Ananya Singh – Women Deliver
2020

Ananya Singh

  • Age: 24
  •    |   She/her/hers

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Women's empowerment doesn't mean imposing any job on women. Rather, empowerment must enable women to freely choose the job in which they want to be gainfully employed.

- Ananya Singh

Bio

Ananya is a Master’s Degree Candidate in Development and Labor Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, India. She is, at present, a “Member of the CECA Digital Youth Council, an activity of YouthPower2: Learning and Evaluation, a project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by Making Cents International and its partners”.

Ananya deeply cares about the digital safety of young children, especially girls. She has, in the past, also ran a massively popular campaign against TikTok, asking the social media giant to make its app more responsible in terms of content moderation. The campaign, which ran with the hashtags #TweakTikTok and #TikTokTheekKaro, was started in response to a viral TikTok video glorifying a man spitting acid onto the face of a woman. Ananya’s campaign garnered 158,888 signatures in a month’s time. Ananya has been awarded the very prestigious Diana Award 2021 for her remarkable humanitarianism and exemplary social action. She envisions to establish a Digital Defense Lab to help create an informed digital citizenry for the future.

She’s also been Tunza Eco-Generation’s Ambassador to South Asia. Tunza Eco-Generation is a joint effort of the UNEP and Samsung Engineering, South Korea to promote environmental education and networking among young people from across the globe. She was also the Global Facilitator for the Samsung Junior Engineering Academy held in the Samsung Global Engineering Center in Seoul, Korea.

She was awarded a 100% scholarship to attend the International Affairs & Security session of the Yale Young Global Scholars – 2015 at the Yale University. She’s been awarded a silver prize in the senior category of the International Essay Competition organised by the Royal Commonwealth Society, London, UK, twice, in 2014 & 2016 respectively, on the merit of her submitted entries & as recommended by the jury panel and she’s also been a Judge for the same competition.

What ignited your pursuit for gender equality?

In a 24/7 online world like ours, young girls face increased risks of digital abuse and scams since they’re never formally trained to deal with the internet or digital technology. In fact there's been 159 percent rise in cyber crimes against women in my state. In 2019, I started a petition on Change.org asking the government to teach digital defense techniques to young girls.

Please share your biggest wins as an advocate for gender equality.

I spearheaded a strong advocacy movement to emancipate women from the shackles of conformist and conservative ideas of gender roles and expected behaviors and attitudes by writing a series of articles for The Huffington Post US Edition. In 2020, I ran a massively popular campaign against TikTok, asking the social media giant to make its app more responsible in terms of content moderation. The campaign, which ran with the hashtags #TweakTikTok and #TikTokTheekKaro, was started in response to a viral TikTok video glorifying a man spitting acid onto the face of a woman, and garnered 158,888 signatures in a month's time.

Outside of your gender equality advocacy work, what do you enjoy doing?

I like to read, write, sketch, and cook in my free time.

Languages Spoken:

  • English (Advanced/Native)
  • Hindi (Advanced/Native)
  • Odia (Advanced/Native)
  • Spanish (Elementary)

Speaks On:

  • digital economy
  • cyber safety
  • women's value creation

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