Annual reports and impact reports serve different purposes: Annual reports document activities and organisational performance, while impact reports examine whether those activities created meaningful change.
Outputs are not the same as outcomes: The number of people trained or villages reached does not necessarily show whether a programme improved people’s lives.
A theory of change connects activities to impact: Impact reporting should make clear how an intervention is expected to produce longer-term outcomes and whether the evidence supports that pathway.
Numbers need context: Disaggregated data, participant stories, interviews and other qualitative evidence can reveal who benefited, who was left out and why results differed.
Impact reporting should enable learning: A strong report does not hide missed targets or unintended consequences. It uses evidence to help NGOs, donors and CSR teams decide what to improve, scale or rethink.
A non-profit can end the year with an impressive list of numbers: 50,000 children taught, 10,000 women trained, 500 villages covered, 1,000 teachers supported. Its annual report may have photographs from the field, testimonials from beneficiaries, a neat account of how much money was raised and spent. And on paper, it can look like a year of considerable achievement. But there is a question those numbers do not necessarily answer: what actually changed?
That is the gap an impact report is supposed to fill. An annual report tells the story of an organisation’s year with a focus on its programmes, finances, activities, milestones and institutional developments. An impact report, in contrast, should go a step further and examine whether those activities produced the social or environmental change the organisation set out to create. This distinction is increasingly important in India’s development sector, where donors, CSR funders and communities are asking not only where money went, but what it achieved.
A glimpse of ‘what changed’
The easiest way to understand the difference between these two reports is through the distinction between outputs, outcomes and impact. Suppose an organisation runs a programme teaching digital skills to women. An annual report might focus on numbers like 2,000 women attended training, 100 workshops were conducted, 50 trainers were engaged, etc. These are outputs: they tell us what the organisation did.
An impact report should thus ask what happened next. The report needs to answer questions like: How many women actually acquired the intended skills? How many began using digital banking independently? Did their access to financial services increase? Did their income or economic decision-making change? Did the programme work equally well for younger and older participants? What happened to those who dropped out?
The distinction matters because a large output does not automatically translate into a meaningful outcome. As The Bridgespan Group notes, organisations need to track inputs, outputs and intermediate outcomes if they want to understand not merely whether a programme was delivered, but how and for whom it is producing results.An impact report, therefore, should not simply contain more numbers than an annual report. It should simply contain different kinds of answers.
The theory behind the numbers
A good impact report should begin by making the organisation’s ‘theory of change’ visible. In simple terms, the theory of change framework denotes the pathway for an organization to achieve long term goals. In that sense, the impact report informs if the organisation is headed in the right direction towards desired outcomes or not.
To illustrate the same: every social programme contains an implicit argument: if we do X, it will lead to Y, which will eventually contribute to Z. A school might believe that providing remedial classes will improve attendance and foundational learning, which in turn will improve children’s long-term educational outcomes. A livelihoods programme might assume that vocational training, combined with market access and financial support, will increase women’s income and economic independence. Therefore, an impact report should make this chain explicit and then ask whether the evidence supports it.
This is important because otherwise reporting can become a collection of disconnected achievements. Ten thousand people trained tells us very little if training was not followed by employment, income generation or another intended outcome. Similarly, distributing 1,00,000 textbooks is an important activity, but the impact question is whether children actually used them and whether learning improved. Impact measurement is thus key for any social sector organisation. It refers to the process of understanding how much progress an organisation has made towards its intended outcomes, and is useful as it helps organisations learn and improve their strategies.
A mechanism of review
An annual report tends to present an organisation at the level of aggregate achievement. An impact report should be much more interested in distribution. If a programme says it improved school attendance by 15 percent, an impact report should ask: among whom? Did attendance improve equally for girls and boys? Did children from poorer households benefit as much as others? Were children with disabilities included? Did the programme reach those most at risk of dropping out? This is where disaggregated data becomes important. Age, gender, geography, socioeconomic background and other relevant characteristics come into play as they can reveal patterns that disappear inside a single headline number.
The same principle applies to geography. A national programme may report that it reached 100 districts, but an impact report should help readers understand whether results varied between regions. A health intervention might work particularly well in areas where frontline health workers were already strong but produce weaker results elsewhere. That difference is not an embarrassment to hide but it is information about how the programme works, and what the next steps would be like. Community-driven impact is often highly contextual. While practitioners use different combinations of quantitative measures, community self-assessments and storytelling because social change cannot always be reduced to a single metric.
The people behind the data
An impact report essentially gives one qualitative evidence alongside statistics, and in the process elevates numbers to real people. While numbers tell us that a programme achieved an outcome; interviews, focus groups, case studies and participant narratives can help explain why.
Imagine an organisation reporting that women who completed a financial-literacy programme became more likely to use bank accounts. The statistic establishes a pattern. A conversation with participants might reveal that the real turning point was not the financial-literacy module itself but learning how to use a smartphone, having a woman facilitator or receiving support from a peer group. Conversely, qualitative evidence can complicate a positive result. Participants might report that they completed training but could not apply what they learnt because they lacked internet access, family support or employment opportunities.
This combination of evidence is particularly important in development work, where the people being counted are not simply programme beneficiaries but individuals living within complex social systems. This is why it is recommended that organizations balance quantitative data with qualitative information such as interviews and open-ended surveys because the two reveal different dimensions of change.
To look back and evolve
Perhaps the biggest difference between a promotional annual report and a genuinely useful impact report is its willingness to discuss failure, limitations and unintended consequences. An annual report is often designed to communicate confidence in an organisation. An impact report thus needs to create room for uncertainty, and also address questions like: What targets were missed? Which intervention produced weaker results than expected? Did participation fall after the first few months? Were there groups who did not benefit? Did the programme create an unintended burden for communities? What assumptions turned out to be wrong?
It is about both transparency and learning. If a nonprofit discovers that its vocational training programme has high enrollment but low post-training employment, the finding can change the programme itself. This allows them to figure if the curriculum needs to change or employers need to be involved or if the programme is measuring enrolment rather than completion, etc.
Impact measurement in turn becomes valuable when such findings feed back into decisions, helping organisations refine strategy, improve programmes and make better resource-allocation decisions.
Towards a valuable future
This distinction between annual report and impact report has also acquired institutional importance in India. Under the Companies (CSR Policy) Rules, certain companies are required to undertake independent impact assessments of specified CSR projects. The rules require companies with an average CSR obligation of at least ₹10 crore in the preceding three financial years to undertake impact assessment of CSR projects with outlays of ₹1 crore or more, subject to the conditions specified in the rules. The resulting impact assessment reports are to be placed before the board and annexed to the annual CSR report.
The Ministry of Corporate Affairs has explained the purpose in straightforward terms: impact assessment is intended to assess the social impact of CSR projects and provide feedback that can help companies make better decisions about deploying CSR funds. This represents an important conceptual shift. CSR reporting is not supposed to end with simple numbers but in fact, answer the harder question of whether that spending had a tangible impact or not.
Ultimately, the test of an impact report is not how glossy it looks or how many indicators it contains. It is whether a reader can use it to make a better decision. The report should provide key stakeholders context, and in turn, the scope to find answers. A donor should be able to understand whether continuing to fund a programme makes sense and what conditions might improve it. A CSR team should be able to decide whether to scale, modify or discontinue an intervention.
An NGO should be able to identify where its theory of change is working and where it needs revision. Most importantly, communities should be able to see whether the organisation’s claims correspond with their lived experiences. This is why an impact report should not be just an annual report with more charts.
The annual report tells us what an organisation was, did and spent during the year. An impact report should make us wrestle with more difficult questions. The strongest impact report, therefore, be the one willing to show the distance between an intervention and the change it hoped to create; and to explain honestly what happened along the way.
FAQs
1. What is the difference between an annual report and an impact report? An annual report generally presents an organisation’s programmes, activities, finances and achievements during a year. An impact report goes further by examining whether those activities produced the intended social or environmental outcomes.
2. Why aren’t programme outputs enough to demonstrate impact? Outputs show what an organisation did, such as how many people attended training or how many workshops were conducted. They do not necessarily show what happened as a result. An impact report needs to examine whether the intended changes actually occurred.
3. What is a theory of change in impact reporting? A theory of change explains the pathway through which an organisation expects its activities to contribute to longer-term goals. An impact report can use this framework to examine whether the evidence supports the assumptions connecting an intervention to its intended outcomes.
4. Why is qualitative information important in an impact report? Statistics can show that a particular outcome occurred, while interviews, focus groups, case studies and participant narratives can help explain why it happened. Qualitative evidence can also reveal barriers, unintended consequences or experiences that headline numbers might miss.
5. Should an impact report include programmes that did not succeed? Yes. A useful impact report should make space for missed targets, weaker results, groups that did not benefit and unintended consequences. Acknowledging these findings can help organisations improve programmes and make better decisions about resources.
6. Why does disaggregated data matter in impact reporting? A single headline number can hide important differences. Breaking data down by factors such as age, gender, geography and socioeconomic background can help organisations understand who benefited, who may have been excluded and where a programme worked differently.
7. Why is impact assessment becoming important for CSR in India? Under India’s CSR framework, certain companies are required to undertake independent impact assessments for specified CSR projects, subject to prescribed conditions. The purpose is to assess social impact and provide feedback that can inform decisions about the deployment of CSR funds.
Catering to the Education and Health Needs of Tribal Populations
Key takeaways
Gender education is for everyone: Boys and girls both learn and internalise gender expectations during adolescence.
Boys need space to question masculinity: Conversations can challenge ideas that boys must always be strong, aggressive, competitive or emotionally restrained.
Schools can challenge stereotypes: Lessons on menstruation, consent, relationships, care work and bodily autonomy should include boys rather than excluding them.
Gender equality needs participation: One-off sensitisation sessions are less meaningful than continuous, participatory conversations involving students, teachers and families.
Men and boys can be part of the solution: Engaging boys in conversations about equality can help create more equitable attitudes at school, at home and in the wider community.
The period bell rang, and the boys in the class got up almost instinctively. They grabbed their water bottles and headed towards the school ground while the girls stayed behind. For the boys, this was a fun hour away from the classroom; the girls, meanwhile, were asked to remain seated for a session on gender, adolescence and their changing bodies. This has been widely experienced by us back in our schools but this division says something about how gender is taught to children.
Girls are often introduced to conversations about their bodies, safety, menstruation, puberty and the expectations attached to growing up as women. Boys, meanwhile, are frequently left outside these conversations. They are expected to learn about gender indirectly, from their peers, families, popular culture and the world around them. In fact, it is considered rather unimportant for boys to know about gender at all.
But if gender shapes the lives of both boys and girls, why is gender education so often treated as something girls need to receive?
The need for equality education
India has one of the world’s largest adolescent populations, with around 253 million people between the ages of 10 and 19. As per UNICEF, adolescence is a particularly important period because this is when gender norms begin to consolidate and attitudes about equality are formed. This makes schools an important site not merely for teaching students about their changing bodies, but for questioning the social expectations that begin to accompany those changes.
It is usually girls who have to bear the inequalities of these social expectations. UNICEF notes that while boys tend to experience greater freedom during adolescence, girls face greater restrictions on mobility and decisions relating to education, work, marriage and social relationships. Gender education thus needs to be egalitarian in the way it is imparted to students.
There is growing evidence that engaging boys and girls together can shift these attitudes. In Maharashtra, a UNICEF-supported Gender Transformative School Programme reached 246,960 girls and 257,606 boys across 950 schools. An assessment involving more than 18,000 students found improvements in gender-equitable attitudes around games, professions and household responsibilities, alongside less gendered ideas about traits such as fearlessness, sensitivity and emotional expression. The significance of this is that gender equality was not framed simply as a lesson for girls about their rights; boys were also asked to examine the expectations placed upon them.
The classroom, then, should not be divided into lessons girls need and activities boys can get back to. A conversation about menstruation can also be a conversation about stigma. A lesson on bodily changes can include bodily autonomy. A discussion about harassment can include consent, peer pressure and masculinity. And a conversation about women’s unpaid labour can ask boys what they understand by care and what role they expect to play in it.
