2. • Traditionally, Indian women have been brought to become workers or servants to
serve the man – dominating world.
• Empowerment is the process of building capacities of women, creating an
atmosphere which will enable people to fully utilize their creative potentials.
• Empowerment gives women, the capacity to influence decision making process,
planning, implementation and evaluation.
• Gender gap exists regarding access to education and employment.
• Household decision-making power and freedom of movement of women vary
considerably with their age, education and employment status.
• The empowerment of women refers to providing the necessary rights and
responsibilities to women in order to make them self-reliant.
• Traditionally, Indian women have been brought to become workers or servants to
serve the man – dominating world.
• Empowerment is the process of building capacities of women, creating an
atmosphere which will enable people to fully utilize their creative potentials.
• Empowerment gives women, the capacity to influence decision making process,
planning, implementation and evaluation.
• Gender gap exists regarding access to education and employment.
introduction
Traditionally , Indian women have been brought to become workers
and servants to serve the man-dominating world.
Empowerment is the process of building capabilities of women,
creating an atmosphere which will enable women to fully utilize there
creative potentials.
Gender gap exists regarding access to education and employment.
Household decision-making power and freedom of movement of
women vary considerably with their age, education and employment
status.
The empowerment of women refers to providing the necessary rights
and responsibilities to women in order to make them self-reliant.
Gender gap exists regarding access to education and employment.
3. Let us take you to some recent and blunder
issues….
Delhi rape case.
Victims suffered.
Culprits moving free on streets.
Whom to believe in?
Are they impressionists?
4. Are women safe on the Indian streets? The ugly truth revealed by statistics
• After the Guwahati incident, wherein a girl was sexually molested by around 30 men, I have been getting calls from
concerned parents and IT/BPO companies which employ women; all enquiring about self-defense courses. Suddenly
here was an ugly reminder of the safety of women on Indian streets.
“Oh..come on..it’s the same all over the world. .tell me..if the girl is walking outside a bar at that time, what does
she expect?!” shrugged one middle aged man, while another waved the whole the thing away with a generic
dismissal , “She is a victim of the angrezi pub culture”
But the truth is more ugly and accurate, as these facts below point out.
• The security of woman in India is amongst the lowest, globally ( The more startling fact is, even war-torn Somalia is
rated a better country in terms of safety of women! India is at the bottom 4 along with Afghanistan, Congo and
Pakistan
• In India , Andhra and Bengal seem to be the worst states for woman. All the inference drawn below are based on
published reports of NCRB on “Crime against women”
• A quick look of the molestation and eve-teasing statistics of the top metros, reveal Chennai is comparatively a safer
city for women.
• In total numbers, the predictable bad-boy is of course Delhi, followed by Mumbai. But the ugly story is revealed in
the smaller cities like Bhopal, Indore, Lucknow and especially Vijayawada.
What’s wrong with small town India?!
5. Two thirds of the 774 million illiterate adults worldwide are women
Nearly 3.9 million women are missing each year including 1.4 million
missing girls who are never born and 350,000 women who die each year from complications during
pregnancy or in childbirth.
Women make up just over 19 per cent of parliamentarians worldwide
and only 2.3 per cent in Pacific countries.
Women farmers produce more than half the world’s food and
between 60 to 80 per cent in developing countries but have far less
access to land and resources than men farmers.
One in three women experience physical or sexual violence in their
Lifetime.
Fact About Women :
6. PROCESS
Four of the main processes that could lead to women's empowerment, as defined by the IFAD evaluation, were:
• changes in women's mobility and social interaction
• changes in women's labor patterns
• changes in women's access to and control over resources
• changes in women's control over decision-making.
PROGRAM
Society for Human Development (SHD) carries out women empowerment program, and its implemented at 2 levels…..
1. Attitudinal change process at local level
2. Constitutional reforms and legislation for equal citizenship for women.
• CEDAW (Convention of Elimination of all kinds of Discrimination against Women) and focus the four sectoral
areas……
1. Women’s Political and 2. legal Empowerment
3. Women’s Economic and 4. Social Empowerment.
International Women Day, 8 March a tribute to the women
7. STEPS TO ENHANCE WOMEN’S SAFETY
1. Increase police patrolling. If necessary, hike number of cops in city. All VIPs with more than two security
personnel should give one cop from their security to enhance police presence for the
public
2. Register FIRs in all cases of rape, sexual harassment and other crimes against women. Prosecute cops
found persuading women to drop such complaints
3.Home guards on buses not enough. Institute system of random checking of buses by PCR vans at
night
4.Use technology: All public transport must be on GPS, install CCTVs on buses, make drivers and
helpers/conductors wear non-tamperable photo IDs, create common database accessible by police and
other enforcement agencies
5.All sexual offenders must be monitored by law enforcers once they have served their sentence
6. work with partner governments to help develop and implement the
necessary laws and policies for ending violence against women
7. improve health service responses so they can identify, respond and give referrals to women
who have been subjected to violence> work with men and boys, community organisations
and leaders to
8.prevent violence against women and help change community attitudes
to violence, including through work in the education sector
8. Proposed Solutions
1. Advancing equal access to gender-responsive health and education
services
2. Increasing women’s voice in decision-making, leadership, and
peace-building
3. Empowering women economically and improving their
livelihood security
4. Ending violence against women and girls at home, in their
communities, and in disaster and conflict situations.
