16-05-2012, 11:24 AM
WOMEN EMPOWERMENT IN INDIA – MILESTONES & CHALLENGES
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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. The list of capabilities
that she draws is cross-cultural as necessary element of truly human functioning. They
include:
1. Life-being able to live to the end of human life of normal length: not dying prematurely, or
before one's life is so reduced as to be not worth living.
2. Bodily health – being able to have good health including reproductive health, to be
adequately nourished, to have adequate shelter.
3. Bodily integrity – Being able to move freely from place to place, to be secure against
violent assault, including sexual assault and domestic violence; having opportunities for
sex satisfaction and for choice in matters of reproduction.
4. Senses, imagination and thought – Being able to use the sense, to imagine, think and
reason in a truly human way including but not limited to literacy. Being able to use one's
mind and imagination protected by freedom of expression.
5. Emotions – being able to have attachments, to love, to grieve to experience longing
gratitude and justified anger. Not having one's emotional development blighted by fear
and anxiety.
6. Practical Reason – Being able to form a conception of the good and to engage in critical
reflection about planning of one's life's protected by liberty of conscience.
7. Affiliation – Being able to live with and toward others to have social interactions, to have
the capability of both justice and friendship. This would entail freedom of assembly and
free speech. Having social bases for self-respect and non-humiliation, being protected
against discrimination on the basis of race, sex sexual orientation religion caste or
region.
8. Other species – Being able to concern with nature.
9. Play – being able to laugh, play and enjoy.
10. Control over one's environment.
a) Political. Being able to participate effectively in political choices that govern one's life,
having the right to political participation, protection of free speech and association.
b) Material. Being able to hold property to seek employment on equal bases and having
freedom from unwarranted search and seizure. In work, being able to work as a
human being, exercising practical reason and entering into meaningful relationships
of mutual recognition with the workers.
These capabilities cover the so called "first generation rights" (political & civil liberties) as
well as the "second generation rights" (economic and social rights0. It has been emphasized
that women all over the world have been short shifted and have not found support for their
central human functions. Women are capable of these functions given sufficient, nutrition,
education and other support. Women are most often not treated as subjects. Women are as
capable as men of exercising will, controlling desires and taking decisions but males enjoy
support of social institutions and women are excluded as the 'other'. Women are often not
treated as "ends in themselves" persons with dignity who deserve respect from laws and
institutions instead they are treated instrumentally as reproducers, caregivers, sexual
receivers, agents of family's general prosperity.
Human development report since 1999 demonstrate that practically no country in the world
treats its women as well as men according to the measures of life expectancy wealth and
education. Developing countries present especially urgent problems where caste and class
result in acute failure of human capabilities of women. Women in this part of south East Asia
lack essential support for fully functioning human lives. Within the country there are many
issues to be addressed closely.
GDI: Inter State Comparison
The virtues of a measure such as the GDI, which can project the status of women by
encapsulating achievements in three basis dimensions, soon become clear to policy makers.
It spurred efforts to rank States in India by calculating their GDI (Shiv Kumar 1966, Seeta
Prabhu, Sarkar and Radha 1996; Aasha Kapur Mehta 1996; Hirway and Mahadevia 1996).
A comparison of the HDI and GDI reveal that in Punjab, Haryana, Bihar. West Bengal and
Rajasthan development has been inequitous and women did not get equal share in the
development. For Uttar Pradesh which has the lowest HDI rank as well as the lowest GDI
rank, the challenge is to see how men and women can more from being equal partners in
slow development to partners in dynamic growth.
Empowerment of women is a commitment for PACS and some others strategic programmes,
while developing strategies for empowering women some programmes are sensitive to
recognizing women's contribution and their knowledge as the first step. The appreciate that
women require principally social support to fight their sense of inadequacy and fears to
enhance their self-respect and dignity. Empowering women means control over their bodies
and becoming economically independent, controlling resources like land and property and
reduction of burden of work. A society or programme which aims at women's empowerment
needs to create and strengthen sisterhood and to promote overall nurturing, caring and
gentleness. PACS emphasis on emphasis on women SHG's as a collective is one such
efforts. Being conference 1995 had identified certain quantitative and qualitative indicators of
women empowerment.
