1.
Women Empowerment is empowering the women to take their own
decisions for their personal development as well as social development.
Empowering women is to make them independent in all aspects from the
mind, thoughts, rights, decisions and social or family limitations.
2. Women Empowerment is the process that creates power in women to live a
happy and respectable life in a society. Women are empowered when they
are able to access opportunities in a variety of fields such as in education,
profession, lifestyle, etc., without any limitations and restrictions. It includes
raising their status through education, awareness, literacy and training. It
also includes the authority to take decisions. When a woman makes a crucial
decision, she feels empowered.
Need for Women Empowerment
History says that women were ill-treated. The Sati Pratha in the ancient times to the
girl child abortion in the present scenario, women continue facing such violence.
Not only this, heinous crimes against women such as rape, acid attack, dowry
system, honour killing, domestic violence, etc., are still happening in India.
Out of the total population, 50% of the population should consist of women.
However, due to female foeticide practices, girl child numbers are decreasing
sharply in India. It has also impacted the sex ratio in India. The literacy rate in girls
is very low. Most of the girls are not even provided with primary education.
Moreover, they are married early and made to raise children and shoulder only
household work. They are not allowed to go out and are dominated by their
husbands. Women are taken for granted by men as they are considered their
property. Even at the workplace, women are discriminated against. They are paid
less for the same work as compared to their male counterparts.
Global gender gap report
1. In the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index (which
measures progress towards gender parity), India slipped to 112th place in
2019-20, simply because over 70 lakh Indian women have dropped out of
work.
2. The estimated earned income of women in India is only one-fifth of
men’s, which puts the country among the bottom 10 globally on this
indicator.
3. China and India together account for about 90 to 95% of the estimated 1.2
to 1.5 million missing female births annually worldwide due to gender-
biased prenatal sex selective practices.
4. The gender gap in political empowerment remains the largest: women
represent only 26.1% of some 35,500 parliament seats and just 22.6% of
over 3,400 ministers worldwide.
5. In 81 countries, there has never been a woman head of state, as of 15th
January, 2021.
6. Bangladesh is the only country where more women have held head-
of-state positions than men in the past 50 years.
7. It will take South Asia 195.4 years to close the gender gap, while Western
Europe will take 52.1 year.
8. According to the UN, legal restrictions have kept 2.7 billion women from
accessing the same choice of jobs as men.
9. As of 2019, less than 25% of parliamentarians were women.
10.One in three women experience gender-based violence.
11.In 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic, female labor force participation
in India was 20.5%, according to ILO estimates. Comparable estimates for
males was 76%.
12. In the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index (which
measures progress towards gender parity), India slipped to 112th place in
2019-20, simply because over 70 lakh Indian women have dropped out of
work.
Steps to Empower Women
Women can be empowered in various ways. It can be done through government
schemes as well as on an individual basis. At the individual level, we should start
respecting women and start giving them opportunities equal to men. We should
promote and encourage them to take up jobs, higher education, business activities,
etc. The Government has come up with various schemes such as Beti Bachao Beti
Padhao Yojana, Mahila-E-Haat, Mahila Shakti Kendra, Working Women Hostel,
Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana, etc. to empower women. Apart from these schemes, we
as individuals can also empower women by abolishing social evils like the dowry
system, child marriage. These small steps will change the situation of women in
society and make them feel empowered.
The Union Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways has flagged off an all-women
crew onboard Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) vessel MT Swarna Krishna.
The initiative is a part of SCI’s ongoing Diamond Jubilee celebrations and also to
commemorate the International Women’s Day (8th March).
This is the first time in the world maritime history that a cargo ship is being
sailed by all women officers.
The UN has decided to keep the theme as “Women in leadership: Achieving an
equal future in a Covid-19 world”.
Meanwhile, some groups of women have called for the theme to be “Choose to
challenge”, claiming that the world only became alert about such issues if it was
challenged.
India celebrates National Girl Child Day, an initiative of the Ministry of Women and
Child Development, every year on January 24.
1. The objective is to raise awareness on the issue of declining Child Sex
Ratio (CSR).
2. The celebrations will also mark the anniversary of Beti Bachao, Beti
Padhao (BBBP) scheme.
3. Punjab has announced January 2021 to be the “month of the girl
child”. The scheme Dheeiyan Di Lohri has also been launched.
4. Shrishti Goswami, a 19-year-old girl, was designated as one-day Chief
Minister of Uttarakhand on the occasion of National Girl Child day on
Sunday.
Safeguards for Women in India:
Constitutional Safeguards:
Fundamental Rights: It guarantees all Indians the right to equality (Article 14),
no discrimination by the State on the basis of gender (Article 15(1)) and special
provisions to be made by the State in favour of women (Article 15(3)).
Fundamental Duties: The Constitution imposes a fundamental duty on every
citizen through Articles 51 (A)(e) to renounce practices derogatory to dignity
of women.
Legislative Framework:
Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005: It provides
victims of domestic violence with a means for practical remedy through
prosecution.
The Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961: It prohibits the request, payment or
acceptance of a dowry.
The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention,
Prohibition, and Redressal) Act, 2013: This legislative act seeks to protect
women from sexual harassment at their place of work.
Related Schemes: Women Technology Park, Gender Advancement for
Transforming Institutions (GATI), etc.
World Conferences on Women:
The United Nations has organized 4 world conferences on women. These
took place in
Mexico City, 1975
Copenhagen, 1980
Nairobi, 1985
Beijing, 1995
The 4th World Conference on Women (WCW), held in Beijing, was one of the
largest ever gatherings of the United Nations, and a critical turning point in the
world’s focus on gender equality and the empowerment of women.
