Women Empowerment in India : a distant dream

 Women Empowerment in India : a distant dream 

Women Empowerment

• Women empowerment refers to the strengthening the social, economic and educational powers of women. It refers to an environment where there is no gender bias/discrimination and that they have equal rights in community, society, and workplaces. Women Empowerment’ means complete emancipation of women from socio-economic shackles of dependency and deprivations.
• Empowerment of women would mean encouraging women to be self-reliant, economically independent, have positive self-esteem, generate confidence to face any difficult situation and incite active participation in various socio-political development endeavors. Thus, women empowerment is nothing but recognition of women’s basic human rights and creating an environment where they are treated as equals to men.
• Though constitutional rights and legislative measures have helped women make remarkable contributions in many fields, a large number of women are yet to emerge from their limiting circumstances to achieve their full potential. While on one hand, India has seen an increased percentage of literacy among women, and women are now entering professional fields, the practices of female infanticide, poor health conditions and lack of education still persisting still continue. Unless the government, civil society, local communities and women themselves work in coordination, total empowerment of women is will remain a distant dream in India.

Temporal Aspect of Women Empowerment

• Points to Think

• In ancient India, women enjoyed equal status with men. They were educated. They were trained in the art of warfare by choice. The Rigvedfinds mention about a warrior queen Vishpala, who is trained in the art of warfare.
• In Ancient India,women had the freedom to choose their husbands at a matured age. Everyone is familiar with the concept of Swayamvarwherein a woman has the liberty to select the husband of her choice from amongst a group of suitors.
• In the medieval and later period,we have examples of Rani Rudrama Devi of Warangal who defied the male counterparts of her times;Chennamma, the queen of Keladi, fought like Goddess Shakti in the battlefield; Velu Nachiyar,who was trained in martial arts, use of war weapons, archery, and horse riding, happens to be the first queen in the history of India to wage a successful war against the British. Laxmibai became queen of Jhansi, added a regiment of women. An excellent horse rider, she herself drilled and trained them.
• The status of women saw a gradual decline with Islamic invasion and later the British. Such was the effect of their rule that women’s rights and freedom were curtailed. They started getting exploited.Practices like child marriage and Jauhar saw a rise only to protect their honor from invaders. Social reformers like Swami Dayanand Saraswati, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar amongst others were instrumental in extensively wiping out many a social evil.
• During the post-independence India, improvements were made in terms of various areas that led to well-being of women within the society. There were formulation of many programs and schemes that had the main objective of bringing about progressive among women. In spite of initiation of the measures and policies, still women face discrimination in India .Currently; illiteracy and poverty are the hindrances behind women empowerment.

• Why Women Empowerment?
• Women empowerment is giving power to women. It is making the women better off by lending them a voice. And a will of their own. It enables a greater degree of self-confidence and a sense of independence among the women. The main advantage of women empowerment is that there will be overall empowerment of society.
• Women roughly constitute half the world population but in every aspect women still remain grossly under-represented. For any society or country to be developed in true sense, women empowerment is the key.
• Challenges that make Women empowerment a distant dream in India

• Female Illiteracy and Education: In comparison to 82.14% of adult educated men, only 65.46% of adult literate women are there in India.
• Gender-Based Inequality: India is highly patriarchal society; this is one of the many social standards that need to be addressed in order to better the lives of women in India.
• Poverty in the Country: Due to abject poverty, women are exploited as domestic helps and wives whose incomes are usurped by the man of the house. The GINI index keeps rising slowly over the years, indicating that the inequality in the distribution of wealth in the country is increasing, currently hovering a little close to 33.9.Additionally, sex slaves are a direct outcome of poverty.
• Health & Safety issues: There are alarming concerns where maternal healthcare is concerned. The maternal mortality rate of India stands at 167 per 100,000 live births.
• Women Security: It is one of the major issues in India. As every day, we hear one or more cases of rape, violence against women, sex trafficking, dowry deaths in the country.
• Female Feticide and Female Infanticide:
• Unemployment: Women constitutes around 50% of world population and a large number of women are unemployed around the world. The world economy suffers a lot if women are not provided equal opportunities at work places.
• Crimes Against Women: Sexual harrasment,Rapes,Trafficing and other atrocities like dowry deaths,domestic violence etc.

• Positive side of Women Empowerment

• Although there are still challenges that are hurdles for women empowerment, but with the time, lots have been changed. Women are now getting access to education, employment and health facilities.Girls enrollment is increasing and dropouts are decreasing. Programs like ‘Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan’ and ‘Saakshar Bharat Mission for Female Literacy’ has helped increase the literacy rates.
• India has the largest population of working women in the world, and has more number of doctors, surgeons, scientists, professors than the United States.Women in India slowly started recognising her true potential. She has started questioning the rules laid down for her by the society. As a result, she has started breaking barriers and earned a respectable position in the world.
• Today Indian women have excelled in each and every field from social work to visiting space station. There is no arena, which remains unconquered by Indian women. Whether it is politics, sports, entertainment, literature, technology everywhere, its women power all along.
• Today names like Arundhati Roy, Anita Desai, Kiran Desai, Shobhaa De, Jhumpa Lahiri are some of the examples of women empowerment in India. In the field of Politics, from Indira Gandhi to Shiela Dixit, Uma Bharti, Jayalalithaa, Vasundhra Raje and Mamata Banerjee today, women are making their presence felt.

• Initiatives Taken for Women Empowerment

• National Commission for Women:
• Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
• Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao
• Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana
• Mahila Shakti Kendra (MSK) Scheme
• Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS)
• STEP(Support to Training and Employment Program for Women
• Mahila E-haat
• NARI Portal
• One Stop Centre Scheme
• The Sexual Harassment at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013
• SABLA Scheme

• Swayamsiddha
• Swadhar Greh
• Janani Suraksha Yojana
• Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005

• Women Safety Apps

The Way Forward

• Women can be empowered only when they have full access to their rights, which include the right to live free from violence, slavery and discrimination, along with access to education, employment and maternal health rights on equal basis.
• Recognition and provision of equal and inalienable rights to women is sine qua none for establishing society based on freedom, justice, and peace. If we want to have such a society, women must enjoy freedom of speech, belief, along with protection of life, honour and property. Furthermore, change in mindsets and attitudes towards women is needed. An atmosphere to realise gender-equality not only in words but also in practice needs to be realised in all sections of population especially in the downtrodden one.
• Human rights organizations, feminist movement activists, civil society activists and the academia meeting shoulder to shoulder with the government have to play their role collectively for ending gender-based disparity in every walk of life and for the protection of rights, honour and lives of women. For attaining that mission, all of them will have to make arduous efforts for women empowerment in the country.
• We have many schemes, many programs for the purpose of women empowerment at every stage of administration, all we need is a good system and agencies for the implementation of these policies and programs. And if we can build up that system, if we can implement these programs then the dream of women empowerment can be turned into a reality very soon.