Beijing conference 1995 indicators of women empowerment, qualitative & quantitative Qualitative:
1. increase in self-esteem, individual and collective confidence;
2. increase in articulation, knowledge and awareness on health, nutrition reproductive
rights, law and literacy;
3. increase an decrease in personal leisure time and time for child care;
4. increase on decrease of work loads in new programmes;
5. change in roles and responsibility in family & community;
6. visible increase on decrease in violence on women and girls;
7. responses to, changes in social customs like child marriage, dowry, discrimination
against widows;
8. visible changes in women's participation level attending meeting, participating and
demanding participation;
9. increase in bargaining and negotiating power at home, in community and the collective;
10. increase access to and ability to gather information;
11. formation of women collectives;
12. positive changes in social attitudes;
13. awareness and recognition of women's economic contribution within and outside the
household;
14. women's decision-making over her work and income.
Quantitative indicators:
A. demographic trends
• maternal mortality rate
• fertility rate
• sex ratio
• life expectancy at birth
• average age of marriage
B. Number of women participating in different development programmers
C. Greater access and control over community resources/government
schemes-crèche, credit cooperative, non formal education
D. Visible change in physical health status and nutritional level
E. Change in literacy and & enrollment levels
F. Participation levels of women in political processMonitorable targets for the Tenth Plan
and beyond had certain key issues related to gender.
• All children in school by 2003; all children to complete five years of schooling by
2007.
• Reduction of gender gaps in literacy and wage rates by at least 50% by 2007.
• Reduction of IMR to 45 per 1000 live births by 2007 and 28 by 2012.
• Reduction of maternal mortality ratio (MMR) to 2 per 1000 live births by 2007 onto to
by 2012.
India's declining sex ratio caused through foeticide, infanticide and systematic neglect
requires urgent and comprehensive action. It is well evidenced that low literacy, endemic
under nutrition and social inequality are closely related gender inequality is a crucial
antecedent to endemic undernutrition.
Education:
Women's education is extremely important intrinsically as it is their human right and required
for the flourishing of many of their capacities.
It is, however, noticed that most programmes for education of girls and women in India have
reinforced Gender roles specially motherhood in curriculum as well as impact evaluation.
The huge study of nearly 94% of India's population done by Drez and others looks at female
literacy and its negative and statistically significant impact on child mortality.
The questions of power are interlinked and we understand that what is necessary is both
objective power in terms of economic resources, laws, institutional roles and norms held by
others as well as subjective power in terms of self efficacy and entitlements. Empowerment
of women is closely related to formal and informal sources of education. Late 19th century &
20th century reformers advocated women's education as a principal strategy to answer the
'women's question'. Many innovative efforts are accelerated after the NPE. In UP a renewal
process of correcting gender stereotyping was initiated in 1998 looking at textbooks and
training besides infrastructure and community mobilization. There is marked improvement in
girls enrollment and steady decline in drop out rates.
Despite statistically positive trends closer studies show that privileged spaces in classrooms
are occupied by boys. Girls are rarely addressed by their names. Girls sit in last rows in
classes of mathematics and rarely muster courage enough to come close to the board where
the teacher sits (usually a male in most remote areas? Private school initiative for gender
concerns is rare Madarsas have large number of girls but like convents and Arya Kanya
Pathshala's gender transformation is not their agenda. Moral science text books still have
preponderance of men. Women as agents of social reform are not mentioned. CSO efforts
have very often shown greater enhancement of girls self-esteem but in many cases there is
poor cognitive development generally attributed to low paid, low qualified but highly
motivated instructor. Kanya Vidya Dhan, free uniforms, mid-day meal, school attached
crèche, mothers meetings have all had positive results.
In various surveys conducted by ISST it has been apparent that parental apathy or
opposition to girl child education is fast reading even in traditional male dominated states of
north Indian. Given the right infrastructure-schools located in neighbourhoods, preferably
with female teachers parents would allow girls to study "as long as they would like to". It may
however be noticed as evidenced by researchers, the same families who are willing to see
girls in college react violently if the girl decides to choose her partner in marriage or
challenge other norms of feminine behavior.