Striipes - Women Empowerment: The Story So Far

By Author: Anand Kumar
Total Articles: 5
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Women are powerful change makers and their leadership is critical in development of any society. With the unique set of skills and knowledge that they possess, women play a crucial role in tackling the world's most urgent issues. Recognizing this very fact, United Nations adopted the promotion of gender equity as one of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG 3). Kofi Annan, the Former Secretary General of United Nations has also indicated that "Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance." It is evident that empowering women would ultimately lead to economic growth and sustainability of the society.

Women form almost half the global population and account for 60% of the workforce, but still have no or little say in decision making and own only 1% of the world's real estate (ILO). Women face political, economic and social, discrimination indicating prevalence of gender biasness globally. Society has often belittled the efforts of women, and this is reflected in the words of Virginia ...
... Woolf, "For most of history, Anonymous was a woman". Despite the recognition of the indispensable role of women in addressing the existing social challenges, the progress made towards achieving the MDG3 targets has been slow. Research in this direction reveals numerous facts that exposes the reality and the plight of women across the globe.

1. 40 million women and children around the world are affected by violent conflicts, civil wars, disasters, and displacement.
2. 60 million girls across the world are forced into early marriage.
3. Every year 3 million women are at a risk of facing genital mutilation/cutting.
4. Women wages are 17% lower than men.
5. 776 million women are illiterate in the world.

Indian women have made remarkable progress in coming out of the age old traditions and obstacles. These changes are evident from the fact that in 2012, 86% of urban resident women and 76% of rural women are involved in decision making. Also 60% of the women folk have access to money (GOI, 2012). There has been tremendous progress made on certain aspects, but at the same time certain facts make the picture gloomy. An increase of 7.1 % in crime against women was observed between 2010 and 2011, indicates the rising crime against women. Similarly the Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) of India is 212 per 100,000 live births, which is higher than the MDG target of 109 per 100,000 live births by 2015. In 2012, only eight out of 74 ministerial positions in the Union council of ministers was occupied by women. There are only two women judges out of 26 judges in the Supreme Court, and there were only 54 women judges out of 634 judges in various high courts. These figures confirm that there is a long way that Indian women will have to travel to become equal to their male counterparts.

Women deserve equal dignity, justice and respect and there are evidences that progress is being made towards women empowerment. The struggle for equality will continue but the question is how long, would it take to ensure equal participation of women and bring them at par with men?

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