The need to teach boys
The absence of formal gender education does not mean boys are growing up without ideas about gender. They are learning them everywhere—from films, songs, social media, and through informal conversations in their peer groups, families, etc. A boy may learn that crying makes him weak, that aggression earns approval, that domestic work belongs to women, that sexual experience enhances his status, or that being rejected by a girl is an insult to his masculinity. None of these lessons necessarily comes from a textbook. They emerge through jokes in school corridors, conversations among friends, films, advertisements, pornography, social media and the behaviour of adults around them.
There is another dimension to this conversation. Gender education should not approach boys only as potential perpetrators of harm. It should also ask what rigid masculinity does to boys themselves. If boys are repeatedly told that they must be strong, competitive and emotionally controlled, vulnerability becomes difficult. If care work is presented as feminine, boys may grow up seeing caregiving as an obligation that belongs to someone else.
If sexual confidence is treated as proof of masculinity, boys may have little space to talk honestly about uncertainty, rejection or intimacy. UNICEF research reveals that harmful gender norms can restrict boys, including through expectations around masculinity and risk-taking. This is why gender education should not be framed as a lesson in how boys ought to behave around girls. It should instead give boys permission to question the narrow version of masculinity they have inherited.
From awareness to practice
The solution is not another one-off gender sensitisation lecture. Organisations working with adolescents show that gender education is more effective when it is continuous, participatory and extended beyond the classroom. Schools must make gender education a recurring part of the curriculum, rather than an annual workshop.
Smile Foundation’s Swabhiman programme offers an interesting model because its approach to women’s empowerment has never been limited to working with women alone. The programme uses a “4S Model”: health-seeking behaviour, education, male involvement in women’s empowerment, and creating community change agents. Its interventions include work with adolescent girls and women on menstrual hygiene, sexual and reproductive health, nutrition and life skills, while also engaging men and boys in conversations around these issues.
Schools can take a similar approach. A session on menstruation should not automatically mean sending boys outside; boys can be taught what menstruation is and why it should not become a source of shame or ridicule. Boys should also be taught to unpaid care work and then share classroom responsibilities. They can learn about consent alongside discussions about friendship, rejection and relationships. They too should be asked to examine gender stereotypes in films and advertisements and create their own alternatives. Teachers, meanwhile, need training to recognise their own biases and ensure that boys and girls receive equal opportunities to speak, lead, play and participate.
Parents also have to be part of the process. A school cannot teach boys that care work belongs equally to everyone if they return home to a household where only women cook, clean and care for children. The most tangible change, then, may be deceptively simple: keep the girls’ session, but bring the boys into it too. Let both learn about bodies, consent, emotions, relationships and gender expectations. Then make those conversations part of everyday school life, not something that happens once while one half of the class is sent out to play.
FAQs
1. Why is gender education important for boys? Boys are also shaped by gender norms and expectations. Gender education can help them question stereotypes around masculinity, emotional expression, relationships, care work and behaviour while developing more equitable attitudes.
2. Should boys be included in conversations about menstruation and puberty? Yes. Age-appropriate education about menstruation and puberty can help reduce stigma, misinformation and teasing. Keeping boys outside these conversations can reinforce the idea that these are issues they do not need to understand.
3. What should boys learn through gender education? Gender education can cover topics such as equality, consent, bodily autonomy, emotions, relationships, respectful behaviour, menstruation, unpaid care work, stereotypes and the expectations associated with masculinity.
4. How can schools teach boys about gender equality? Schools can integrate gender education into regular learning rather than relying on one-off workshops. Discussions, group activities, role-playing, media analysis and opportunities to question everyday stereotypes can make the learning more participatory.
5. How do gender stereotypes affect boys? Rigid expectations can tell boys that they must be strong, competitive, emotionally controlled or willing to take risks. These expectations can make it harder for boys to express vulnerability, ask for help, manage rejection or see caregiving as part of their responsibilities.
6. What role can parents play in gender education? Parents reinforce or challenge gender norms through everyday behaviour. Sharing household responsibilities, encouraging boys to express emotions and treating care work as everyone’s responsibility can reinforce the lessons children receive at school.
7. How does Smile Foundation approach gender equality? Smile Foundation’s Swabhiman programme takes a broader approach to women’s empowerment through its 4S Model, which includes health-seeking behaviour, education, male involvement in women’s empowerment and creating community change agents. Its work with men and boys alongside women and adolescent girls reflects the idea that lasting gender equality requires wider community participation.
Disaster Preparedness should begin in the classroom: Disaster risk education should be integrated into the curriculum rather than treated as an occasional activity.
Teachers need practical training: Teachers should know how to manage evacuation, first aid, communication and children’s emotional needs during emergencies.
Children can become preparedness leaders: Older students can take responsibility through disaster-awareness clubs, peer education and leadership activities.
Schools can strengthen entire communities: Preparedness can extend beyond students to parents and surrounding communities, multiplying the school’s impact.
Resilience includes emotional recovery: Psychosocial support and continuity of education are essential parts of helping children recover after a disaster.
It’s a normal school day. A teacher is midway through a maths lesson when the ground begins to shake, or someone smells smoke down the corridor. In that moment, what happens next depends entirely on whether the teacher and the students were prepared for what was happening. Was there a plan? Did anyone rehearse it? Did the children know where to go?
India cannot afford to leave this to chance. Twenty-seven of its 29 states and 7 union territories sit in the path of natural hazards, and disasters have displaced over half a million people internally in recent years. Globally, the UN estimates that more than a billion children have had their education disrupted by disasters since the turn of the century, with tens of thousands of schools damaged or destroyed along the way. This data describes the everyday risk that Indian classrooms live with, often without quite realising it.
The argument here is simple: disaster preparedness begins with a curriculum, a trained teacher, and a school that treats readiness as routine.
Schools Are the Infrastructure We Keep Overlooking
Ask most people what keeps a community safe during a disaster, and they’ll mention the fire brigade, the police, perhaps the local municipal office. Few think of the school down the road. Yet schools are already doing half the job community resilience requires. Schools gather people daily, they employ adults trained to manage and teach groups, and they hold the trust of parents in a way few institutions can match.
Research bears this out. A recent systematic review of school-based disaster management found that schools can meaningfully contribute to every stage of the disaster cycle: prevention, disaster preparedness, response and recovery, not merely the one annual fire drill most of us remember from our own schooldays. And yet, the same review found that schools remain chronically underused in this role, treated as sites to be protected rather than institutions capable of protecting others.
That’s a wasted opportunity, and in a country as disaster-prone as India, an expensive one.
The Gap Between What’s Promised and What’s Practised
In most schools, drills happen once a year, often as a formality rather than a genuine test of readiness. There’s no real framework for tracking which students have been affected by a crisis, no clear protocol for keeping their education going once the immediate danger has passed, and even less guidance for events that don’t fit the standard “natural disaster” mould, such as communal violence or forced displacement, for instance, which uproot families just as brutally as any flood.
Part of the problem is structural. Much of the global evidence base on school disaster preparedness management comes from wealthier countries, leaving a gap in models suited to India’s scale and diversity. Add to that the usual constraints of tight budgets, patchy communication systems, and an absence of binding regulation, and it becomes clear why preparedness so often stays on paper.
What Genuine Disaster Preparedness Actually Looks Like
B. Kenit, a student in the third grade, living in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, attended a tsunami evacuation drill held in his school. It was part of a UNDP-Government of Japan ‘Tsunami Project’ aimed at strengthening school disaster preparedness to tsunamis in several countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
He says,
“I realized that if I did nothing, I would continue to be frightened by the threat of a tsunami. I stood up to protect my parents, school friends, neighbours…everyone I care about.”
Disaster preparedness education needs to sit inside the regular curriculum, not bolted on as an occasional assembly topic. Children should understand the specific risks their region faces and know, in practical terms, how to respond.
Skills like basic first aid, safe evacuation (for fire, flood or earthquake), and how to spot an early warning sign are the abilities that turn panic into action. Further, identifying safe spots and trusted adults, recognising alarms and signals, leadership roles for bigger students, and crowd management, are all skills that are a must in the curriculum.
Schools should function as a multiplier, not an island. When a school trains its students, it can just as easily extend that training to parents and the surrounding neighbourhood, turning one institution’s preparedness into a community’s. After Assam’s floods, the state disaster authority worked with UNICEF to distribute learning kits designed to keep children’s education going even mid-crisis, which is a small but telling example of what’s possible when readiness is built in beforehand rather than improvised afterwards.
Develop an age-appropriate disaster curriculum for each grade level to help children understand and respond to the risks they face. This can include engaging learning materials and activities, such as cartoons, comics, competitions, and film screenings, all aimed at educating children about disaster risks.
Train the senior children to lead and take responsibility. They can help when a disaster strikes, and on normal school days they should be given opportunities to set up disaster awareness and reduction clubs or committees in schools. Such clubs can organise events and workshops in partnership with organisations that work on disaster management, to help create awareness on disaster risk management.
Finally, emotional preparedness deserves as much attention as physical safety. Counselling and psychosocial support determine whether a child recovers or carries that trauma silently for years.
The Policy India Actually Needs
Smile’s disaster response team distributing relief material to affected families in Assam
None of this scales without institutional backing. Disaster preparedness education needs a formal place in national and state curricula, mandated through the Ministry of Education rather than left to the goodwill of individual principals. Funding has to be sustained, not a one-off grant after the last disaster makes headlines, particularly for schools in India’s most exposed and least-resourced regions.
Equally, no single framework will fit a country this vast. What works in flood-prone Assam won’t necessarily suit earthquake-prone Uttarakhand or cyclone-battered Odisha. The smarter approach is a national minimum standard, flexible enough to be shaped by local risk and local knowledge, with schools, families, NGOs and district authorities all pulling in the same direction instead of working in isolation.
Picture that normal school day again. The ground shakes, or the smoke drifts down the hallway, but this time, the teacher is following a plan the whole school trusts. The children know exactly what to do, because they’ve done it before as something rehearsed and understood.
Sources:
PDF- Role of schools in disaster risk management: A systematic review, BMC Emergency Medicine, Ameneh Marzban, Mohsen Dowlati, Shandiz Moslehi and Milad Ahmadi Marzaleh
Skills alone are not enough: Women need market access to customers and reliable markets to turn skills into viable businesses.
Finance must connect to demand: Loans and capital become meaningful when entrepreneurs have opportunities to sell and grow.
Market barriers are interconnected: Mobility, unpaid care work, technology, information and social norms can all restrict women’s access to buyers.
Digital markets offer opportunities, but need support: Smartphones and e-commerce do not automatically translate into successful businesses.
Success should be measured by outcomes: Sustainable sales, growing incomes, repeat customers and business expansion matter more than simply counting training participants.
For years, the conversation around women’s entrepreneurship in India has focused on a familiar set of solutions limited to the thoughts of providing women with skills, improving access to credit, offering financial literacy and encouraging them to start businesses. While all of these matter, there is another question that often receives less attention — Once a woman starts producing something and begins providing services, who will buy it?
A woman may have the skills to make clothes, process food, provide a service or run a small enterprise. She may even receive a loan to buy equipment and raw materials. But without customers, distribution networks and access to larger markets, that business can remain trapped at the level of a small supplementary income.
This is why market access to women entrepreneurs matters the most. Entrepreneurship is not simply about helping women start businesses, but it is about creating the conditions in which those businesses can survive, generate income and sustain.
Market Access to India’s Large Base of Women Entrepreneurs
Women are already an important part of India’s small-business economy. The Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE) 2023–24 found that women headed 26.2% of proprietary establishments in India’s unincorporated non-agricultural sector, up from 22.9% in 2022–23. The share was particularly high in manufacturing, where women headed 58.4% of proprietary establishments.
These numbers are significant because they challenge the idea that women need to be persuaded to enter entrepreneurship. Many are already doing so, often from homes or very small establishments and with limited resources.
