GENDER EQUITY WOMAN EMPOWERMENT Abstract Empowerment is a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional and multi-layered concept.

Women's empowerment is a process in which women gain greater share of control over resources material, human and intellectual like knowledge, information, ideas and financialresources like money - and access to money and control over decision -making in the home, community, society and nation, and to gain `power'. According to the Country Report of Government of India, "Empowerment means moving from a position of enforced powerlessness to one of power" .If NGO employees are advocating behavior change for self-empowerment such behaviour must also be modeled for successful transmission as suggested in the self-efficacy models of behavior change. Rural NGOs in India that depend on local populationfor employees face a limited labor pool who are as likely to be vulnerable to thetraditional social pressures and therefore equally marginalized as their cli ents. This maycause a gap between what the employees may be trained to 'preach' and what they may'practice' thereby diminishing their effectiveness to motivate change. We examine theemployees of a successful rural NGO in India that has received accolades f or its work inempowerment to establish if the employees actually walk the talk. Using threeempower ment instruments, including one developed for this study, we find thatemployees indeed walk the talk and their index of empowerment is related to their tenure in the NGO. Fight for gender equality is not a fight against men. It is a fight against traditionsthat have chained them a fight against attitudes that are ingrained in the society it is a fight against system a fight against proverbial Laxshma n Rekha which isdifferent for men and different for women. The society must rise to the occasion. Itmust recognize & accept fact that men and women are equal partners in life. Theyare individual who have their own identity. Dr. Justice A.S. Anand Introduction Man and woman are both equal and both plays a vital role in the creation anddevelopment of their families in a particular and the society in general. Indeed, thestruggle for legal equality has been one of the major concerns of the womens moveme ntall over the world. In India, since long back, women were considered as an oppressedsection of the society and they were neglected for centuries. During the national strugglefor independence, Gandhi gave a call of emancipation of women. He wrote :I amuncompromising in the matter of womens rights. The difference in sex and physical formdenotes no difference in status. Woman is the complement of man, and not inferior.Thus, the first task in post independent India was to provide a constitution to the peo ple,which would not make any distinctions on the basis of sex. The preamble of constitution promises to secure to all its citizens- Justice - economical, social, and political. Theconstitution declares that the equality before the law and the equal protec tion of lawsshall be available for all . Similarly, there shall be no discrimination against any citizenon the ground of sex . Article 15(1) guarantees equalities of opportunities for all citizensin matters of employment. Article 15(3) provides that the st ate can make any special provisions for women and children. Besides, directive principle of state policy whichconcern women directly and have a special bearing on their status directly and have aspecial bearing on their status include Article 39(a) right to an adequate means of livelihood; (d) equal pay for equal wok both men and women, (e) protection of health andstrength of workers men, women, children and Article 42 provides for just and humaneconditions of

work and maternity relief.It is really importa nt to note that though the Constitution of India is working since morethan fifty-seven years the raising of the status of women to one of equality, freedom anddignity is still a question mark.The empowerment of women is one of the central issues in the process of development of countries all over the world. The contribution of writers and social reformers has beenwell documented. The Government of India has made Empowerment of Women as one of the principal objectives of the Ninth Five Year Plan (1997-2002) and also declared 2001as the year of Women's Empowerment . These issues of gender equality are discussed inWorld Conferences, National and International Conferences, etc. Our Constitution hasconferred and guaranteed equality before law, universal adult franchise and equalopport unities for men and women as fundamental rights. The imperative of gender partnership in matters of development has been recognised. In order to give a fillip toempowerment of women and appropriate institutional mechanisms and interventionshave been consciously built into the development design.Separate institutions for women and child development, departments at the Central andState levels, creation of the National Commission for Women and also State Commissionfor Women in seve ral States are some of the important developments for the bettermentand prosperity of women. The launching of Rashtriya Mahila Kosh, Indira MahilaYojana, Mahila Samridhi Yojana, reserving of one third of the number of seats in

Panchayats and the local bodies are programmes launched with a view to improve andempower women socially, economically and in political frontiers.Empowerment is a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional and multi-layered concept. Women'sempowerment is a process in which women gain greater share of control over resources material, human and intellectual like knowledge, information, ideas and financialresources like money - and access to money and control over decision -making in thehome, community, society and nation, and to gain `power'. A ccording to the CountryReport of Government of India, "Empowerment means moving from a position of enforced powerlessness to one of power" .Women constitute almost 50% of the worlds population. As per as their social status isconcerned, they are not trea ted as equal to men in all the places, through in the westerncountries women are treated on par with men in most of the fields, their counterpart in theeast suffers from many disabilities. The disabilities on the one hand and the inequalities between men and women on the other, have given rise to what is known Gender problem. All one the world and particularly in South and East Asia and Africa the gender problem has assumed importance during the recent years the gender issue has becomevirtually a crucial point of argument. It is now widely believed that empowerment of women i.e., providing equal rights, opportunities and responsibilities to women, will go along way in removing the existing gender discrimination. Women empowerment incontem porary Indian society in forms of their work, education, health and media imagesin the forms of their work, education, health and media images in the context of lineage,rule of residence and household chores, their context of lineage, rule of residence andhousehold chores, their participation in social and political activities, their legal status interms of marriage, divorce and inheritance of property, seeking wealth care should betaken into consideration. Empowerment in terms of knowledge and awareness of onesown life an d society including legal raise their status with regarded to the lives. Meaning

