A look at world news today would make you believe in the spirit of gender equality. Movements for gender representation and rights have finally begun taking centre stage and women trailblazers can be found in more male-dominated professions than ever before. In this ongoing struggle, achievements like Dr Komal Rao’s are even more significant.

Dr Komal Rao is considered to be the epitome of physical strength and endurance. As India’s only female Mixed Martial Arts fighter to have defeated a man in a pro cage fight, she has proven that there is no field women can’t ace.

Mixed Martial Arts is a challenging combat sport which requires mastery of a variety of combat traditions. In MMA, blows come fast, and strong, and wrong technique can lead to a grievous injury. Men, moreover, have a natural physical advantage over women.

During the final of the YBN Germany, 2017, Dr Rao was up against a formidable male opponent who was larger and stronger. But that didn’t faze her from her goal. She, in fact, won by submission in the second round to great applause.

Combat is a way of life for Dr Rao, who also trains women in self-defence. The world, after all, is stacked against women in numerous ways, and she is merely trying to bridge the gender gap. Watch a day in the life of Dr Komal Rao in the video below.

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“The world can’t ignore us anymore,” Dr Rao speaks for all women striving to make a mark in a world made for men. Take, for example, our roads. There are more women drivers on the roads than ever before, but cars are still designed according to the average male body proportions. As a result, women are 47% more likely to suffer serious injuries in a car crash.

With its Equal Vehicles for All initiative, Volvo Cars is trying to address the neglect of women in car design. Since the 1970s, Volvo’s Accident Research team has been compiling real-world data on the impact of collisions. Now, it is sharing the results of its decades-long research – conducted on men, women and children – with automakers around the world.

Volvo Cars itself has used insights from the EVA research to make its cars safer for all. Volvo cars come equipped with a whiplash protection system, a side impact protection system and safety provisions for shorter occupants in the driving seat. Moreover, Volvo Cars has also designed the world’s first computer model of a pregnant crash test dummy to study the efficacy of car safety features on pregnant women and their foetuses.


Equality in research can save lives. Volvo’s accident research, conducted on more than 40,000 cars and 70,000 passengers, has culminated into 100 research papers. You can access them here. To know more about Volvo’s EVA initiative, click here.


This article was produced by the Scroll marketing team on behalf of Volvo and not by the Scroll editorial team.