Further, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) estimates that India has around 15 million women-owned MSMEs, more than 70% of which are in the manufacturing sector. Its research also found that around 90% of these women entrepreneurs had not accessed finance from formal financial institutions.
The picture that emerges is therefore more complicated than simply saying women lack entrepreneurial ambition. Women are running businesses, but many remain small, informal and financially constrained.
Can a Loan alone Provide Market Access?
Access to finance is key to having their business grow and expand. A tailor may need a sewing machine, a food entrepreneur may need equipment and packaging, while a small retailer needs working capital. But the capital becomes useful only when there is sufficient demand for what a business produces. This is where market access becomes critical.
A woman selling products only within her neighbourhood is working within a very limited customer base. Reaching a larger market may require connections to wholesalers, organised retail, institutional buyers, online marketplaces or government procurement systems. It may also require knowledge of packaging, branding, pricing, logistics and digital payments.
The IFC’s research on women-owned enterprises in India has specifically examined strategies for improving women’s access to markets. The research highlights the role of corporate sourcing from women-owned businesses and the need to connect women entrepreneurs to larger buyers. This changes the way we think about entrepreneurship programmes. If a woman receives training to make a product but has nowhere reliable to sell it, the intervention has solved only half the problem.
The Barriers are Not only Financial
Market access is rarely an isolated challenge. It is closely connected to mobility, time, technology, information and social norms.
Women who run home-based businesses may have limited opportunities to travel to markets or meet potential buyers. Unpaid care work can reduce the time available for networking, training and business development. Limited access to smartphones, digital platforms and financial services can further restrict their ability to find customers beyond their immediate surroundings.
Further, multiple research around this have identified several interconnected barriers, including lack of collateral, time poverty and inadequate ecosystem support, alongside constraints within financial institutions. This matters because a business does not operate in isolation. A woman entrepreneur may be perfectly capable of producing a good or providing a service, but still struggle to scale because the systems around her do not make it easy to access customers, finance, information or business networks.
Moving beyond the Neighbourhood Market
For many women entrepreneurs, the local market is an important starting point. It provides an accessible customer base and allows them to test products, build confidence and establish relationships. But the local market should not become the ceiling.
Government initiatives have increasingly tried to create pathways from local production to larger markets. The Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises’ MSME Sambandh dashboard records public procurement from women-owned micro and small enterprises by Central Public Sector Enterprises. Procurement from women-owned MSEs rose from INR 2,319 crore in 2022–23 to INR 6,018 crore in 2024–25, while the number of women-owned MSEs benefiting increased from 16,792 to 35,279.
Public procurement can be particularly significant because it provides something many small businesses struggle to obtain — a predictable buyer at a scale beyond individual consumers. Similarly, programmes supporting self-help groups and women-led collectives can help entrepreneurs pool resources, reach larger buyers and reduce some of the costs associated with operating individually.
What Market Access Looks like on the Ground?
Civil society organisations can help bridge this gap because they often work closely with communities where women are beginning their entrepreneurial journeys.
Smile Foundation is one such example, where our Swabhiman programme was initiated to combine entrepreneurship development with financial and digital literacy, business planning, mentorship and market access. Its approach recognises that starting a business is only the beginning.
Swabhiman has reached more than 1.90 lakh women and girls through integrated health, nutrition and livelihood interventions. During 2025, 5,048 women were trained in entrepreneurship and financial literacy, with 116 micro-enterprises established, according to the organisation’s own reporting.
The programme’s focus on market access, such as branding, marketing, e-commerce opportunities, market linkages and exposure to potential customers, is particularly relevant to the wider entrepreneurship debate, besides supporting women in navigating financial and government support systems.
This is an important shift from the conventional idea of vocational training. Teaching a woman how to make something is useful; helping her understand how to price it, find customers, market it, manage finances and build repeat business is what can turn that skill into an enterprise.
Are Digital Markets the Ultimate Solution?
It is true that digital commerce has created new possibilities for small businesses. A woman who once depended entirely on customers in her immediate neighbourhood can potentially reach buyers across a city or even the country through social media, e-commerce platforms and digital payments. However, simply putting women-led businesses online does not automatically make markets accessible.
Digital entrepreneurship requires more than a smartphone. Women may need support with product photography, online catalogues, digital payments, packaging, customer service, logistics and online marketing. They also need time to manage these activities.
Smile Foundation’s work on digital pathways for women entrepreneurs illustrates this broader approach. Its Swabhiman programme combines entrepreneurship and skill development with financial literacy and market-linkage support, including connections to digital buyers. This matters because technology works best when women have the knowledge, confidence and support to use it as a business tool.
Real Measure of Success Comes after Training
While there are ample training programmes organised for women entrepreneurs, they cannot tell us whether an enterprise has become sustainable.
Even if women are trained in abundance, a more meaningful assessment would ask:Are women making regular sales? Are their incomes increasing? Are they reaching new customers? Can they negotiate better prices? Are they reinvesting in their businesses? Are they able to hire other workers? These questions shift attention from activities to outcomes.
A training programme can count the number of participants who complete a course. A financial programme can count the number of loans disbursed. But neither necessarily tells us whether women have gained lasting economic independence. Market access makes that difference visible.
When women can sell consistently, generate revenue and build relationships with buyers, other parts of the entrepreneurship ecosystem become more meaningful. Credit can be repaid and reinvested. Skills can be put to use. Digital tools can become productive assets rather than simply technologies women have been trained to use.
From Creating Entrepreneurs to Building Viable Enterprisesthrough Market Access
The central challenge, then, is not simply getting more women to become entrepreneurs. India already has millions of women running businesses, many of them with limited capital and little formal support. But the challenge is to create an enabling environment in which those businesses can grow.
That means combining skills with finance, finance with business support, and business support with reliable markets. It means connecting women to procurement systems, value chains, digital platforms, networks and buyers.
For organisations working on women’s economic empowerment, this suggests a broader understanding of what entrepreneurship support should look like. The goal should not end with a woman receiving training or starting a micro-enterprise. It should extend to the point where she has the confidence, resources, customers and networks to sustain it.
FAQs
1. Why is market access important for women entrepreneurs? Market access connects women entrepreneurs with customers, buyers and distribution networks, allowing them to generate regular sales and grow their businesses rather than remaining dependent on small local markets.
2. Is providing skills training enough to support women’s entrepreneurship? No. Skills training is important, but women also need access to finance, business support, customers, digital tools, networks and markets to turn those skills into sustainable enterprises.
3. What are the biggest barriers to market access for women entrepreneurs? Barriers can include limited mobility, unpaid care responsibilities, lack of business networks, restricted access to technology and information, inadequate finance and limited connections to larger buyers.
4. Can digital platforms help women entrepreneurs reach larger markets? Yes, digital platforms can expand a woman’s customer base beyond her immediate community. However, effective digital entrepreneurship also requires support with marketing, product presentation, payments, packaging, logistics and customer management.
5. How can government procurement support women-owned businesses? Government procurement can provide women-owned enterprises with access to larger and more predictable buyers. The blog notes that procurement from women-owned micro and small enterprises through Central Public Sector Enterprises has increased substantially in recent years.
6. How does Smile Foundation support women entrepreneurs? Through its Swabhiman programme, Smile Foundation combines entrepreneurship development with financial and digital literacy, business planning, mentorship and market-access support. Its work includes branding, marketing, e-commerce opportunities and market linkages.
7. How should the success of women’s entrepreneurship programmes be measured? Beyond counting how many women were trained, programmes should examine whether women are generating regular sales, increasing their incomes, reaching new customers, negotiating better prices, reinvesting in their businesses and creating employment.
A meltdown is not always misbehaviour: Difficult behaviour can be a way of communicating children’s emotional needs.
Look beyond the outburst: Anxiety, sensory overload, ADHD, learning difficulties, hunger and tiredness can all influence behaviour.
Punishment can deepen the problem: Shaming or harsh discipline may increase distress without addressing its underlying cause.
Curiosity can change the response: Naming emotions, offering limited choices and observing behavioural patterns can help children regulate themselves.
Know when to seek help: Persistent or intense outbursts that interfere with home, school or relationships may warrant support from a teacher, therapist or other professional.
There’s a parenting moment that every parent has experienced. Your child is screaming, fussing or crying over something that seems trivial. It could be a broken biscuit, the wrong cup or a sock that feels wrong. Every instinct in you says: this is a discipline problem. But have you ever wondered if that could be a meltdown or a tantrum?
You ask yourself: What am I supposed to do right now? The way you respond to your children is crucial. Even with the best of intentions, a poorly chosen reaction can create unnecessary challenges for them. It’s important to take a moment to breathe and really assess what’s going on in each situation. Let’s take the time to understand their feelings and perspectives before we react.
That’s because it could not necessarily be a discipline problem in the first place. It could be a child telling you, in the only language available to them, that something was too much.
Why We Read Emotion as Misbehaviour
We’re wired to see behaviour and jump straight to intention. A child who refuses to get dressed is being stubborn. A child who lashes out is being aggressive. A child who ignores an instruction is being disrespectful. It’s a tidy explanation, and it lets adults respond quickly because you are already juggling a lot.
The trouble is, tidy explanations are often wrong. School-age children are still building the machinery for managing frustration, disappointment and conflict, skills most adults take for granted because we built them so long ago we’ve forgotten the effort involved. A child mid-meltdown isn’t choosing chaos over cooperation. More often, they’ve simply run out of the internal resources needed to cope, and what spills out looks like defiance because we don’t yet have a better word for it.
What’s Really Going on Underneath: Children’s Emotional Needs
Peel an outburst, and you’ll usually find something quieter and more specific waiting underneath it.
Sometimes it’s anxiety. A child who feels cornered by a demand they can’t meet lashes out because fleeing isn’t an option and freezing doesn’t feel safe either. Sometimes it’s sensory overload: a classroom that’s too loud, a jumper that itches unbearably, a transition that arrived without warning. Sometimes it’s an undiagnosed learning difficulty, and ripping up the maths worksheet is considerably less painful than admitting you can’t do it. ADHD can turn ordinary requests, such as stop the game, come to dinner, into flashpoints, not from wilfulness but from a genuine struggle to shift gears. And sometimes the explanation is simpler still: the child is hungry, overtired, or thrown by a change in routine that adults barely registered.
The Cost of Getting It Wrong
Here’s the part that should give every parent and teacher pause: mislabelling emotional distress as bad behaviour fails to fix the problem, and it may make things worse.
Children start believing the verdict. Get punished for something you couldn’t control often enough, and you stop thinking “I struggled today” and start thinking “I’m bad.” That belief follows a child into the classroom, into friendships, into how much they think they’re capable of.
Shame shuts down learning. A child who’s frightened or humiliated isn’t absorbing a lesson about right and wrong. They’re absorbing a lesson about which adults are safe to fall apart in front of. Unfortunately, the answer, increasingly, is none of them.
Harsh discipline tends to backfire. Shouting, shaming, physical punishment might halt a behaviour in the moment, but they rarely touch what caused it. More often, they escalate it. You are mistaken because a child in fight-or-flight mode isn’t building self-regulation. They’re just getting better at fighting or fleeing.
The relationship takes the hit. Every time distress is met with punishment rather than curiosity, a small amount of trust leaks out of the parent-child bond. Children stop bringing their hard moments to the adults who are supposed to help with them.
It becomes self-fulfilling. Distress gets treated as defiance, the response deepens the distress, the behaviour intensifies, and everyone involved walks away more convinced than before that the child is simply “difficult.”
What helps insteadfor taking care of children’s emotional needs
Make sure to name the feeling before you name the rule.“You’re really frustrated this isn’t working” lands very differently from “stop that right now.” It gives a child something to hold onto besides panic, and it tells them you’ve noticed what’s happening for them, not just what they’re doing wrong.
Stay calm on purpose. Your nervous system talks to theirs faster than your words do. A steady voice in a chaotic moment does more to de-escalate than a stern one ever will.