Gender Inequalities refers to the obvious or hidden disparities among individuals basedon the performance of gender. This problem in simple term is known as Gender Biaswhich i n simple terms means the gender stratification or making difference between a girland a boy i.e. a male or a female. In making biasness among the gender India has 10thrank out of 128 countries all over the world which is shameful for us . But this problem isincreasing although government has banned the pre -natal sex examination. In India (inthe older times) this problem is mainly seen in the rural areas because many rural peoplethink that the girl child is burden on them. But now this is also being seen in the urbanareas i.e. in offices, institutions, schools and in society. The afflicted world in which welive is characterised by deeply unequal sharing of the burden of adversities betweenwomen and men. Gender Inequality exists in most part of the world, from Japan toMorocco, or from Uzbekistan to United States of America (as stated earlier).However, inequality between men and women can take very many different forms.Indeed, gender inequality is not one homogeneous phenomenon, but a collection of disparate and interlinked problems. The issue of gender inequality is one which has been publicly reverberating through society for decades. The problem of inequality inemplo yment being one of the most pressing issues today. In order to examine thissituation one must try to get to the root of the problem and must understand the sociological factors that cause women to have a much more difficult time getting thesame benefits, wages, and job opportunities as their male counterparts. The society inwhich we live has been shaped historically by males.Before thinking about the empowerment of women, one needs to understand the exactmeaning of the word empowerment. According to Cambridge English Dictionaryempo werment means to authorize. In the context of the people they have to beauthorized to have control over their lives. When applied in the context of developmentthe particular segment of population, the poor, the women, the vulnerable, the weak, theoppressed and the discriminated have to be empowered to have control over their livesto better their socioeconomic and political conditions,. But the questions raised are, whoempowers them and how to empower them? Ideally speaking no one empowers any one,the best way us self empowerment, by the segments of population mentione d above arehandicapped both structurally and culturally to empower themselves without any outsidehelp and affirmative action by the State and others. But still as long as these segments of population does not make any effort at self-employment. It would be long and arduoustask and process for the outsiders to empower them.Since the 1990s women have been identified as key agents of sustainable developmentand womens equality and empowerment are seen as central to a more holistic approachtowards establishin g new patterns and processes of development that are sustainable. TheWorld Bank has suggested that empowerment of women should be a key aspect of allsocial development programs (World Bank, 2001). Although a considerable debate onwhat constitutes empowerme nt exists, in this paper we find it useful to rely on Kabeers(2001) definition: "The expansion in people's ability to make strategic life choices in acontext where this ability was previously denied to them." For women in India, thissuggests empowerment in several realms: personal, familial, economic and political.Since the 1980s the Government of India has shown increasing concern for women'sissues through a variety of legislation promoting the education and political participationof women (Collier, 1998). International organizations like the World Bank and United Nations have focused on womens issues especially the empowerment of poor women inrural areas. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, non -governmental organizations (NGOs)have also taken on an incre ased role in the area of womens empowerment (Sadik, 1988). NGOs, previously catering to womens health and educational needs, have moved b

eyond this traditional focus to addressing the underlying causes of deprivations through promoting the economic and social empowerment of women. (McNamara: 2003). Thereare many challenges that face NGOs who make it their goal to empower women(Nara yan: 2002; Mayoux: 2000; Malhotra and Mather: 1997). Types Of Gender Inequalities There are many kinds of gender inequality or gender disparity which are as follows: 1. Natality inequality : In this type of inequality a preference is given for boys over girlsthat many male dominated societies have, gender inequality can manifest itself in the form of the parents wanting the newborn to be a boy rather than a girl. There was a timewhen this could be no more than a wish (a daydream or a nightmare, depending on one's perspective), but with the availability of modern techniques to determine the gender of the foetus, sexselective abortion has become common in many countries. It is particularly prevalent in East Asia, in China and South Korea in particular, but also inSingapore and Taiwan, and it is beginning to emerge as a statistically significant phenom enon in India and South Asia as well. 2. Professional or Employment inequality: In terms of employment as well as promotion in work and occupation, women often face greater handicap than men. Acountry like Japan and India may be quite egalitarian in matters of demography or basicfacilities, and even, to a great extent, in higher education, and yet progress to elevatedlevels of employment and occupation seems to be much more problematic for womenthan for men. The example of employment inequality can be explained by saying thatmen get p riority in seeking job than women. 3. Ownership inequality : In many societies the ownership of property can also be veryunequal. Even basic assets such as homes and land may be very asymmetrically shared.The absence of claims to property can not only reduce the voice of women, but also makeit harder for women to enter and flourish in commercial, economic and even some socialactivities. This type of inequality has existed in most parts of the world, though there arealso local variations. For example, even though traditional property rights have favouredmen in the bulk of India. 4. Household inequality: There are often enough, basic inequalities in gender relationswithin the family or the household, which can take many different forms. Even in cases inwhich t here are no overt signs of anti-female bias in, say, survival or son -preference or education, or even in promotion to higher executive positions, the family arrangementscan be quite unequal in terms of sharing the burden of housework and child care. It is, for example, quite common in many societies to take it for granted that while men willnaturally work outside the home, women could do it if and only if they could combine itwith various inescapable and unequally shared household duties. This is sometimes called"division of labour," though women could be forgiven for seeing it as "accumulation of labour." The reach of this inequality includes not only unequal relations within the family, but also derivative inequalities in employment and recognition in the outside world. Also,the established fixity of this type of "division" or "accumulation" of labour can also havefar -reaching effects on the knowledge and understanding of different types of work in professional circles. 5. Special opportunity inequality: Even when there is relatively little difference in basicfacilities including schooling, the opportunities of higher education may be far fewer for young women than for young men. Indeed, gender bias in higher education and professi