The Beijing Declaration is an agenda for women’s empowerment and
considered the key global policy document on gender equality.
It sets strategic objectives and actions for the advancement of women and
the achievement of gender equality in 12 critical areas of concern like
women and health, women in power and decision-making, the girl-child,
women and the environment.
Recently, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has proposed
a Temporary Basic Income (TBI) for poor women in developing countries to help
them cope with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and alleviate the
economic pressures they face every day.
QUOTES
"Freedom cannot be achieved unless the women have been emancipated from all
forms of oppression." -Nelson Mandela
"You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a
generation." -Brigham Young
The most famous saying said by the Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru is “To awaken the
people, it is the women who must be awakened. Once she is on the move, the
family moves, the village moves, the nation moves”.
Conclusion
"Freedom cannot be achieved unless the women have been emancipated from all
forms of oppression." -Nelson Mandela we as individuals can also empower
women by abolishing social evils like the dowry system, child marriage. These small
steps will change the situation of women in society and make them feel
empowered.
SDGs – women empowerment
TARGETS AND INDICATORS
Target
5.1
End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere
Indicators
Target
5.2
Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private
spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation
Indicators
Target
5.3
Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female
genital mutilation
Indicators
Target
5.4
Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of
public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of
shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate
Indicators
Target
5.5
Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for
leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life
<br>
Indicators
Target
5.6
Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights
as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International
Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action
and the outcome documents of their review conferences
Indicators
Target
5.a
Undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as
access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial
services, inheritance and natural resources, in accordance with national laws
Indicators
Target
5.b
Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and
communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women
Indicators
Target
5.c
Adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion
of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at all levels
Indicators
TARGETS AND INDICATORS
The socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 have adversely affected progress made in
recent years in relation to gender equality: violence against women and girls has
intensified; child marriage, on the decline in recent years, is also expected to
increase; whilst increased care work at home is affecting women
disproportionately. The pandemic has highlighted the need to act swiftly to address
existing gender inequality that remains pervasive globally and get back on track to
achieve the goal of gender equality. Women have played a critical role in the
response to COVID-19, as frontline health providers, care providers and as
managers and leaders of the response and recovery efforts. Yet, they remain
under-represented in critical leadership positions and their rights and
priorities are often not explicitly addressed in response and recovery
measures. The crisis presents the opportunity to re-shape and rebuild systems,
laws, policies and institutions to advance gender equality.
Discriminatory laws and legal gaps continue to prevent women from enjoying their
human rights. Based on 2020 data from 95 countries and territories, more than
half of them lacked quotas for women in national parliament; while 83% of
the countries included budgetary commitments to implement legislation
addressing violence against women, 63% continued to lack rape laws based
on the principle of consent; although over 90% of countries and territories
mandate nondiscrimination on the basis of gender in employment, almost
half of them continued to restrict women from working in certain jobs or
industries; and almost a quarter of countries and territories, did not grant women
equal rights with men to enter marriage and initiate divorce.
New estimates based on surveys from 2000 to 2018 confirm that nearly 1 in 3
women, that is 736 million women, have been subjected to physical and/or
sexual violence by a husband or intimate partner or sexual violence by a non-
partner at least once in their lifetime since the age of 15 – a number that has
remained largely unchanged over the past decade. Intimate partner violence starts
early with nearly 24% of adolescent girls 15-19 years old and 26% of young women
aged 20-24 years who have ever had a partner or been married being subjected
already to this violence.
Over the past decade, the practice of child marriage has declined significantly, with
the global proportion of young women who were married as children decreasing by
15%, from nearly 1 in 4 in 2010 to 1 in 5 in 2020. Thanks to this progress, the
marriages of some 25 million girls have been averted. However, the profound
effects of COVID-19 are threatening this progress, with up to 10 million additional
girls at risk of child marriage in the next decade as a result of the pandemic.
Based on data from 31 countries where the practice is concentrated, at least 200
million girls and women have been subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM).
Despite progress, there are still countries where FGM is almost universal – where at
least 9 in 10 girls and women aged 15 to 49 years have been cut.
On an average day, women spend about 2.5 times as many hours on unpaid
domestic work and care work as men, according to the latest data from 90
countries and areas collected between 2001 and 2019.
As of 1 January 2021, the global average of women in the single or lower chamber
of parliaments reached 25.6%, continuing a slow upward trend that will allow
achieving gender parity no sooner than in 40 years, and 36.3% in local deliberative
bodies (in 135 countries and territories with data). Only 23 countries have 40% or
more women in their lower or single chambers, and 20 countries in local
government, most of them through the use of gender quotas.
By 2019, women, accounted for nearly 39% of the global labour force, but occupied
only 28.3% of managerial positions. This share rose by 3 percentage points since
2000. The pandemic’s disproportional impact on women in the workforce, and
especially on female entrepreneurs, threatens to roll back the little progress that
has been made in reducing the global gender gap in managerial positions.
Data for 2020 from 36 countries show substantial improvement has been achieved
in equal inheritance rights (69%) and to a lesser extent in spousal consent for land
transactions (61%), while areas pertaining to land registration, customary law and
women’s representation in land governance, among others, are lagging behind.
Empowering more women with mobile phones has been shown to accelerate social
and economic development. However, in the 66 countries and territories with data
for 2017 to 2019, mobile phone ownership among women was on average 8.5
percentage point lower than for men.
In 2018, 81% of 69 countries with data required improvements to track budget
allocations for gender equality. In the COVID-19 context, strengthening these
systems, through comprehensive use of gender budgeting tools, will contribute to
better targeting of resources for gender responsive recovery.
Source: Advance unedited copy of 2021 report of the Secretary-General on Progress
towards the Sustainable Development Goals