Try to offer a choice instead of an order. Asking “Do you want to put your shoes on yourself, or shall I help?”, keeps the boundary intact while handing back a sliver of control, which is often exactly what a dysregulated child is fighting for.
Watch for patterns like: does it happen at the same time of day? Around the same task? In the same room? Patterns point straight at causes. It could be tiredness, a sensory trigger, a piece of homework they’re quietly dreading. Observing a single meltdown will never help achieve anything fruitful.
A short break to cool down is fine; being sent away and forgotten about isn’t. Come back, acknowledge what happened, and reassure them the relationship is still solid. This is where most of the actual learning happens. Nothing will be achieved in the heat of the moment.
You should know when to bring someone else in, and there is no harm in admitting that you are unable to deal with something. If the intensity or frequency is affecting daily life at home or school, that’s not a parenting failure; it’s a reasonable moment to speak to a teacher, therapist, or another professional who can help work out what’s underneath it.
The Bigger Picture
Children aren’t giving adults a hard time; in fact, they’re having one. The way adults respond changes the entire posture of a response. A time-out, a raised voice, a firm word is not the cure every time. Avoid correction and focus on curiosity, and move from punishment to partnership. Get that right, and you’re not just managing a moment. You’re teaching a child, gradually and imperfectly, that big feelings are survivable, and that the people around them can be trusted to help rather than judge.
FAQsfor understanding children’s emotional needs
1. What is the difference between a tantrum and a meltdown? A tantrum is generally goal-oriented behaviour in which a child is trying to influence an outcome, while a meltdown can occur when a child becomes overwhelmed and temporarily loses the ability to regulate their emotions or behaviour. The two can sometimes look similar, so context and patterns matter.
2. Why does my child have meltdowns over seemingly small things? The trigger may seem small to an adult but feel overwhelming to a child. Tiredness, hunger, anxiety, sensory sensitivities, changes in routine, frustration or difficulty with a task can all contribute to an intense reaction.
3. Should I punish my child for having a meltdown? Punishment is unlikely to address the underlying reason for a meltdown. A calmer approach is to ensure everyone is safe, help the child regulate and discuss what happened once they are calm, while still maintaining appropriate boundaries around harmful behaviour.
4. Can ADHD cause meltdowns in children? Children with ADHD may have difficulty regulating emotions, managing impulses and transitioning between activities. These challenges can sometimes contribute to intense emotional reactions, although a meltdown by itself does not indicate ADHD.
5. How should parents respond when a child is having a meltdown? Stay as calm as possible, reduce unnecessary stimulation, acknowledge the child’s feelings and avoid lengthy explanations during the peak of the episode. Once the child has calmed down, talk about what happened and explore what might help next time.
6. When should parents seek professional help for frequent meltdowns? Consider seeking professional guidance when outbursts are frequent, unusually intense, becoming more difficult to manage, or interfering with a child’s school life, relationships, sleep or everyday activities. A qualified professional can help identify possible underlying causes.
7. How can parents prevent future meltdowns? Look for patterns in when and where they occur. Consistent routines, adequate sleep and meals, advance warnings before transitions, clear expectations and opportunities for children to make age-appropriate choices can all help reduce situations that lead to emotional overload.
Getting women into jobs is only half the challenge: Retention and continuity matter just as much as workforce entry for women’s employment.
Marriage can be a major turning point: Women’s labour force participation can decline after marriage, even before children enter the picture.
Unpaid care work affects employment: Women continue to carry a disproportionate share of domestic and caregiving responsibilities.
Skills alone cannot guarantee economic independence: Women also need safe workplaces, flexibility, mentorship, financial literacy, childcare and opportunities to access or return to work.
A career break should not become a permanent exit: Employers and systems need stronger pathways for women to re-enter employment after periods of caregiving or other life transitions.
Getting women into the workforce is only one part of the challenge within the workforce and labour participation. The harder question is what pushes them and enables them to stay.
India has seen a substantial rise in women’s participation in economic activity in recent years. According to the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2023–24, the female labour force participation rate for women aged 15 and above rose from 23.3% in 2017–18 to 41.7% in 2023–24. While the increase is encouraging, participation alone does not tell us whether women are entering stable, decent and sustainable employment.
For many women, the problem is not finding the work alone but remaining in it when life keeps changing for them.
Marriage, childbirth, care responsibilities, unsafe transport, inflexible workplaces, poor working conditions and social expectations can all push women out of employment. A woman may enter the workforce after years of education or skills training, only to discover that the structures around her have not changed enough to allow her to remain.
The employment gap does not end with a job
South Asia has one of the world’s lowest rates of female labour force participation. The World Bank’s South Asia Development Update found that only 32% of working-age women in South Asia were in the labour force in 2023, compared with 77% of men. Importantly, the report found that women’s participation falls by around 12 percentage points after marriage, even before they have children.
This distinction matters. Women’s absence from the workforce is often discussed as though it begins with motherhood. But marriage itself can be a turning point.
Similarly, research discussed by the World Bank in 2026 finds that in Bangladesh, India, Maldives and Nepal, marriage alone reduces women’s labour force participation by around 12 percentage points. In India, the analysis suggests that much of the family-formation penalty comes from marriage rather than motherhood.
This tells us that women’s employment is dictated not only by whether they have children, but by what happens to their social roles and expectations when they marry.
The second shift that women carry home
Even when women remain employed, they often add paid work to responsibilities they continue to carry at home.
The Time Use Survey 2024 found that women aged 15–59 who participated in unpaid domestic services spent about 305 minutes a day on these activities. Women also continued to shoulder a disproportionate share of unpaid caregiving: 41% of women in this age group participated in caregiving for household members, compared with 21.4% of men. Among those who participated, women spent about 140 minutes a day on caregiving, compared with 74 minutes for men.
These figures help explain why staying in employment can become difficult even when women want to work. A job does not replace unpaid work at home, and in many households, it is just added to it.
This creates what can be described as a second shift — the paid working day followed by domestic and caregiving responsibilities that remain largely invisible in economic statistics. When working hours are rigid, commuting is long, or childcare is unavailable, the cumulative burden can make employment difficult to sustain.
Childcare matters, but the problem is bigger than childcare
Affordable and accessible childcare is an important part of keeping women in work. The World Bank has highlighted how disproportionately women carry childcare and eldercare responsibilities, making the care economy an important factor in women’s labour force participation.
But childcare alone cannot explain women’s employment patterns in India.
If marriage itself changes women’s mobility, household responsibilities and freedom to make employment decisions, then a creche at the workplace addresses only one part of the problem.
Women also need workplaces that recognise that workers have lives outside work. Flexible working arrangements, predictable schedules, safe transportation, maternity protections and opportunities to return after a career interruption can all influence whether employment remains viable over the long term.
The question therefore needs to move from “How do we get women into jobs?” to “What would make it possible for women to remain in them?”
The workplace can become another barrier
For women who do enter employment, the quality and location of the job matter.
A job that requires a long commute may become impractical if a woman is also responsible for children or elderly relatives. Unsafe public transport can make certain shifts inaccessible. Lack of toilets, inadequate maternity support and inflexible working hours can create barriers that have little to do with a woman’s skills or willingness to work.
The result is that women can become concentrated in the kinds of jobs that are considered compatible with domestic responsibilities rather than the jobs that necessarily offer better wages, career progression or security.
Flexibility, in this context, can be valuable but flexibility should not become another word for precariousness. If women are pushed into informal, poorly paid or unstable work because formal employment cannot accommodate their lives, then higher participation figures may not necessarily translate into greater economic security.
Skills alone cannot keep women working
Skill development is often presented as the obvious answer to women’s economic exclusion. While skills training matters, improves employability, opens new occupational possibilities and helps women establish their own enterprises, training does not change the conditions under which women have to use those skills.
Smile Foundation’s work through our Swabhiman programme illustrates a more integrated approach. The programme, which began in 2005, combines women’s health, nutrition, livelihoods and entrepreneurship rather than treating economic empowerment as a standalone issue.
Our recent programme reporting records 1.90 lakh+ women and girls reached, with 5,048 women trained in entrepreneurship and financial literacy and 116 micro-enterprises established in 2024–25.
What is particularly relevant to women’s ability to sustain livelihoods is the programme’s emphasis on more than vocational skills. Swabhiman includes entrepreneurship development, financial and digital literacy, business development, market access and mentorship. Our programme explicitly recognises that women need support not just to start an income-generating activity, but to manage and sustain it.
That broader approach is important because economic participation does not happen in isolation from health, family responsibilities or access to resources.
A career break should not become an exit
For many women, leaving work may not be intended as a permanent decision. A woman may step away during pregnancy, to care for a young child, because of a family illness or because relocation makes her existing job impossible.
A career break can mean lost income, lost experience, reduced professional networks and fewer opportunities for advancement. The longer the interruption, the harder it can become to re-enter at the same level.
This is particularly significant because workplaces often reward continuous employment. A career path designed around uninterrupted availability may work well for someone without substantial care responsibilities, but it can penalise people whose lives involve periods of care.
Creating meaningful pathways back into employment therefore matters as much as preventing women from leaving in the first place.
Making workplaces sustainable for women’s employment
The conversation about women’s employment often begins with access to education, skills, jobs and entrepreneurship opportunities. Hence, the next stage is all about continuity.
Women need the opportunity to enter work, but they also need the conditions to remain economically active through marriage, motherhood, caregiving and other transitions in life.
This is why women’s economic empowerment cannot be reduced to employment numbers. It is also about whether women have control over their income, whether their work is valued, whether they can make choices about their time and whether a temporary interruption has to become a permanent withdrawal from economic life.
The challenge is therefore not simply to create more jobs for women but to build an economy in which women do not have to choose between earning and caring, between professional continuity and family responsibilities, or between flexibility and decent work.
While women are already entering the workforce in greater numbers, the next big question remains as to whether our workplaces, households and public systems are prepared to let them stay.
FAQs
1. Why is retaining women in the workforce important? Increasing women’s employment is important, but sustained employment is equally critical. Staying in work allows women to build experience, income, professional networks and greater economic independence over time.
2. Why do many women leave the workforce after marriage? Marriage can bring changes in household responsibilities, mobility, decision-making and expectations around women’s roles. Research cited in the blog suggests that women’s labour force participation can decline after marriage, even before motherhood becomes a factor.
3. How does unpaid care work affect women’s employment? Women continue to undertake a disproportionate share of unpaid domestic and caregiving work. When paid employment is added to these responsibilities, the combined time burden can make regular employment difficult to sustain.
4. Is childcare enough to keep women in the workforce? Childcare is an important part of the solution, but it is not the only factor. Women also need safe transport, flexible and predictable working arrangements, maternity protections, supportive workplaces and opportunities to return after career interruptions.
5. Can skill development alone improve women’s economic empowerment? Skills can improve employability and open new economic opportunities, but training alone cannot remove barriers such as unpaid care work, mobility constraints, lack of market access or inflexible workplaces. A broader ecosystem of support is needed.
6. How can employers support women returning after a career break? Employers can create structured return-to-work pathways, flexible arrangements, opportunities to refresh skills, mentorship and fair consideration of candidates whose careers include periods of caregiving or other legitimate interruptions.
7. How does Smile Foundation support women’s economic empowerment? Through its Swabhiman programme, Smile Foundation takes an integrated approach combining women’s health, nutrition, livelihoods and entrepreneurship. The programme includes entrepreneurship development, financial and digital literacy, business development, market access and mentorship, recognising that sustainable economic empowerment requires more than vocational training alone.
Career break for women disproportionately affect them, particularly because of caregiving responsibilities.
Returning to work does not always mean returning to the same career trajectory, with women often facing slower progression after a break.
Reskilling is important, but not enough; women also need mentorship, networks, flexibility and financial support.
Employers have a role to play in making career re-entry easier through return-to-work programmes and inclusive workplace policies.
Women’s economic empowerment goes beyond employment, requiring access to skills, entrepreneurship, financial literacy and sustainable livelihood opportunities.
For many women, a career does not move in a straight line.
