Filed under: affirmative action research
INTRODUCTION
The empowerment of women refers to providing the necessary rights and responsibilities to women in order to make them self-reliant. Traditionally, Indian women have been brought to become workers or servants to serve the man – dominating world. Even in mythology, there is no gender equity and women were deprived of their legal rights, to get property, education privacy, social status and they were never treated as participants in any developmental works. Empowerment is the process of building capacities of women, creating an atmosphere which will enable people to fully utilize their creative potentials. Empowerment gives women, the capacity to influence decision making process, planning, implementation and evaluation. The status of women empowerment in India using various indicators like women’s household decision making power, financial autonomy, freedom of movement, political participation, acceptance of unequal gender role, exposure to media, access to education, experience of domestic violence etc based on data from different sources. Gender gap exists regarding access to education and employment. Household decision-making power and freedom of movement of women vary considerably with their age, education and employment status.
WHAT IS EMPOWERMENT?
Empowerment strategies are varied and refer to those strategies which enable women to realize their full potentials. They consist of greater access to knowledge and resources, greater autonomy in decision making, greater ability to plan their lives, greater control over the circumstances that influence their lives and finally factors which would free them from the shackles of custom beliefs and practices. Unless they themselves become conscious of the oppression meted out to them and show initiative to push forward it would not be possible to change their status much.
ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN
Since the beginning of this decade, much has been achieved in empowering women in the economic and social fields. An increasing volume of development financial resources has been devoted to achieving that objective. Consequently, many countries of the region have been able to report increased female literacy and enrolment rates, improved gender equality in education, reduced infant and child mortality rates, declining maternal mortality rates and expanding access to reproductive health services. The participation of women in formal economic activities has also registered a noticeable improvement.
1. Growing economic participation
Economic empowerment constitutes one of the fundamental building blocks in efforts towards the overall empowerment of women. Participation in formal economic activities on terms and conditions which reflect the productive capacity of women, and their control over their own incomes, are some of the important dimensions of economic empowerment. Although the increasing work participation of women has been viewed as part of the general employment boom created by the export-led economic expansion, female labour-force participation rates have tended to increase more than those for men in the Asian and Pacific region, suggesting that women’s economic participation has been a critical feature of the region’s quest for the economic empowerment of women.
2. Improvements in social development indicators
Fertility rates have declined in the region, even though the total fertility rate and the average number of children per woman remain high (over four) in several countries in the region. The fertility rates on average remain high in those countries of Asia where female literacy is low and opportunities for outside work participation are limited. It is therefore increasingly accepted that, in addition to reflecting general conditions of economic growth and the availability of both health care and birth control facilities, fertility rates also serve as a proxy for women’s general empowerment. This is because these rates are closely linked to the literacy and educational status of women, age at marriage, and other important features of women’s status.
3. Access to technology, including information technology
Promoting access to productive resources and social support systems constitutes one of the fundamental building blocks in efforts to empower women in the region. Access to productive resources such as credit, technology, infrastructure, marketing links and networking facilities can significantly enlarge opportunities for women to engage in formal economic activities and improve their social status. In that regard, promoting access to new and emerging technologies, including information and communication technology, has become a powerful tool for women’s empowerment.
WOMEN’S EDUCATION IN INDIA
Although in the Vedic period women had access to education in India, they had gradually lost this right. However, in the British period there was revival of interest in women’s education in India. However women’s education got a fillip after the country got independence in 1947 and the government has taken various measures to provide education to all Indian women. As a result women’s literacy rate has grown over the three decades and the growth of female literacy has in fact been higher than that of male literacy rate. While in 1971 only 22% of Indian women were literate, by the end of 2001 54.16% female were literate. The growth of female literacy rate is 14.87% as compared to 11.72 % of that of male literacy rate.
Gender discrimination still persists in India and lot more needs to be done in the field of women’s education in India. The gap in the male-female literacy rate is just a simple indicator. While the male literary rate is more than 75% according to the 2001 census, the female literacy rate is just 54.16%.
THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT IN INDIA
The women’s movement in India is a rich and vibrant movement which has taken different forms in different parts of the country. The absence of a single cohesive movement, rather than being a source of weakness, may be one of the strengths of the movement. Although scattered and fragmented, it is a strong and plural movement. During the 18 years that India had a woman as Prime Minister the country also saw increasing incidents of violence and discrimination against women. This is no different from any other time: a casual visitor to any Indian city – for example Mumbai – will see hundreds of women, young and old, working in all kinds of professions: doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, scientists… and yet newspapers in India are full of stories of violent incidents against women, of rape, sexual harassment, sometimes even murder. But to have a woman in the highest office of the State and to simultaneously have extreme violence against women are merely the two ends of the scale. As always, a more complex reality lies in between.
