Women empowerment

Women Empowerment

Women are the focus of all development.For any sustainable change towards progress needs involvement of women. There is a great variation across the world in empowering women, even in developed industrial countries. High income is not a prerequisite to creating opportunities for women, Gender empowerment focuses on gender inequality in economic and political opportunity and participation in decision-making process and values.The inequality varies from community to community, race to race and region to region within a particular country. It can be seen in terms of the percentage of women in parliament, State Legislatures,senior officials and managers,and among professional and techinical worker.It was rightly said by Jawaharlal Nehru, ''You can tell the condition of a nation by looking at the status of its women.''

Women empowerment means increasing the power of women. providing social, economic and poltical status to women through the enactment of appropriate laws is the crying need of today. Women have capabilities to make a world of difference in the great march of civilisation.

In the indian context, although the men's share in gainful or paid employment in industry and services has increased in most of the states,women even today do not hold more then 10 per cent seats in Parliament and 5% in State Legislatures.The Women Reservation Bill has been in cold storage since 1995 which provides 30% reservation for women in Parliament and State Assemblies.There is much to improve in women's social,economic and political status in our country.

In India, women have been recognised as a separate target group since 1980s our developmental planning, for raising their status at par with that of men. The National Commission for Women was set up in junuary, 1992. Besides Constitutional safeguards, initatives in the areas of capacity building, employment and income generation, welfare and support servies and gender sensitisation have been undertaken by the Department of Women and Child Development under the national policy for empowerment of women, 2001.

In the context of gender related development, it is heartening that the enrolment, participation and literary rate of girls, as compared to boys, has increased with the growth of our national literacy rate. India still has to go a long way to catch up the HDI levels of the developed countries. For poor and helpless women who are unable to fight for themselves against sexual harassment, domestic violence,ill-condition at work place,protective houses,now a new concept of social action litigation has been developed. It means that any person, social institution, NGO or social worker can directly sue against crime on behalf of aggrieved party.