There may be years of study, a first job, a promotion or two, and then a pause. Sometimes it is for raising a child. Sometimes it is to care for an ageing parent, deal with a family emergency, recover from illness, relocate, pursue further education or simply step away from a workplace that has become unsustainable.
The break may last months. It may last several years. But increasingly, the evidence suggests that the real problem is not the break itself. It is what happens when a woman tries to return.
The latest Global Gender Gap Report 2026 from the World Economic Forum puts the issue starkly. Women are almost twice as likely as men to report having taken a career break. Full-time parenting is by far the most gender-skewed reason: 26.5% of women who report career breaks cite full-time parenting, compared with 6% of men. And the consequences can continue well after a woman returns to work. (World Economic Forum)
A career pause, in other words, can become a career penalty.
That needs to change.
The career break for women is not the problem
For generations, the ideal career has been imagined as a straight line: education, employment, promotion, leadership and retirement.
Real lives rarely work that way.
People change cities. Families grow. Parents age. Health changes. Industries disappear and new ones emerge. Workers take time out to study, care for others, recover, rethink their priorities or pursue something completely different.
The World Economic Forum itself notes that careers are becoming increasingly non-linear. The question, therefore, is not whether career break for women will exist. They will.
The more important question is whether workplaces are designed to accommodate them fairly.
For women, that question is particularly important because care responsibilities continue to fall disproportionately on them. The International Labour Organization describes care work, whether paid or unpaid, as fundamental to the functioning of economies and societies, while noting that it remains disproportionately carried out by women. (International Labour Organization)
When a woman leaves paid employment to provide that care, she has not stopped working. Yet the labour market can treat her as though she has stopped accumulating experience, ambition and value.
That is where the problem begins.
The numbers tell a different story about “having to start again”
The 2026 Global Gender Gap Report analysed LinkedIn data across 60 economies and found that women are almost twice as likely as men to report career breaks. The difference is particularly pronounced around full-time parenting.
But perhaps the more revealing statistic comes after the break.
Among senior individual contributors who had taken a full-time parenting break, 6.3% of women had moved to a higher level of seniority one year after returning, compared with 9.1% of men. Three years after returning, the figures were 7.2% for women and 10% for men.
LinkedIn’s analysis describes the difference another way: men in this group were 44% more likely than women to be promoted in their first year back after a full-time parenting break.
The same break. The same workplace. But not necessarily the same career consequences.
That should make us rethink how we talk about women returning to work.
The language of “getting back on track” subtly suggests that a woman has fallen behind and must catch up. But perhaps the better question is why the track was designed to leave her behind in the first place.
In India, the challenge is part of a larger employment gap
The issue of career break for women cannot be separated from India’s wider gender gap in economic participation.
The WEF’s 2026 report gives India a gender parity score of 64.5%. The country performs much better on educational attainment, where it has reached 96.6% parity, than on economic participation and opportunity, where the parity score is 41.2%. Labour-force participation parity stands at 44.1%.
That contrast matters.
It tells us that getting girls and women into education is essential, but education alone does not guarantee economic independence.
There has to be a bridge between learning and earning, and that bridge needs to remain open when life interrupts a career.
Earlier LinkedIn data on India also showed how strongly parenting breaks are gendered. In 2024, 38% of women in India with LinkedIn profiles listed a career break for parenting, compared with 9% of men. LinkedIn’s India analysis also found that the median career break was longer for women than men. (LinkedIn)
These figures do not mean every woman who takes a break wants to return to the same career or at the same pace. They do, however, make one thing clear: career interruption is a significant part of women’s working lives, and employment systems need to account for it.
A career break for women can also mean lost opportunity
The cost of a career break for women is not simply the months or years missing from a CV.
It can affect salary progression, promotions, professional networks, retirement savings and access to leadership opportunities. The longer-term consequences can accumulate quietly.
A woman may return to work at the same organisation but at a lower level. She may accept a lower salary because she feels she has limited options. She may move into a role below her previous experience because employers question whether her skills are still current.
Or she may decide that returning is simply too difficult.
This is where the idea of a “career setback” becomes important.
A career break should represent a period in a person’s life. It should not become a permanent judgement about their professional worth.
The return-to-work gap is also a skills gap
One of the easiest assumptions is that women returning after a break simply need to “update their skills”.
Sometimes they do.
Technology changes quickly. New software replaces old systems. AI is transforming occupations. Industries develop new ways of working.
But skills are only one part of the equation.
A woman returning after several years may also need:
access to current industry knowledge;
opportunities to rebuild professional networks;
confidence after time away from the workplace;
mentorship and sponsorship;
flexible working arrangements;
childcare or other care support;
an employer willing to assess her current capabilities rather than focus exclusively on the gap in her CV.
LinkedIn’s India discussions on return-to-work have similarly highlighted training, mentorship, upskilling and dedicated return-to-work programmes as ways employers can make re-entry less intimidating.
This is why skilling and reskilling should not be treated as one-time interventions.
For women whose careers are likely to be non-linear, learning needs to remain accessible throughout life.
This is also why women’s empowerment cannot begin and end with employment. Women need opportunities to build skills, strengthen financial confidence, access livelihoods and make decisions about their economic futures. Smile Foundation’s Swabhiman programme takes an integrated approach to women’s empowerment, combining health, nutrition, livelihood and entrepreneurship support for women and adolescent girls from underserved communities. Its economic empowerment interventions include entrepreneurship training, financial and digital literacy, business development support, market linkages and mentorship, helping women move from skills and aspiration towards sustainable livelihoods.
What employers can do differently
The responsibility for successful re-entry cannot sit entirely with the woman.
Employers can begin by treating career break for women as a normal part of modern working lives rather than an automatic signal of reduced commitment.
1. Stop treating the gap as the first thing to explain
A CV gap does not tell you what a person learned, managed or achieved during that period.
Recruitment should focus on skills, experience and suitability for the role rather than assuming that time away equals professional decline.
2. Create structured return-to-work programmes
A good returnship does more than offer a temporary job.
It can provide a period of structured re-entry, mentoring, skills refreshers, exposure to current tools and a realistic pathway into longer-term employment.
3. Make flexibility part of work design
Flexible and hybrid work should not be viewed as special treatment for women.
The ILO has repeatedly emphasised the importance of care systems and workplace arrangements that enable people with care responsibilities to participate in decent work. (International Labour Organization)
4. Keep women connected during career breaks, where they want that connection
A woman taking parental or caregiving leave should not have to disappear professionally.
Optional access to learning opportunities, professional updates, networks or organisational events can make returning less like entering an entirely unfamiliar world.
5. Measure what happens after women return
Getting women through the door is only the first step.
Organisations should ask:
Are women returning at the same level? Are they being promoted? Are they being paid fairly? Are they staying? Are they reaching leadership?
These questions matter because representation at entry level does not automatically translate into representation at the top.
The WEF’s latest data illustrates this wider problem: women’s representation falls from 46% at entry level to 23% at the C-suite across the economies covered by its LinkedIn analysis. (World Economic Forum)
And what can women do?
There is plenty that women can do to make a return easier: refresh skills, reconnect with professional networks, update a CV, seek mentors, explore flexible roles and identify industries where their experience remains valuable.
But we should be careful about turning this into another checklist for women to fix a structural problem.
A woman should not have to become exceptionally resilient simply to compensate for an inflexible workplace.
Support systems matter.
So do affordable childcare, accessible skilling opportunities, safe transport, digital access, flexible employment and employers willing to recognise experience that does not fit neatly into a continuous timeline.
This is where women’s empowerment has to be understood more broadly than employment alone.
Being economically empowered means having the ability to enter work, remain in work, leave when circumstances demand it, and return without being permanently penalised.
From education to economic independence
For organisations working on education, livelihoods and women’s empowerment, this creates an important opportunity.
Preparing women for employment cannot end with vocational training or a first job. Women also need access to lifelong learning, digital skills, financial knowledge and pathways back into the workforce when circumstances take them away from it.
The same principle applies much earlier.
A girl who receives a good education today should be able to imagine not only getting a job tomorrow, but building a career that can adapt to the different stages of her life.
That means helping girls develop skills that remain relevant in changing economies. It means ensuring young women can access technology and new forms of work. It means creating pathways into entrepreneurship as well as formal employment. And it means recognising that economic independence is strengthened when women have choices.
A career should be allowed to bend without breaking.
A different definition of career success
Perhaps it is time to retire the idea that a successful career is one that never pauses.
The future of work is already becoming more fluid. People are changing occupations, learning new skills and moving between different forms of employment. The WEF’s latest report argues that employment alone is no longer enough; the next frontier is access to productive, resilient and upwardly mobile careers.
Women should not have to choose between having a career and having a life.
A woman may leave work at 32 and return at 36. She may retrain at 40. She may start a business at 45. She may move from employment into social enterprise and back again.
None of these transitions should erase what came before.
The real measure of an inclusive economy is not whether everyone’s career looks the same. It is whether people can move through different stages of life without losing their opportunity to participate, earn, learn and lead.
A career break for women is a chapter, not a verdict.
And if we want genuine women’s empowerment, our workplaces, skilling systems and social institutions must be built to understand the difference.
FAQs
1. Why do women take career breaks?
Women take career breaks for many reasons, including childcare, caring for family members, health, relocation, further education and personal circumstances. Caregiving, particularly full-time parenting, remains a disproportionately common reason for women to leave paid employment.
2. Does taking a career break affect women’s career progression?
It can. Women may face slower promotions, reduced earning potential, loss of professional networks and difficulty returning at the same level of seniority after a career break.
3. How can women prepare to return to work after a career break?
Refreshing professional and digital skills, rebuilding networks, seeking mentorship and exploring return-to-work or reskilling programmes can help. However, responsibility for successful re-entry should not fall entirely on women. Employers also need to create supportive pathways back into work.
4. What can employers do to support women returning to work?
Employers can introduce structured returnship programmes, flexible working arrangements, mentoring, skills-refresh opportunities and fair recruitment practices that assess a candidate’s capabilities rather than treating a career gap as a weakness.
5. Why is skilling important for women’s economic empowerment?
Skills can help women access employment, entrepreneurship and changing sectors of the economy. But effective empowerment also requires financial literacy, access to markets, mentorship, technology and opportunities to turn skills into sustainable livelihoods.
6. What is Smile Foundation’s Swabhiman programme?
Smile Foundation’s Swabhiman is a women and adolescent girls’ empowerment programme that takes an integrated approach to health, nutrition, livelihoods and entrepreneurship. Its economic empowerment work includes areas such as entrepreneurship training, financial and digital literacy, business development, market linkages and mentorship.
7. What does women’s economic empowerment really mean?
Women’s economic empowerment goes beyond simply having a job. It means having the skills, resources, income, opportunities and decision-making power to participate meaningfully in economic life, build sustainable livelihoods and navigate different stages of life without being permanently disadvantaged by career interruptions.
World Mental Health Day 2026 calls for people with lived mental health experiences to have a greater role in shaping the systems that affect them.
Belonging matters for children’s mental health: Feeling accepted, valued and connected at home, school and in the community can support emotional wellbeing and healthy development.
Exclusion can have lasting consequences: Persistent isolation, discrimination and a lack of meaningful connections can affect confidence, learning, relationships and mental health.
Relationships can be protective: Supportive families, teachers, friends, peers and community groups can give children stability, connection and resilience during difficult periods.
Children need to be heard: Building genuine belonging requires families, schools, communities and policymakers to listen to children and involve them in creating more inclusive environments.
In 2024, the High Court stepped in with a ruling for the students from the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) studying in private schools; the HC said: The injury to dignity felt by a student from the EWS category, who is made to feel unequal to his peers in a privately run school, and even in the eyes of the state, is deeply damaging.
Now imagine the sting of being left out on the playground or at lunch because of your economic background, religion, caste or even because of your performance in class if you are differently abled. For too many children, these moments are common. They are minor disappointments for some and the seeds of chronic loneliness and doubt for others. At any given time, a diverse set of individual, community, school, workplace and other structural factors may combine to protect or undermine a child’s sense of belonging and, in turn, affect their mental health. On this World Mental Health Day, as we reflect on the power of lived experience, we must ask: can a true sense of belonging act as a shield for our children’s mental health?
