Even as the International Women’s Day was observed on March 8, it is realised that empowerment of women today is vital for sustainable development of a nation and the strategy required for sustainable development includes economic growth, social development and environmental sustainability.
And this can be achieved only by promoting gender equality, which would focus on identifying and redressing power imbalances giving women more autonomy to manage their own lives and the society at large. This would help realise human rights of every individual.
Gender equality suggests a society where women and men enjoy the same opportunities, outcomes, rights and obligations in all spheres of life. Equality between men and women exists when both sexes are able to share equally in the distribution of power and influence; have equal opportunities for financial independence through work or through setting up businesses; enjoy equal access to education and the opportunity to develop personal ambitions. When women are empowered, whole families benefit, and these benefits often have ripple effects to future generations. The UNDP promotes equality between women and men through gender mainstreaming.
Addressing women’s issues also requires recognising that women are a diverse group, in the roles they play as well as in characteristics such as age, social status, urban or rural orientation and educational attainment. Although women may have many interests in common, the fabric of their lives and the choices available to them may vary widely. The way in which economic progress is judged in the contemporary world, tends to give a much larger role to men’s needs and demands despite all the progress that has been achieved in enhancing the voices of women in the last
half-century.
The roles that men and women play in society are not biologically determined instead they are socially determined, they are changing and changeable. Although they may be justified as being required by culture or religion, these roles vary widely by locality and change over time. The UNFPA has found that applying culturally sensitive approaches can be the first step in advancing women’s rights while respecting different forms of social organisation.
Women’s empowerment can be promoted through democratic governance, decentralisation and civil society participation and by developing women’s capacities through training, knowledge-sharing and networking.
Their lives should be made freer, more robust, and more empowered. Women’s empowerment is catalytic and central to achieving social and environmental goals.
Because of the inequalities a woman has to face in the society, women have to independently guarantee basic elements of their livelihood. Women’s economic dependency on their husbands or male counterpart not only limits their choices and access to their socioeconomic rights but some situations of domestic violence and abuse seriously impairs the opportunity that women might have had to break free from the circle of violence and the imminent threat of her life. Without property rights and economic power, women simply cannot afford to reach a safer environment. The economic situation generated by this lack of economic independence is crucial to the invocation of rights and to finding immediate recourse and effective response to such problematic situations that arise in front of women.
Through International Women’s Day, we can celebrate womanhood and can pay tribute to the indomitable spirit of women across the globe. The root of the women’s day celebration lies in the early 1900s when oppression and inequality was spurring women to become more vocal and active in campaigning for change. The first National Woman’s Day was more or less a political event, observed across the United States on February 28. It was the initiative of Socialist Party of America.
Around the world, healthy, educated, employed and empowered women break poverty cycles not only for themselves, but for their families, communities and countries too. Main processes that could lead to women’s empowerment are changes in women’s mobility and social interaction; changes in women’s labour patterns; changes in women’s access to and control over resources; and changes in women’s control over decision-making. In traditional societies, even more than elsewhere, women’s empowerment does not occur easily or overnight. In India it is most noticeable among certain types of women. Perhaps one of the most important emerging facts is that women’s groups themselves, in their social aspects, play a role in such empowerment.
This put forth for placing emphasis on sustaining groups beyond the life of the project. It is also essential for the communication support (films, radio broadcasts and so on, with sensitisation and training content) be used to speed up the empowerment process.
Women’s empowerment includes women’s sense of self-worth; their right to have and to determine choices; their right to have access to opportunities and resources; their right to have the power to control their own lives, both within and outside the home; and their ability to influence the direction of social change to create a more just social and economic order, nationally and internationally.
Girls’ education is fundamental to gender equality and women’s empowerment. And this again stresses for life-long education and training, including pre-school provision, the elimination of stereotyped teaching and education materials, diversification of the educational and training opportunities available to women and girls, and the promotion of self-esteem and leadership in girls. At the individual level, violence disrupts the lives of women, limits their options, undermines their confidence and self-esteem, and impairs their health psychologically as well as psychically. It denies them their human rights and hinders their full participation in society.
Violence against women deprives society of the full participation of women in all aspects of development, not just in terms of hours of labour missed due to violence, but also in terms of the cost of services to the victims. It also has serious consequences for the mental and bodily health of dependent children.
Women’s are the wealth of India and they have contributed in almost every field and made country feel proud at every occasion. They are in front, leading the country, making mile stones and source of inspiration for many. However, another reality of Indian society is that there is systematic discrimination and neglect of women’s in India, which could be in terms of inadequate nutrition, denial or limited access of education, health and property rights, child labour and domestic violence etc. The fear of sexual violence has been a powerful factor in restricting women’s behavior and sense of freedom.
The struggle against violence is actually the struggle against the unequal distribution of power both physical and economic between the sexes. Participation and control over resources of power are critical indicators in the process of development in the woman’s life.
There still exists a wide gap between the goals enunciated in the constitution, legislation, policies, plans, programs and related mechanisms on the one hand and the situational reality of the status of women in India, on the other hand. India is fast developing but women’s in India continue to be discriminated. The declining sex ratio in India amply portrays the discrimination shown towards women at the stage of birth. Women may be have stardom in any stream but are getting harassment every day by their surroundings.
From cradle to grave there is a systematic discrimination against women. Nutrition, health care, education are all withheld and provided grudgingly to daughters. Women empowerment can be interpreted as totality of empowerment including political, social, cultural, and other dimension of human life as also the physical, moral and intellectual.
(Dr Das is State Research and Documentation Coordinator at National Coalition for Education (NCE). She can be mailed at Subhashree.das1201@gmail.com)