Prof D Mukhpadhyay
It may not sound inappropriate to state that half of the world populations are women and achieving sustainable socio-economic development is nothing but a dream unless women can take part in the nation building process. India is attributed with low Human Development Index with respect to women compared to the neighboring countries in general and Sri Lanka in particular. Though the scenario and the rate of gender discrimination has decreased since the days William Bentick, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Annie Besant who were the pivotal forces in securing social justice against gender discrimination during colonial rules. Women empowerment is the pious process in bringing about overall divine capacity development of women in domestic and social existence, with political, social, educational and economic strength. It is an important reliant on numerous variables that comprise of geological situation, socio-economic status, educational achievement and age. Political, social and economic equality for women is integral to the achievement of all across developmental goals. It is true that throughout the world, many women are living in fearfulness of violence but the picture in India is not ignorable too.
There are considerable gaps among policy making against violence and actual scenario at the societal level. Empowerment of women is basically a scientific approach for enhancement of social, economic, cultural and political standing of women, the conventionally disadvantaged, neglected ones in the society. Researchers have shown that women are more likely than men to expand a large proportion of their household income in the welfare of their children, family and providing education. When women are empowered to earn, build assets and enhance their economic security, they develop capability for industrial support and spur economic growth by creating new and suitable employment opportunities as well as spread out the pool of talents and human resources accessible in a country. It is overwhelmingly acknowledged by the researchers that women who are involved in business and entrepreneurial activities are the new drivers for sustainable socio-economic growth and are the emerging stars of the economies in developing countries. Though more and more women are trying to launch businesses, still they are much lesser than men.
In simplicity,empowering women implies developing the society by creating such a system where they can make decisions freely for their individual development and the evolution of society.Empowerment is the process by which women accomplishes increased control and engagement in decision making which ultimately help to attain equal foundation with men in various spheres signified to be social, cultural, economic, political and civil. Let us have glance on the statistics of the degree of lesser cognizance for women empowerment though during last five decades, the concept of women empowerment has undergone a sea change from welfare oriented approach to equity approach. It has also been construed as enabling process by which overall well being of the society is achievable.
It needs to mention that UNDP for the first time introduced the concept of Human Development Index (HDI) in 1990 that was evolved initially as a broader measure of socio-economic development of a nation and it is also accepted by the researchers as a popular measure of average achievements in human development for both the sexes. Contrary to the general belief that development is gender neutral, statistics show that women lag behind men all over the world and India in not an exception in almost all aspects and spheres of socio-economic canvas. It is for this reason that the focus on human development has been to highlight the gender dimension and continuing inequalities confronting women since 1995. The UNDPReport (1995) evidences that that without empowering women overall development of human beings is not possible. It further stressed that if development is not engendered, is endangered. To bring out the facts and figures relating to deprivation of women, two indices, namely, Gender related Development Index (GDI) and Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) were introduced. While GDI measures the achievements in the same dimensions and variables as the HDI, it also takes into account inequality in achievement between women and men. The researchers argued that the greater the gender disparity in human development, the lower is country’s GDI compared to its HDI. The GDI is the HDI adjusted downwards for gender inequality. On the other hand, GEM indicates the degree of women’sability to actively participate in socio- economic and political diaspora. Theoretically speaking, the index can take values between zero and infinity, with a value of unity reflecting an absolute equality in the respective attainments of males and females.
It is worth mentioning that HDI is a summary measure of human development. It measures the degree of average achievements in the three basic dimensions of human development which comprises of ‘knowledge’ which measured by the adult literacy rate with two-thirds weight and the combined Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) with one-third weightage- Education Index, longevity i.e. a long life span and healthy life measured by life expectancy at birth – Health Index, and standard of living measured by GDP per capita in PPP terms in US dollars – Income Index. Since independence, Government of India has been making various efforts to empower women. In various plan periods, the issues regarding women empowerment has been given priority. From fifth five year plan onwards there has been a remarkable shift from welfare oriented approach of women empowerment to development approach. The National Commission for women was set up by an Act of Parliament in 1990 to safeguard the rights’ of women. The 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution provided opportunity to women to take part in active politics.
The year of2001 was declared as the year of women’s empowerment for enhancing their status. To achieve the goal, Government introduced different programs, identified strategies, established different institutions and made various legal provisions. In spite of all these efforts and actions, women in India still lag behind the men. According to 2001 Census, female literacy rate in the country was 54.2 per cent as against 75.9 per cent in case of males. Although literacy rates for both the sexes were witnessing increasing trend over the years from 1951 to 2001 the gap between them were also simultaneously increasing till 1981 and since then it has started declining but the progress has not been as much as was expected of. The situation has been much worse in the rural and remote areas of the country. In spite of women going for higher education, they are facing exclusion from their male counterparts and are alienated in various positions in governance. The incidence like early marriage, female feticides and infanticide, dowry, bride burning, rape, molestation, kidnapping etc are found to be rampant and frequent. The researchers have substantive records of crime against women and it indicate an increasing trend. The position of women in the country in the social, economic and political platforms is hardly equal to that of their male counterparts. Besides low female literacy, there are many other factors that have contributed to gender discrimination, inequality and biasness. Girl child is still given less priority in certain parts of the country.
A female child is discriminated in all spheres including education, employment, nutrition and social status. Though, Government Central and the State Governments are persistently putting their efforts to bring down and control the rate of discrimination against women and empowering them with economic supports in the forms of various schemes for women development and they are also generating positive outcomes but much more needs to be dome at accelerated rate if India aspires to become a prominent economic power in the global map by 2030.Education is sine qua non for bringing about social and economic disparity against women. It is significantly important to know that 82.14% of adult male are literate while just about 65.46% of adult female are known to be literate in India. The gender bias is in higher education, specialized professional trainings which hit women very hard in employment and attaining top leadership in any field. Article 14, 15(I), 16, 39(a), 39(d), and Article 42 of the Constitution provide equality etc to promoting women empowerment but result are not very eye-catching as it should have been. Process to empowering women should begin with providing health, safety and security.
The socio-economic status needs to be improved and it could be possible only by formulating and adopting policies with a view of holistic development of women and making them realize that they have the potential to be strong human beings. In order to create a sustainable world, we must begin to empower women.
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