World Mental Health Day 2026 Context
This year’s World Mental Health Day, 10 October 2026, is a call to action. It urges us to move beyond passively hearing those with lived mental health experiences and instead involve them in shaping the systems that affect their lives. For children, who often lack a platform to voice their needs, this shift is especially urgent. We must consider the environments we create for them. Are we building communities where every child feels they belong? And crucially, does this belonging truly protect their mental health?
Why Belonging Matters for Children’s Mental Health
For children, feeling like they belong is just as crucial as having food or a roof over their heads. It’s a fundamental human need that plays a key role in their healthy development. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs places love and belonging just above safety and survival, underscoring how essential they are. When kids feel accepted, included and valued at home, in school or in their broader community, they truly thrive. The evidence is compelling: children who experience a sense of belonging tend to be happier, more at ease and more engaged in their learning. Their academic performance improves, behavioural issues decrease and they build healthier relationships.
Research clearly shows the benefits. Just being part of a group — be it a sports team, a choir, or a circle of friends — provides children with social, emotional, and cognitive advantages. They learn to cooperate, share, and resolve conflicts. They find out whom they can rely on when times get tough. Over time, these experiences create a support network that lasts into adulthood, offering opportunities and a sense of security that can help them navigate life’s storms. Belonging has four essential ingredients:
Feeling part of something bigger than yourself
Knowing that your voice matters
Trusting that your needs will be met
Finding connection through shared experience
The Risks of Disconnection
Yet, when belonging is absent, the consequences are stark. An ongoing sense of exclusion chips away at confidence. Children who feel isolated often internalise messages of unworthiness or invisibility. The result? They’re more likely to struggle with anxiety, depression and poor self-esteem. Academic performance suffers; focus slips and motivation wanes.
These risks aren’t distributed evenly. These risks are not equally distributed. For children who are neurodiverse with ADHD, autism or learning differences, social situations can present additional challenges. So do children who are poor, who have family problems or who are discriminated against. If loneliness is not treated, it can be chronic. Research has shown that ongoing loneliness can actually depress the immune system, making children more vulnerable to disease. These problems reverberate into adulthood, impacting a person’s approach to relationships, work and community.
How Belonging Protects Mental Health
A genuine sense of belonging can act as a powerful protective shield, especially in childhood’s most vulnerable moments. What makes the difference? It begins with relationships, like your family, friends, teachers who offer consistent, unconditional support.
Supportive connections with family, friends, and teachers provide children with stability and reassurance during challenging times.
Sports, music, volunteering and clubs help children build natural bonds that provide friendship and a sense of purpose.
Long-term mental health benefits, as research shows that adolescents who feel a strong sense of school belonging at 15–16 years old are less likely to experience depression, anxiety or stress as adults.
The number of friends a child has is not as important as the quality and authenticity of relationships. Even one good connection can make a huge difference.
Emotional support is important. Children are more resilient when they are consistently supported and understood by adults, especially by parents and teachers. They tend to cope with and recover from disappointments and challenges better when they have a strong support system and feel a sense of belonging.
Girls tend to thrive on multiple, overlapping support circles. Boys often have fewer but deeper connections, highlighting the need for tailored approaches.
Children who feel included are more likely to try new things, learn from their mistakes and build confidence.
Children recover from disappointments and challenges through a strong support system and sense of belonging, and further develop their ability to cope with adversity.
Building Belonging: What Works?
Creating these environments is a shared task. For parents, it starts with modelling healthy relationships: showing empathy, listening actively and helping children manage big emotions. Simple actions matter, like inviting friends over, encouraging participation in activities that spark joy and being present during tough times. Every child’s social motivation is different; some thrive in busy groups, others prefer smaller circles.
Schools, too, have a vital role. Policies that celebrate diversity, challenge exclusion, and make space for every voice set the tone. Teachers can be powerful agents of belonging simply by noticing who’s left out and making small adjustments, like a paired project, a welcoming gesture, a quiet word of encouragement. Peer-led programmes, where students support one another, can foster belonging in ways that adult interventions sometimes can’t.
Above all, we must listen to children themselves. This movement, from passive “listening” to active co-creation, is at the heart of this year’s World Mental Health Day message.
Roadblocks
Of course, barriers persist. Stigma is stubborn, especially for those who stand out. Schools and communities often face resource gaps, making it harder to offer the wide range of activities or supports that foster connection. And no matter how advanced we have become, inequities of race, gender, ability or income shape who gets to belong and who remains on the outside looking in. But awareness is growing, and the momentum for change is real.
Conclusion
It’s time to move from listening to action. Let’s strive for policymakers, educators, and families to make belonging a central pillar of mental health prevention. Let’s advocate for school environments where every child feels safe, seen and valued.
Belonging is a powerful, proven shield for children’s mental health. As we mark World Mental Health Day 2026, let’s commit to ensuring every child knows they matter and has somewhere to belong.
FAQs
1. When is World Mental Health Day 2026? World Mental Health Day is observed on 10 October every year. In 2026, the day focuses on bringing people with lived mental health experiences into conversations and decisions that shape mental health systems.
2. Why does belonging matter for children’s mental health? A sense of belonging can help children feel accepted, valued and supported. Positive relationships and connection can strengthen confidence and resilience and help children cope with challenges.
3. How can exclusion affect a child’s mental health? Persistent exclusion or discrimination can contribute to loneliness, low self-esteem and emotional distress. It can also affect a child’s participation in school, relationships with peers and overall wellbeing.
4. What can parents do to help children develop a sense of belonging? Parents can listen without judgement, encourage healthy friendships and activities, model empathy and make time for children to talk about their experiences and emotions.
5. What role do schools play in creating belonging? Schools can create inclusive environments by addressing discrimination, encouraging peer connections, recognising different abilities and backgrounds, and ensuring that children feel heard and valued in the classroom.
6. Can one meaningful relationship make a difference to a child? Yes. A child does not necessarily need a large social circle to feel connected. A consistent, trusting relationship with a parent, teacher, friend or another supportive adult can provide an important source of emotional support.
7. How can communities support children’s mental health? Communities can create safe opportunities for children to participate, connect and express themselves through sports, arts, volunteering, youth groups and other activities. Inclusive community spaces can help children build relationships and feel that they are part of something larger than themselves.
World Teacher’s Day is an opportunity to recognize the lasting influence teachers have on children’s learning, confidence and futures.
Observation is central to good teaching: Teachers who pay attention can recognise changes in a child’s learning, behaviour and emotional wellbeing.
Struggling children may not always ask for help: Falling grades, withdrawal, absenteeism or changes in behaviour can be early signs that a child needs support.
Early intervention matters: Identifying challenges early can help prevent learning difficulties from affecting a child’s confidence and long-term progress.
Teachers need support too: Training, manageable class sizes, learning resources and collaboration with families and specialists can help teachers respond effectively.
Every child deserves to be seen: Great teaching goes beyond curriculum delivery. It means recognising individual strengths, understanding different needs and creating opportunities for every child to thrive.
Each year, World Teachers’ Day on 5 October gives us a chance to pause and recognize the lasting impact teachers have around the world. In 2026, the day feels especially meaningful as it marks the 60th anniversary of the landmark 1966 UNESCO/ILO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers. Like a skill that multiplies over time: the best teachers are also, above all, attentive observers. By noticing the small signals others may miss, they can change the course of a child’s life.
The Power of Observation in Teaching
It’s easy to think of teaching as a matter of delivering lessons and marking papers, but at its heart, teaching is about paying attention. Observation is the art of seeing what’s in front of you and what lies beneath. It’s about reading the room, catching the anxious glance or detecting the student who suddenly grows quieter. Teachers who observe well spot the first hints that a student is falling behind. In classrooms brimming with different personalities, backgrounds and abilities, observation becomes the secret ingredient.
Early Signs That a Child Is Falling Behind
The signs of a struggling child often surface in subtle ways. You might notice:
Academic signals: Perhaps a student’s homework is regularly incomplete or their answers become vague, or grades start to slide, or participation drops off.
Social signals: A child withdraws from classmates, stops volunteering for group activities or appears lost in the shuffle.
Behavioural and emotional signals: There’s a rise in unexplained absences, a change in mood or an uncharacteristic outburst. Sometimes, it’s a frustrated sigh or a look of defeat that says more than words.
The best teachers pick up on these cues and help a student avoid slipping through the cracks. They know that falling behind is rarely about laziness or lack of ability. More often, it’s a silent distress call.
Stories of Impactthis World Teacher’s Day
Ask any successful person, and they’ll likely have a teacher’s name on their lips. Bill Gates credits his maths teacher for urging him to aim higher and his drama teacher for drawing him out of his shell. Oprah Winfreyremembers Mrs Duncan, who sparked her confidence and ambition. For countless children, a teacher’s watchful eye and timely encouragement have been life-changing. Sometimes, that teacher is the first adult to see their potential, or simply, to notice that they’re struggling and care enough to act.
Across India, remarkable educators are changing the very shape of learning, often in places where resources are scarce but hope is abundant. Ranjitsinh Disale, for instance, turned rural classrooms on their heads by adding QR codes to textbooks and translating lessons into local languages. Then there’s Deep Narayan Nayak, known as the “Wall Teacher.” When the pandemic shuttered schools, he refused to let children fall behind. Nayak transformed mud walls into blackboards, making entire neighbourhoods his classroom. By observing not only his pupils but also their communities, he tackled deep-rooted social barriers and kept children learning against the odds.
And consider Arvind Gupta, who saw that many children lacked access to science labs but not to curiosity. He built simple science toys from everyday objects, turning ordinary items into extraordinary learning tools. His playful approach made science accessible and fun, inspiring millions to explore and question the world around them.
Why Early Intervention Matters
Recognizing the early signs and offering timely support can make a meaningful difference. Whether a child is struggling academically or emotionally, timely help can prevent setbacks from affecting their confidence. Teachers can respond in ways that fit each student’s needs, such as adjusting instruction, having one-on-one conversations or providing additional resources. The sooner support begins, the better the chances of helping a child succeed and believe in their abilities.
The Evolving Role of Teachers in a Changing World
The classroom is not what it once was. Today’s teachers face challenges their predecessors could hardly imagine — digital distractions, larger class sizes, a kaleidoscope of learning needs and the aftershocks of a global pandemic. Observation has become even more essential. In online lessons, teachers look for the student who goes quiet behind a muted microphone. In multicultural classrooms, they notice who is struggling with language or adjusting to a new environment. The 2026 World Teachers’ Day theme, “Standing with teachers: 60 years of protecting the profession, advancing its status and shaping our futures”, couldn’t be more apt. Teachers are frontline observers, adapting every day to help every child find their footing.
Supporting and Training Teachers
It’s not enough to ask teachers to observe; we must equip them to do it well. This means investing in training that sharpens observation skills and provides practical strategies for early intervention. Schools should foster environments where teachers have the time and resources to truly know their students, such as smaller classes, access to mental health support and strong collaboration with families.
Practical Steps
When a student falls behind, a thoughtful, systematic approach helps:
Identify strengths and weaknesses: Look beyond the obvious; a student struggling in maths may shine in group work or creative projects.
Identify learning styles: Not every child learns the same way. Some may need hands-on tasks, others visual cues or discussion.
Differentiate instruction: Adapt lessons, scaffold concepts and provide varied homework options.
Have one-on-one conversations: Sometimes what a child needs most is to know you believe in them and that help is available.
Involve classmates: Peer support can boost confidence and understanding for both struggling and excelling students.
Involve the administration: Tap into school resources like counsellors, learning support staff or academic advisors. It truly takes a village.
Celebrate and Empower Teachersthis World Teacher’s Day 2026
Let’s not reserve our gratitude for just one day. Thank a teacher this World Teacher’s Day 2026, support education for underserved children and speak up for better working conditions and resources. Write a note, share a memory, or simply offer a listening ear. Teachers shape our future by what they teach and, more importantly, by what they see and nurture in each child.
