Women Empowerment
Women’s empowerment is essential for decision-making in terms of health-seeking, family planning, nutrition and economic issues not only for her but for the family as well. In India, women’s empowerment depends heavily on several variables including geographic location (urban/rural), educational status, social status (caste and class) and age. There are policies on women’s empowerment at the central, state, and local (panchayat) levels. In many sectors such as health, education, economic opportunities and political participation, women still face differentiation, which shows that there are significant gaps at community level between policy advancement and actual practice. This paper reveals the current status of indices for women empowerment in India. It focuses on different laws and policies that are framed for empowering women. Despite adequate laws, the reasons for discrimination against women in society are given for protecting their rights. The research concludes by making appropriate suggestions to boost women’s status. Framing and implementing sound policy framework, educating and disseminating social awareness regarding women’s empowerment can lead to achieving the desired goals of eliminating women’s plight in Indian society.
Women’s safety, decision-making power, and mobility are three indicators for empowering women. Education is the primary reason that impacts Indian women’s empowerment (Biswas, 2018). Education is the most dynamic development factor and is the only important tool for empowerment and the development of human resources. Society and cultural ethics, however, disallow women’s education and continue to prevalence in India (Waghamode & Kalyan, 2014). Another major reason that hampers women’s empowerment in the country is gender discrimination. Failure to implement legislation and policies to address discrimination, economic disadvantages, community-level violence against women and largely patriarchal structure governing the Indian community and households are also responsible for weak empowerment of women in India. We can see the effect of the patriarchal system in both rural and urban India, although the empowerment of women is much less evident in rural India than in urban areas.
Improving women’s political, social, economic, and health status is in itself a highly imperative end. Women empowerment is essential to achieving sustainable societal development. Women and men need equal participation in a productive life. Women’s talents, intelligence and tremendous coping spirit still go unrecognized due to gender inequality, cultural limitations and patriarchy being ignored. Factors which impede the achievement of a healthy and fulfilling life by women are omnipresent at all levels of our society. Changes in policy and program actions and implementation are needed to expand the ability of women to secure livelihood and economic opportunities to avoid these catastrophes. It is also necessary to raise social awareness through effective education and mass communication programmes, to prevent women from being victimized by society’s culprits. Education can play the most vital role in making women well-equipped with knowledge, skills and abilities that would help them stand on their own feet and take all life decisions on their own.
Given the current state of economic liberalization, we are working to equip self-employed women with information, knowledge technology, training and managerial techniques, and to train poor women and provide them with self-employment opportunities to improve their social and economic status. They also cultivate thrift and credit habits among poor women, to improve their quality of life.
Since women’s overall empowerment vitally depend on economic empowerment, we are involved in the following women empowerment activities:
- Educating and raising awareness among women, especially rural women.
- Supplement the Government’s efforts to empower women.
- Encourages the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to empower women.
- Establishes women’s leadership qualities and ensures their participation.
- Represents the issues faced by rural women to the authorities concerned and performs impact evaluation of women’s policy decisions.
- Mobilizes finest resources and strategies, and executes the plans that have to do with empowering women.