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          Karmaveer Shantarambapu Kondaji Wavare college in CIDCO Nasik city offers Arts, Science and Commerce College. The college was established with a vision to cater to the educational needs of the youth of the industrial area of Nashik City. The principal Dr. J. D. Sonkhaskar and her management, took a great initiative to organize a two days National Conference on “Gender Sensitization: Special Reference to the Third Gender” on 17^th and 18^th January 2020. This conference brought together many transgender across the nation, researchers in the field of gender, academicians, and transgender rights experts.  

              The supreme court of India in April 2014 recognized Hijras, Third Gender People, Eunuchs, and Intersex People as the Third Gender in law. The third Gender is persons with different sexual orientations. The life of Third Gender people is a daily battle as there is no acceptance anywhere and they are ostracized from society. The biggest lacuna in the system is that nobody knows the real definition of the Third Gender. Sensitization will not help until people are ready to accept change and acceptance can come only through education. The third Gender does not have access to proper education, health employment, and other basics of life. The harsh one of this is the education. They are school dropouts and lose the chance of having a normal life and carrier. This National Conference focused on the issues concerned with Third Gender people and hence was geared to help them to create a better future for themselves.

The objectives of this conference were;

1. To focus on education for the Third Gender to create employment for them.
2. Sensitize the minds of people to accept the Third Gender community as a part of our society.
3. To become familiar with the national and international legal frame works for gender equality.

        I was glad to be one of the chosen few who presented their papers at this event since I was researching transgender rights issues under S. P. Pune University. My paper “Legal Status of the third gender in our society” was well received by the audience, especially the transgender community which applauded my efforts towards bringing the transgender issues in the limelight. It was a wonderful event, that helped me to gain more experience as I interacted with the transgender community, fellow researchers, and human rights experts at the conference.