Great teaching begins with observation. When we value and empower our teachers as observers, we give every student the chance to be seen, understood, and uplifted. On this World Teachers’ Day, let’s celebrate those who notice the quiet struggles and the hidden strengths.
FAQs
1. What is World Teacher’s Day? World Teacher’s Day is observed annually on 5 October to recognise the contribution of teachers and highlight the importance of supporting the teaching profession.
2. Why is observation important in teaching? Observation helps teachers identify changes in a child’s academic performance, behaviour, participation and emotional wellbeing. It can help teachers recognise when a child may need additional support.
3. What are some early signs that a child is struggling at school? Signs can include declining academic performance, incomplete work, reduced participation, frequent absence, withdrawal from classmates, changes in mood or unusual behaviour. A single sign does not necessarily indicate a problem, but persistent changes may warrant further attention.
4. How can teachers support children who are falling behind? Teachers can adapt instruction, provide additional learning support, have one-on-one conversations, use different teaching approaches and work with parents, school leaders and other professionals where appropriate.
5. Why is early intervention important for children? Early support can help address learning or emotional difficulties before they become more significant barriers to a child’s confidence, participation and educational progress.
6. How can schools help teachers identify and support struggling students? Schools can provide teacher training, learning resources, manageable workloads, access to counsellors or learning-support professionals, and systems that encourage collaboration between teachers and families.
7. What is the theme of World Teacher’s Day 2026? The 2026 World Teacher’s Day theme is “Standing with teachers: 60 years of protecting the profession, advancing its status and shaping its futures.” The year also marks the 60th anniversary of the 1966 UNESCO/ILO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers.
When disasters strike, children with disabilities can face barriers that are invisible in conventional emergency planning. A hearing-impaired child may miss an audio-only warning; a child with a visual impairment may struggle with visual evacuation cues; a child with mobility limitations may encounter inaccessible routes or shelters; and a child with an intellectual or developmental disability may require additional time, communication support and familiar routines to respond safely.
Research shows that these vulnerabilities are shaped not only by disability but by poverty, inaccessible infrastructure, dependence on caregivers, disrupted social networks and the failure of emergency systems to anticipate different needs.
India already has important legal and policy foundations for disability-inclusive disaster risk reduction. Section 8 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, requires equal protection and safety for persons with disabilities during disasters and requires disaster-management authorities to include them in disaster-management activities.
NDMA issued dedicated Disability Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction guidelines in 2019, while UNICEF and international frameworks such as the Sendai Framework emphasise accessible communication, inclusive preparedness and participation by people with disabilities.
The remaining challenge is implementation. Research from Assam has identified a gap between policy and practice, while initiatives such as Bihar’s disability-inclusive preparedness programme demonstrate that accessible training, mock drills, educator preparation and child participation can translate policy into practical readiness.
The central argument is therefore simple: disability-inclusive disaster preparedness should not be treated as an additional layer of emergency planning. It is a test of whether the emergency system works for everyone.
When a disaster strikes
When a disaster strikes, the first instinct is to think about speed: how quickly people can be warned, how quickly they can leave, how quickly emergency teams can arrive and how quickly food, water and medical supplies can reach those who need them. But speed assumes something that emergency systems do not always stop to examine: that everyone receives the warning in the same way, can move through the same spaces, understands the same instructions and can reach the same services without assistance.
For a child with a hearing impairment, an evacuation announcement made over a loudspeaker may never arrive; for a child with a visual impairment, an exit sign may be meaningless without an accessible route or human guidance; for a child using a wheelchair, the staircase that becomes the fastest escape route for everyone else can become an impassable barrier; and for a child with an intellectual or developmental disability, the sudden disappearance of familiar routines, people and sensory cues can itself become part of the emergency.
These are not hypothetical complications to be addressed after the main disaster plan has been written. They are questions that determine whether the plan works at all. UNICEF identifies children with disabilities as among those most at risk during humanitarian emergencies and says that inclusive preparedness requires accessible risk communication, accessible emergency services and the meaningful involvement of children with disabilities and organisations representing people with disabilities in preparedness, response and recovery decisions.
The question, therefore, is not simply whether a community has an evacuation plan, an emergency shelter or an early-warning system; it is whether a child with a disability can actually use any of them when the moment comes.
A disaster does not create every vulnerability; sometimes it exposes the ones already there
The vulnerability of children with disabilities during disasters is often described as though it comes directly from the impairment itself, but decades of research suggest a more complicated picture.
A landmark review by Lori Peek and Laura Stough argued that the risks faced by children with disabilities emerge from the interaction between disability and the social environment around it, including poverty, housing conditions, dependence on caregivers, access to healthcare and education, the availability of social networks and the extent to which emergency systems have anticipated their needs. Their conclusion was significant: the problem is not simply that a child has a disability, but that a disaster can remove or disrupt the systems that normally compensate for barriers in everyday life.
That distinction becomes clearer when thinking about an ordinary school day. A child who uses a wheelchair may be able to move around a school because there is a ramp, a particular classroom, an accessible toilet and a teacher who knows how to assist; a child with a visual impairment may navigate because the school environment is familiar and because someone routinely helps with unfamiliar spaces; a child with an intellectual disability may understand the day’s expectations because the timetable, classroom, teacher and sequence of activities remain consistent. When a flood, earthquake, cyclone or fire suddenly changes that environment, those layers of support can disappear at precisely the moment they are most needed.
The result is that disaster preparedness has to account not only for the hazard but also for the loss of ordinary support systems. If a caregiver is separated from a child, if an assistive device is damaged, if a school is converted into a shelter, if an accessible toilet becomes unusable, if medication is left behind or if communication between a child and emergency personnel breaks down, an existing vulnerability can become an immediate safety risk.
UNICEF’s preparedness checklist consequently asks whether disability-disaggregated data are available, whether disability organisations have been involved in needs assessments, whether assistive devices and inclusive emergency supplies have been planned for, whether children with disabilities participate in drills and whether evacuation centres themselves are accessible.
The warning may arrive — and still fail
One of the most overlooked problems in emergency preparedness is communication. Modern disaster management increasingly depends on SMS alerts, mobile applications, social media, television, radio, public-address systems and digital dashboards, creating the impression that technology has made warnings faster and more universal. But a warning is only useful if the person receiving it can perceive, understand and act on it, and India’s own disability-inclusive disaster guidance explicitly recognises that inaccessible technology can create an additional barrier rather than solving the original one.
Consider an emergency announcement delivered through a school loudspeaker. A hearing-impaired child may see other students moving but not know why; if the instruction is also not displayed visually or communicated through sign language, the child is dependent on someone nearby noticing the problem and translating the information.
A television warning without sign-language interpretation can similarly exclude people who cannot hear it, while a digital warning designed without accessibility features may be unreadable to someone using a screen reader. India’s national disability-inclusive disaster guidance specifically notes these risks and calls for information and communication technologies to be used to overcome, rather than reproduce, traditional accessibility barriers.
Recent international research reinforces the point. A 2025 scoping review examining the experiences of deaf and hard-of-hearing people during emergencies identified three recurring areas affecting participation: warnings and alerts, the response of emergency services, and preparedness itself. In other words, communication failure is not a small inconvenience that occurs at the beginning of a disaster; it can affect the entire emergency chain.
An inclusive warning system therefore has to be deliberately redundant: visual and auditory alerts, text and voice, captions and sign-language interpretation where appropriate, clear symbols, accessible digital content and, where necessary, human communication through teachers, caregivers, community workers or trained volunteers. The principle is simple but easily missed: there should never be only one way to learn that danger is coming.
Evacuation is not the same thing as moving people from A to B
Emergency planning often reduces evacuation to a route on a map: leave the building, follow the marked path and gather at a safe point. But children do not evacuate maps; they evacuate physical environments, and those environments are not equally navigable for everyone.
Research involving children with disabilities in school-based disaster-risk reduction has found precisely these kinds of problems. Children using wheelchairs may struggle to evacuate quickly, while standard instructions such as “drop, cover and hold” may not work in the same way for every child.
Children with autism may find continuous sirens or alarms overwhelming, while some children with intellectual disabilities may need additional prompts, repetition or support from teachers and peers. More recent experimental research involving children with intellectual disabilities found that the timing of the drill announcement, the floor on which children were located and their dependence on teachers affected evacuation behaviour, demonstrating that evacuation is influenced by cognitive, environmental and social factors as well as physical mobility.
This has a practical implication that is easy to miss: a drill can be inaccessible even when everyone technically participates in it. If a child is carried down a staircase by adults every time, the exercise may demonstrate that adults can rescue the child, but it does not necessarily demonstrate that the school has a sustainable evacuation procedure. If a child who becomes distressed by alarms is removed from the drill rather than supported through an adapted version, the school may complete its emergency exercise while leaving the child’s actual needs untested.
Inclusive evacuation planning therefore has to begin before the alarm sounds. It means identifying accessible routes, testing them, keeping them unobstructed, determining how children who need assistance will be supported, planning transportation where necessary, securing mobility and communication devices, ensuring that medication can travel with the child and creating individualised emergency plans where appropriate.
Guidance from CBM’s disability-inclusive disaster-risk reduction work specifically recommends individual support networks, accessible evacuation routes and shelters, inclusive drills and early warnings that combine different communication formats.
What happens when the school becomes the shelter?
There is another complication that receives less attention: the place designed to protect children during a disaster may itself become inaccessible.
Schools are frequently used as temporary shelters after floods, cyclones and other disasters, but the fact that a building can accommodate large numbers of people does not make it accessible. UNICEF notes that disasters can damage schools and other critical infrastructure, while schools may also be repurposed as shelters, disrupting children’s education and other services. For a child with a disability, the consequences can extend well beyond losing classroom time.
A shelter may have a ramp at the entrance but no accessible toilet. It may have electricity but no charging arrangement for an assistive device. It may distribute food but not have a system for reaching children who cannot stand in a long queue. It may provide water but place taps or containers beyond the reach of some children. It may have medical assistance but lack information in accessible formats. A child who depends on a particular communication device, medication schedule, mobility aid or personal-care routine can therefore experience the shelter not as a safe space but as another environment full of barriers.
This is why accessibility cannot be treated as an architectural checklist added to disaster planning at the end. India’s National Disaster Management Authority issued its Guidelines on Disability Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction in 2019, and the framework calls for universal design, accessibility and reasonable accommodation across the disaster-risk-reduction cycle. The guidelines also recognise that physical inaccessibility can affect access to food, water, medical care, shelter and transportation, and that the loss of mobility or other assistive devices can exclude people from relief and recovery.
The question a shelter manager should therefore be able to answer is not merely, Can a child enter this building? It is, Can this child live here safely and with dignity for the next several days?
For some children, the emergency is also the loss of routine
Physical access is only one part of the story. Disasters can be particularly destabilising for children who depend heavily on predictable routines, familiar environments and established communication patterns.
For a child with an intellectual or developmental disability, the sudden shift from classroom to crowded shelter, from a known teacher to unfamiliar adults, or from a predictable daily sequence to an uncertain environment can produce distress that emergency planners may misinterpret as non-compliance. A siren that is simply a warning to one child may be an overwhelming sensory experience for another; an instruction such as “move outside now” may be understandable to most students but require additional processing time, visual cues or individual prompting for another.
The school-based research on disability-inclusive disaster risk reduction found that children with disabilities were often capable of understanding hazards and identifying safe and unsafe spaces, but their knowledge was not always incorporated into formal planning. In one particularly revealing finding, researchers found that children could map hazards around their schools and identify resources that could help them during an emergency, yet their participation in formal disaster planning remained limited.
This is an important shift in perspective. The child should not be viewed only as someone to be rescued.
The child can also be someone who knows what makes the environment safe.
