that we need to highlight, along with the issues and problems that are faced by women in different careers”.

For Tandon, who was recently announced as The Wildlife Goodwill Ambassador of Maharashtra, the issue that she wants to highlight at the summit is security measures for women.

“We also need to highlight the security measures for them. Highlight the fact that a lot of fast tracking as far as our laws are concerned (is needed). Because in India, our laws are very supportive towards women, but most of the time they don’t get implemented or the justice is meted out in time. So I would love to highlight these points,” says the actor, who feels the summit is a “fantastic opportunity to empower women and provide them with more rights for their full social and economic participation”.