Centre for Social Research

The Centre for Social Research (CSR), established in 1983, is an advocacy group for women based in New Delhi, India. The group tries to bring attention and justice to all marginalized and underprivileged areas of society. They offer services to women and girls throughout the country, and focus on restructuring gender relations with the aim of creating a more humane, equitable and gender-just society.

Empowerment of Women
In 1997, CSR founded the Gender Training Institute (GTI) to facilitate the empowerment of women and social justice through capacity building and training-related activities. GTI's trainings investigate gendered interactions happening in other areas of life like media, economy, politics and culture. Leadership skills and the ability to address gender issues in their lives and that of society will be passed on to participants. With the support of the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF), GTI also founded a program "Enhancing the Role of Women in Strengthening Democracy", where 1000 women leaders were geared up to run for and serve in state and national political offices. Crisis Intervention Centres (CICs) are also managed under the understanding that fighting gender-based violence involves direct assistance as well as sensitization and mobilization of grassroots communities.

GTI has also implemented a project on "Promotion of Women's Rights through Networking, Lobbying, Advocacy and Capacity Building". The 3rd phase of the project was successfully completed with as much success on initiating the 4th phase of the project which incorporated Men and boys in the process. Another initiative of GTI was to commence the first one of its kind online course launched on "Training women in leadership and Democracy". CSR further launched a certificate program, India-Women in Leadership (iWIL), in collaboration with Centre for Public Policy that includes lectures, field visits and travels.

Eliminating Sex-Selection
Eliminating Female infanticide in long term will resolve the biasness towards sex selection. CSR implemented the Meri Shakti, Meri Beti (My Daughter, My Strength) project in 2007 to reduce pre-natal sex selection. It has organized over 40 Community Outreach Programs, nine Community Watch Group meetings, two Expert Group meetings and one Interface Workshop in the Kurukshetra district of Haryana state. A second phase of the campaign was launched in 2013.