The child who is usually “helped” may know more than the adults assume
One of the most important findings from research on disability-inclusive disaster preparedness is that children with disabilities are frequently described primarily in terms of vulnerability, while their capacities are overlooked. In the school-based study by Ronoh, Gaillard and Marlowe, children with disabilities demonstrated substantial awareness of hazards, identified dangerous areas in their schools and understood the relationship between hazards and protective actions, yet their knowledge was not consistently incorporated into institutional disaster planning.
This is not merely a matter of good consultation practice. It affects the quality of the plan itself.
A child who uses a wheelchair may know which route is actually passable when a classroom is crowded. A child with a visual impairment may know which parts of the school can be navigated through touch and memory. A deaf child may know which visual signals would be easiest to recognise. A child with autism may be able to identify sensory triggers that adults designing an evacuation drill have overlooked. Their experiences are not simply stories to be collected after an emergency; they are information that can make preparedness more effective.
UNICEF’s guidance explicitly recommends communicating directly with children with disabilities rather than relying exclusively on caregivers and encourages the use of sign-language interpreters, inclusive education or special-education teachers and other communication supports when required. The broader principle is even more important: preparedness should be designed with children with disabilities, not merely for them.
India has a framework. The harder question is implementation.
India is not starting from an absence of policy. Section 8 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, provides that persons with disabilities have equal protection and safety in situations of risk, humanitarian emergencies and natural disasters, and requires national and state disaster management authorities to include persons with disabilities in disaster-management activities. It also requires district authorities to maintain information on persons with disabilities and take measures to inform them about situations of risk, while reconstruction is required to take accessibility into account.
The National Disaster Management Authority subsequently issued its Disability Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction guidelines in 2019, and the national disaster-management framework recognises the heightened vulnerabilities associated with disability, including limited access to information and services and the risk that specific needs will be overlooked during relief. The Government of India has more recently reiterated that the 2019 guidelines are aligned with the Sendai Framework and that people with disabilities should be included in disaster-risk-reduction policymaking and implementation.
Yet policy on paper and preparedness on the ground are not the same thing.
A 2025 study of disability-inclusive disaster risk reduction in Assam, based on policy analysis and interviews with people with disabilities, families, government and NGO officials and disabled people’s organisations, found a significant gap between the existing DRR framework and its implementation. In Majuli, researchers found that formal institutionalised disability-inclusive disaster-risk-reduction measures remained limited and that people with disabilities often had to depend on family members, community knowledge or their own coping strategies when formal systems were inadequate.
That finding is particularly important because it exposes a common weakness in disaster policy: having an inclusive guideline does not guarantee an inclusive response.
The missing link is often local implementation — the school that has never practised an accessible evacuation, the shelter whose toilet has never been assessed for accessibility, the village that has no mechanism for identifying children who may need additional assistance, or the emergency communication system that technically reaches everyone but is not actually understandable to everyone.
Bihar offers a glimpse of what implementation can look likefor disability-inclusive disaster preparedness
There are also examples showing that this gap is not impossible to close.
The Bihar State Disaster Management Authority has developed a disability-inclusive disaster-risk-reduction and capacity-building programme specifically focused on people with disabilities, including children with special needs. Its programme includes training for caregivers, educators, trainers and institutional staff, accessible training material including a Braille handbook, mock drills and practical evacuation exercises. By April 2025, the authority reported that 1,352 caregivers, educators, trainers and institutional staff had been trained, while more than 600 children with disabilities in special schools in Patna had participated in structured disaster-safety sessions and practical drills.
The significance of this approach is that it treats preparedness as a skill that can be practised rather than a document that can be filed away.
Children, teachers and caregivers are trained. Emergency responders are involved and drills are conducted.
The process can then move beyond a theoretical statement that children with disabilities should be included to a practical test of whether they can actually evacuate, communicate, reach safety and remain protected once they get there.
That is the difference between having an inclusive disaster plan and being prepared to use one.
Disaster preparedness must also protect learning
There is another reason this matters for children: a disaster does not end when the floodwater recedes or the earthquake stops shaking.
The interruption to education can stretch for weeks or months, particularly when schools are damaged, used as shelters or unable to reopen safely. UNICEF has highlighted the impact of climate-related shocks on children’s education in India, where floods, heatwaves and other hazards can destroy classrooms, disrupt attendance and interrupt learning. A systematic review of school-based disaster-risk-reduction research in India similarly found that research has increasingly focused on school infrastructure, disaster education, online learning and the effects of disasters on disadvantaged students and their mental health.
For children with disabilities, interrupted education can compound existing exclusion. UNICEF’s India data indicate that children with disabilities are disproportionately represented among children who are out of school, while its more recent work on disability inclusion stresses that barriers in education, healthcare, protection, sanitation and public spaces often intersect rather than appearing separately.
Recovery therefore has to ask more than whether a school building has been repaired. It has to ask whether children with disabilities can return to learning with their assistive devices, accessible transport, teaching support, communication aids, therapy and other services restored.
Otherwise, the disaster may end physically while continuing educationally.
Climate risk makes this question harder to postpone
The urgency is increasing because disasters are no longer occasional interruptions in many children’s lives. UNICEF’s 2026 Children’s Climate Risk Report finds that nearly half of the world’s children — about 1.1 billion — are exposed to at least three overlapping climate hazards, while more than four million face as many as six. The report argues that children’s risk depends not only on exposure to hazards but also on the strength of the social services on which they depend, including education, healthcare, water and sanitation and protection systems.
This matters enormously for disability-inclusive preparedness because disability itself does not exist in isolation from other forms of vulnerability. A child with a disability living in a flood-prone rural area, for example, may face the interaction of disability, poverty, inaccessible transport, disrupted schooling and dependence on a caregiver. A girl with a disability may face additional protection risks during displacement. A child whose family cannot afford to replace a damaged assistive device may remain affected long after the immediate emergency has passed.
The future of disaster preparedness therefore cannot be about designing one more emergency plan and expecting it to work for everyone.
It has to be about designing systems that assume human diversity from the beginning.
Donate to Smile Foundation’s Assam floods disaster response here.
What would truly disability-inclusive disaster preparedness look like?
It would begin with data that tell planners who lives in a community and what kinds of support different children may require, rather than discovering their needs only after an emergency begins. It would mean accessible early-warning systems that combine sound, sight, text, sign language and other communication methods; evacuation plans that have actually been tested by children with different disabilities; schools with accessible routes, toilets and safe assembly points; shelters that can accommodate assistive devices, medication, personal support and communication needs; trained teachers, caregivers and first responders; and clear arrangements for family reunification so that children are not separated from the people on whom they depend.
UNICEF’s preparedness checklist brings many of these elements together, including disability-disaggregated assessment, inclusive drills, accessible evacuation centres, assistive devices, trained staff and accessible communication.
But the most important change may be less technical.
It is a change in who gets to define what “prepared” means.
If disability-inclusive disaster preparedness is designed entirely by adults without disabilities, it can easily become a checklist of ramps, alarms and emergency kits. If children with disabilities, their families, teachers and organisations of persons with disabilities participate in designing and testing the system, preparedness becomes more grounded in the realities of movement, communication, sensory needs, anxiety, dependence, dignity and recovery.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities makes this principle a matter of rights rather than goodwill: Article 11 requires states to take necessary measures to ensure the protection and safety of persons with disabilities in situations of risk, humanitarian emergencies and natural disasters. The Sendai Framework similarly recognises persons with disabilities as stakeholders in disaster-risk reduction, rather than merely recipients of relief.
A disaster may be unpredictable.
Exclusion is not.
The question we should ask before the next disaster
The quality of a disaster-response system is often judged by how quickly it can move the largest number of people to safety. A more demanding test would be to ask what happens to the child who does not receive the announcement, cannot use the staircase, cannot read the evacuation sign, cannot tolerate the alarm, cannot communicate with a stranger or cannot find the person who usually helps them understand what is happening.
If the answer is that someone will figure it out when the disaster occurs, the community is not yet prepared.
Preparedness means figuring it out beforehand.
It means knowing which children may need additional support, understanding what that support looks like, practising it, funding it, testing it and changing the plan when children say it does not work. It means treating accessible communication as life safety, accessible infrastructure as disaster preparedness, assistive devices as essential emergency equipment and children’s participation as a source of expertise rather than a symbolic gesture.
Most importantly, it means changing the definition of who a disaster plan is designed for.
The goal cannot simply be to save the greatest number of people.
It has to be to ensure that no child becomes invisible when the systems around them begin to fail.
Because when disaster strikes, the children most likely to be left behind are not necessarily those who are least capable of surviving it.
They may simply be the children whose needs were never built into the plan.
FAQs
Why are children with disabilities more vulnerable during disasters?
Children with disabilities may face physical, communication, sensory, cognitive and social barriers during emergencies. Their vulnerability can increase when evacuation routes, warnings, shelters, healthcare, assistive devices or caregiver networks are inaccessible or disrupted. Research emphasises that vulnerability is produced by the interaction between disability and the surrounding social and physical environment, rather than by impairment alone.
How can emergency warnings be made accessible to children with disabilities?
Emergency warnings should use multiple formats rather than relying on a single channel. Depending on the child’s needs, this can include visual alerts, audio announcements, text messages, captions, sign-language interpretation, accessible digital information, clear symbols and direct communication through trained adults. UNICEF specifically recommends accessible risk communication for children with hearing, visual, intellectual and physical impairments.
What problems can children with disabilities face during evacuation?
Children with mobility limitations may encounter stairs, narrow routes or inaccessible transport, while children with hearing impairments may not hear alarms and children with visual impairments may not be able to use visual evacuation signs. Children with intellectual or developmental disabilities may require additional prompts, repetition or support, while some children may experience distress from loud alarms or sudden changes in routine.
Why should children with disabilities participate in disaster planning?
Children with disabilities can provide information about hazards, barriers and solutions that adults may overlook. Research in school settings has found that children with disabilities can identify dangerous and safe areas and understand disaster risks, but are often excluded from formal DRR decision-making. Their participation can therefore improve both inclusion and the quality of preparedness plans.
Does India have disability-inclusive disaster-management guidelines?
Yes. India’s Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, provides for equal protection and safety for persons with disabilities during disasters and requires disaster-management authorities to include them in disaster-management activities. The National Disaster Management Authority also issued Guidelines on Disability Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction in 2019.
What does disability-inclusive disaster risk reduction mean?
Disability-inclusive disaster risk reduction means integrating the needs, rights, capacities and participation of people with disabilities into every stage of disaster management — including risk assessment, prevention, mitigation, preparedness, early warning, evacuation, emergency response, relief, recovery and reconstruction. It is not simply about providing assistance after a disaster.
Why do schools need disability-inclusive disaster preparedness drills?
Schools are central to children’s safety because they are where children spend a significant portion of their time. A standard drill may not reveal whether evacuation routes, alarms, communication systems and shelters work for children with different disabilities. Inclusive drills allow schools to test those systems before an actual emergency and enable children themselves to identify barriers.
What happens to children’s education after a disaster?
Disasters can damage schools, force schools to become shelters, disrupt transportation and interrupt teaching and learning for extended periods. For children with disabilities, disruption can compound existing educational exclusion if assistive devices, specialised support, accessible transport or learning accommodations are not restored quickly. UNICEF has highlighted the continuing impact of climate-related disasters on educational continuity in India.
What is the biggest gap in disability-inclusive disaster preparedness in India?
One of the most important gaps is implementation. India has legal provisions and national guidelines, but research from Assam has found a divide between formal disaster-risk-reduction policy and what happens at community level, including inadequate institutionalised disability-inclusive measures and dependence on families and local communities when formal systems are insufficient.
What can NGOs do to make disability-inclusive disaster preparedness a reality?
NGOs can work with schools, children, families, disability organisations, local authorities and emergency responders to conduct accessibility assessments, develop individual emergency plans, train teachers and caregivers, create accessible preparedness materials, support inclusive drills and ensure that children with disabilities participate in designing preparedness measures. The most effective approach is collaborative: people with disabilities should be treated as experts and participants in disaster-risk reduction rather than only as beneficiaries of relief.