Fifty Six years ago when India became independent, it was widely acknowledged that the battle for freedom had been fought as much by women as by men. One of the methods M K Gandhi chose to undermine the authority of the British was for Indians to defy the law which made it illegal for them to make salt. At the time, salt-making was a monopoly and earned considerable revenues for the British. Gandhi began his campaign by going on a march – the salt march – through many villages, leading finally to the sea, where he and others broke the law by making salt. No woman had been included by Gandhi in his chosen number of marchers. But nationalist women protested, and they forced him to allow them to participate.
WOMEN IN INDIAN POLITICS
- It is scarcely news that women are underrepresented in Indian politics. The issue has come sharply into focus for some years now, partly because of the thwarted moves towards providing one-third reservation for women in legislative bodies including Parliament, along with the more successful moves to enforce such reservation in elections to rural panchayats. Of course such an issue naturally becomes more apparent during a period of elections as well. What has emerged quite clearly in the current very long drawn out election process is how little has changed at one level since Independence. The candidates fielded by the various political parties are still dominantly male: women account for only five t o ten per cent of all candidates across parties and regions. This is the same broad pattern that has been observed in virtually the 12 previous general elections in the country.
The Constitution (84th Amendment) Bill relating to women’s reservation even last year. The very parties that were most explicitly in favour of pushing for such reservation have put up the same proportion of women as always, and certainly not more than other parties that had opposed the Bill. The Congress party, led by a woman and supposedly pushing for reservation for women, has only 10 per cent of women among the candidates announced so far. For the BJP the proportion of women candidates is even lower at 7 per cent. Even in the case of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), only 7 per cent of the candidates are women. May be more significant in terms of political power than the proportion of women fighting the Lok Sabha polls is the importance of women in inner party structures. Here women are by and large even less represented, in all parties. Only in the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) has there been a conscious move to bring many more women into decision-making levels and posts within the party.
In most parties, the women members are by and large thin on the ground if not invisible in the actual decision-making bodies and rarely influence the more significant party policies. Most often, indeed, they are relegated to the “women’s wing” of the party, and made to concentrate on what are seen as specifically “women’s issues” such as dowry and rape cases, and occasionally on more general concerns like price rise which are seen to affect especially “housewives”. Is that the political empowerment of women not only still has a long way to go, but finally may not have all that much to do with the periodic carnivals of Indian electoral democracy. This is not to say that the elector al representation of women is unimportant, but rather that it needs to be both deeper and wider than its current manifestation in the form of the prominence of a few conspicuous women leaders.
WOMEN’S PANCHAYATI RAJ
The 73rd Constitutional Amendment enacted in December 1992 (and its sister 74th Amendment for municipalities) made the most radical provisions in respect of affirmative action to create a level playing field for women’s participation in public affairs. For all elected offices in the three-tier system of Panchayati Raj (and municipalities), Part IX and IX-A of Indian Constitution mandates one-third reservation for women. Such historic and radical constitutional provisions have few parallels in democracies around the world.
Beginning with the first round of elections to panchayats after the states passed conformity legislations in 1994, nearly one million elected women are occupying constitutionally mandated public offices. In most states, the third round of Panchayat elections are beginning later this year (except Jharkhand which has the singular distinction of defying the Constitution by not holding Panchayat elections even once so far), and soon three million elected women would have acquired a public persona in local bodies. The significance of this can only be gauged by the absence of such constitutional provisions in respect of elected positions in state assemblies and national parliament. It is, therefore, worthwhile to ask the question what difference women’s election to Panchayats has made. This is particularly apt today (23rd September 2004) as the Third Roundtable Conference of Ministers.
WOMEN EMPOWERMENT THROUGH SELF HELP GROUPS:
The women empowerment through SHGs in the north Tamil Nadu. It is found that the income of the women has been increased after joining the SHGs. So that the monthly household expenditure also has been raised considerable level. But the savings is increasing at slow rate, because the incremental expenditure is higher. Mostly they are spending for present consumption. The members should change it. The good practice of the women SHGs in the study area is repayment of the loan in time. Nearly 64% of the debtor paid their monthly due with in the time, even some members 19% paid their due in advance. A few members do not pay in time but this is not affecting the further credit of SHGs. Since the repayment of loan is regular and within the time, we may conclude that the economic activities of SHGs are quite success. In this way SHGs in north Tamil Nadu are very successful to develop women empowerment and rural areas.
