Varsha Deshpande Wins 2025 UN Population Award for Advancing Women's Rights

By: WE staff | Saturday, 12 July 2025

• The 2025 United Nations Population Award in the individual category went to Varsha Deshpande, a well-known Mumbai-based advocate for women's rights
• In order to empower Dalit women, she founded the Dalit Mahila Vikas Mandal of India
• Her noteworthy contributions to social justice, gender equality, and women's rights are honored with this award

Award-winning women's rights campaigner Varsha Deshpande, founder of India's Dalit Mahila Vikas Mandal, has received the 2025 United Nations Population Award in the category of an individual. She is to receive the highly esteemed award at the United Nations headquarters in New York this Friday.

Varsha is just the third Indian award recipient in the individual category, after former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (1983) and industrialist JRD Tata (1992). The institution of HelpAge India was honoured in the institutional category in 2020.

A pioneering activist from Western Maharashtra, Varsha has been actively working on women's rights, gender violence, and social discrimination for over 35 years. She founded the Dalit Mahila Vikas Mandal in 1990 to empower marginalized women.

Varsha has helped in raising vocational skills, connecting women to vital resources, and promoting economic independence, a UNFPA release says. She has also led successful programs that have prevented child marriage, promoted women's property rights, improved working conditions of women in the informal economy, and mobilizing men and boys as allies for gender equality.

UNFPA acknowledged her leadership in campaigning for the enactment and implementation of law against gender-biased sex selection in India. She is also a member of different government advisory committees on the national and state level.

The UN Population Award on its 40th anniversary was established in 1981 by the UN General Assembly and first awarded in 1983. The award provides recognition to distinguished achievement in population and reproductive health and comes with a gold medal, diploma, and monetary award. The selection committee consists of eight member states of the UN as well as the UN Secretary-General and the Executive Director of UNFPA as ex-officio members.

In the institution category, the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population received this year's award.