To achieve strategic goals
– saving lives
- promoting opportunities for all
- sustainable economic
Development
- effective governance and humanitarian and disaster
response.
9. Pillar 1:
Advancing equal access gender-responsive health and education services
The gender-related priorities in the education sector are:
> specific focus on girls’ education in countries where gender gaps in
completion rates are greatest
> maximising opportunities in education programs to promote gender
equality by including women in management
Example:
In 2010, Australia supported BRAC – a large local NGO in Bangladesh –to operate
23,670 primary schools serving 722,065 children and 8,000 pre-primary schools
serving 223,864 children. Over 60 per cent of the BRAC students at pre-primary and
primary levels are girls and almost 100 per cent of all BRAC teachers are women as
are the librarians working in community learning centres and facilitators working in
community-based adolescent clubs. This is in contrast to the national norm, where
the majority of primary school teachers are male.
10. Pillar 2: Increasing women’s voice in decision-making,
leadership and peace-building
Approach to increasing women’s voice in decision-making, leadership
and peace-building is therefore to:
> develop women’s leadership abilities in communities, for example,
through participation in water supply management committees, school
management committees, village health committees and village
development committees
> strengthen women’s groups and organisations in civil society, including
at sub national level, and help them to build coalitions (including with
men) and influence policies and developments
> build capacities of women to participate in democratic processes as
candidates and voters, and to hold governments and service providers
to account
> work with governments and civil society in partner countries to
establish an enabling environment for women to participate in
democratic processes and administrative decision making
Example:
In the Philippines, Mindanao communities have been damaged
by decades of
complex armed conflict between community groups. Under the
initiative ‘Another
Mindanao is Possible’, Australia is providing support to the
Mindanao Commission
on Women to help them to influence public policy and public
opinion about peace
development from a women’s perspective
11. Pillar 3: Empowering women economically and improving their livelihood security
Our approach for improving women’s economic empowerment and
livelihood security is to:
> improve access to financial services (savings, credit, insurance and
financial literacy) by helping providers expand their coverage and develop new financial instruments that respond to women’s
needs, as
well as by improving financial literacy
> work with the government, private sector, and research institutions to
improve women’s agricultural productivity through access to productive
resources, machinery, inputs, markets, and new technology
> provide an enabling environment for women to compete equally with
men through improved policies and access to training, rural roads,
transportation, electricity, information and digital technology
> look for innovative solutions to provision of care for children, the
elderly, and infirm, including through expansion of pre-primary
education
> support social protection measures that specifically meet the needs of
women and children, including those that protect women in the
informal sector and other vulnerable occupations.
Example:
Solomon Islands Road Program, through the Community Sector Program, upgraded
and maintained roads on Malaita Island. The program can demonstrate that the
improvement in road transport in Malaita has led to significant improvements for
women in accessing markets and essential services such as schools and government
extension services. The program also made a point of employing women wherever
possible – 39 women and 128 men were employed as contractors and five of
the 17 contracts awarded for road maintenance had women as their principals.
In addition, 490 women out of the 730 people employed to maintain roads,
were women.
12. The summary of the pathetic India story on “crime against women” is captured by the graph below.
In 10 years since 2000, the total incidents of crime has grown 50 fold! If one tries to blame this on the
burgeoning population, its futile; because the figure on the rate of crime against woman (number of
incidents in a lakh of population) also shows a steady upward slant. 30 times increase in 10 years!
Today Crime against women cases form 10% of the total IPC cases in India !
• What is to be done to improve the safety of Indian women?
I am not a social scientist to understand the implications and extrapolate on the catalysts of this trend of Crime
against women in India. But there is no ambiguity in the simple fact that security of women in India is abysmal.
This ‘crime against woman ‘situation cannot be improved in a short duration; due to various cultural, economic and
social factors. Like the ingrained patriarchal mind-set, the economic dependency, increasing alcohol consumption,
wave of migrant labourers in big cities, the clash of cultural values due to a media explosion within 2 decades. The
list can go on.
• Education is better than Policing for “crime against women”
I feel the change will be more enduring if it’s inculcated from bottom up. Values and social mores are imbibed at an
early age. It’s very tough to change social values after a certain age.
Policing and law-enforcement can at the best act as deterrents. But their resources are already stretched thin. The
best bet is education. If the man vs woman equations are spelt out clearly at a very young age, probably in 2 or 3
generation cycles we can see a significant change is the safety of women on the Indian streets.
13. ‘’We know the causes…
We have the solutions...
We can make a difference.”
When women move forward the family moves, the village moves and the nation moves".
It is essential as their thought & their value systems lead the development of a good family, good society &
ultimately a good nation".
Indian government has taken several steps towards empowering women.
Empowerment of women also requires participation and co-operation of men as they benefit by having
educated mothers, wives, daughters and sisters.
The economic empowerment will allow raising women's self awareness, skill development, creative decision
making and it may also lead to produce better citizens and a new and modern India.
“The Role of women in the development of society is of utmost
importance. In fact, it is the only thing that determines whether a
society is strong and harmonious, or otherwise. Women are the
backbone of society”.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar