Women empowerment can be defined in a very simple word that it is the making of women more powerful so that they will be able to take their own decisions regarding their lives and well being of the family and society. Gender inequality is the main social issue in which women are put back in the male dominated society. Women empowerment needs to take a high speed for equalizing the value of both the genders. Uplifting of women in all means should be the utmost priority. Inequalities between the men and the women in the society generate lots of problems which becomes a big obstruction in the way to success of the nation.
Women Empowerment is all about increasing and improving the social, economic, legal and political strength of the women, to ensure the equal-right to the women and to make them confident enough to claim their rights. The subject of empowerment of women is a burning issue all over the world since last few decades. Many agencies of United Nations have emphasized that the gender issue is to be given utmost priority.
Inequalities between women and men and discrimination against the women have been the age-old issue all over the world. Women’s quest for equality with man is an universal phenomenon. Women would like to have for themselves the same strategies of change which the men have had over the centuries, like equal pay for equal work.
A long struggle over a century has brought the women their voting rights, property rights, an equality in civil rights before the law, in matters of marriage and employment (in India women had not struggled for voting rights as we find in other countries).
Women now feel empowered and that they are being equally treated by men in all the spheres of life and are able to express one’s true feminine urges and energies. Women have started playing bigger and bigger role in the economic field as consumers, entrepreneurs, managers, workers and investors. As per a report of The Economist, ‘Women and the World Economy’, in 1950, only one-third of the American women of working age had a paid job.
We can now see the women in almost every field like architecture, lawyers, medical, engineering, financial services and IT jobs. They have also entered the service occupations such as nurse, beautician, sales worker, waitress, etc. They are increasingly and gradually seen marching into the domains which were reserved for males (police, army, pilots, chartered accountants, commandos).
By Premji