The World Bank’s Empowerment and Poverty Reduction empowerment in its broadest sense as the “expansion of freedom of choice and action” (Narayan, 2002). United Nations (2001) defines empowerment as the processes by which women take control and ownership of their lives through expansion of their choices. Kabeer’s (1998, 1999) view of empowerment refers to the processes by which those who have been denied the ability to make choices acquire such ability. The fundamentals of empowerment have been defined as agency (the 1 Key among them are: the ratification of the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1993, the Mexico Plan of Action (1975), the Nairobi Forward looking Strategies (1985) and the Beijing Declaration as well as the Platform for Action (1995)
WOMEN IN AGRICULTURE
The women are the backbone of agricultural workforce but worldwide her hard work has mostly been unpaid. She does the most tedious and back-breaking tasks in agriculture, animal husbandry and homes. The research efforts at the ICAR institutes have been tried to relieve her of the drudgery by providing time and labour saving tools. Vocational trainings are also being conducted, to impart skills to undertake different avocations. In extension activities the women is now the centre point and activities are being planned keeping her in view. Her enlightenment will change the face of rural India. Several programmes started at the National Centre for Women in Agriculture and Krishi Vigyan Kendras, are the right steps in this direction.
Role of women in agriculture
- Development and testing of extension methods for farm women in Eastern India
- Standardization of women specific field practices in rice in Orissa
- Occupational health hazards of farm women in coastal Orrisa
4. Identification and evaluation of interactive learning modules for dissemination of homestead technologies
- Improvement in storage practices of seeds and grains of important crops with women perspective
- Reducing drudgery of women in agricultural operations through use of improved techniques
- Management of coastal agro-eco system affected by super cyclone in Orrisa
- Empowerment of women in agriculture
9. Involving women in aquaculture is a step towards ensuring economic and nutritional security
- 10. Krishi Vigyan Kendras trained nearly 0.2 million farm women, girls and women extension workers
- 11. Self help groups were made and took up income generating steps in home made products, dairy products, bakery products, tailoring/embroidery, goat/buffalo rearing and vermicomposting
- 12. Innovative marketing outlets developed for Self help groups. Five components of AICRP on Home Science moved towards empowerment of rural women. There mainachievements were
13. Mobilization of self help groups and creation of learning environment
14. Strengthening empowerment process
15. Empowerment gains for women were assessed
16. Cafeteria for women in agriculture was developed and offered to states to guide the development of new programmes for women in agriculture
WOMEN EMPOWERMENT IN INDIA – MILESTONES & CHALLENGES
Empowerment is now increasingly seen as a process by which the one’s without power gain greater control over their lives. This means control over material assets, intellectual resources and ideology. It involves power to, power with and power within. Some define empowerment as a process of awareness and conscientization, of capacity building leading to greater participation, effective decision-making power and control leading to transformative action. This involves ability to get what one wants and to influence others on our concerns. With reference to women the power relation that has to be involved includes their lives at multiple levels, family, community, market and the state.
Importantly it involves at the psychological level women’s ability to assert themselves and this is constructed by the ‘gender roles’ assigned to her specially in a cultural which resists change like India. The questions surrounding women’s empowerment the condition and position of women have now become critical to the human rights based approaches to development. The Cairo conference in 1994 organized by UN on Population and Development called attention to women’s empowerment as a central focus and UNDP developed the Gender Empowerment measure (GEM) which focuses on the three variables that reflect women’s participation in society – political power or decision-making, education and health. 1995 UNDP report was devoted to women’s empowerment and it declared that if human development is not engendered it is endangered a declaration which almost become a lei motif for further development measuring and policy planning. Equality, sustainability and empowerment were emphasized and the stress was, that women’s emancipation does not depend on national income but is an engaged political process.
Drawing from Amartya Sen’s work on ‘Human capabilities’ — an idea drawn from Aristotle a new matrix was created to measure human development. The emphasis was that we need to enhance human well being flourishing and not focus on growth of national income as a goal. People’s choices have to be enlarged and they must have economic opportunities to make use of these capabilities. States and countries would consider developments in terms of whether its people lead a long healthy painless life or no are educated and knowledgeable and enjoy decent standards of living. The intuitive idea behind the capability is twofold according to Martha Nussbaum (2003) first, that there are certain functions that are particularly central to human life. Second, that there is something do these in a truly human way, not a mere animal way.
CONCLUSION
“When women move forward the family moves, the village moves and the nation moves”. It is essential as their thought & their value systems lead the development of a good family, good society & ultimately a good nation”. Indian government has taken several steps towards empowering women. Empowerment of women also requires participation and co-operation of men as they benefit by having educated mothers, wives, daughters and sisters. The economic empowerment will allow raising women’s self awareness, skill development, creative decision making and it may also lead to produce better citizens and a new and modern India.
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Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – ANALYSING THE CURRENT SCENARIO OF WOMEN STATUS