onal training can be observed even in some of the richest countries in the world,in India too. Sometimes this type of division has been based on the superficiallyinnocuous idea that the respective "provinces" of men and women are just different. Role of women in development process The principal of gender equality was recognized in the United Nations Charter in 1945 and the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the majority of development plannersdid not fully address the role of women in development process. In 1975, the first UN C o n f e r e n c e o f W o m e n a n d D e v e l o p m e n t w a s h e l d a t M e x i c o c i t y u n d e r t h e m o t t o , Equality, Development and peace. The need to integrate women into development wasinternationally proclaimed in the 1995 Beijing Conference. The Economic Survey (1999-2 0 0 0 ) u s e d a n e n t i r e s e c t i o n o n g e n d e r i n e q u a l i t y . I t b e g a n w i t h a r e m i n d e r o f t h e commitment made in the ninth plan document of allocating 30 per cent of resources for womens development schemes through Womens Component Plans. According toMenon and Probhu (2001), there was a strong plea for investing in womens equality ont h e g r o u n d t h a t t h i s m a d e e c o n o m i c s e n s e a n d s p o k e o f t h e s o c i a l r a t e o f r e t u r n o n investment in women being greater that the corresponding rate for men. According toP a t e n ( 2 0 0 2 ) , w o m e n s d e v e l o p m e n t c a n b e a t t a i n e d b y i m p r o v i n g h e r e s t a t u s a n d bargaining power in the economy.Sushma Sachay (1998) argues that approaches and strategic for women empowermentcould be possible by outlining the mechanisms and tools that till influence for womenempowerment. Decisions making process, multidimensional process that are enable wornto realize their full identity and powers in all walks of life. As a Concept Gender Inequalities refers to the obvious or hidden disparities among individuals basedon the performance of gender. This problem in simple term is known as Gender Bias which in simple terms means the gender stratification or making difference between a girland a boy i.e. a male or a female. In making biasness among the gender India has 10th rank out of 128 countries all over the world which is shameful for us . But this problem isincreasing although government has banned the pre-natal sex examination. In India (in the older times) this problem is mainly seen in the rural areas because many rural peoplethink that the girl child is burden on them. But now this is also being seen in the urbanareas i.e. in offices, institutions, schools and in society.H o w e v e r , inequality between men and women can take very many different forms.Indeed, gender inequality is not one homogeneous phenomenon, but a collection o f disparate and interlinked problems. The issue of gender inequality is one which has been p u b l i c l y r e v e r b e r a t i n g t h r o u g h s o c i e t y f o r d e c a d e s . T h e p r o b l e m o f i n e q u a l i t y inemployment being one of the most pressing issu es today. In order to examine thiss i t u a t i o n o n e m u s t t r y t o g e t t o t h e r o o t o f t h e p r o b l e m a n d m u s t u n d e r s t a n d t h e sociological factors that cause women to have a much more difficult time getting thesame benefits, wages, and job opportunities as their male counterparts. The society inwhich we live has been shaped historically by males. However, in many parts of theworld, women receive less attention and health care than men do, and particularly girls o f t e n r e c e i v e v e r y m u c h l e s s s u p p o r t t h a n b o y s . A s a r e s u l t o f t h i s g e n d e r b i a s , t h e mortality rates of females often exceed those of males in these countries. The concept of missing women was devised to give some idea of the enormity of the phenomenon of women's adversity in mortality by focussing on the women who are simply not there, dueto unusually high mortality compared with male mortality rates. In some regions in the

world, inequality between women and men directly involves matters of life and death,and takes the brutal form of unusually high mortality rat es of women and a consequent preponderance of men in the total population, as opposed to the preponderance of womenfound in societies with little or no gender bias in health care and nutrition. Mortalityinequality has been observed extensively in North Afr ica and in Asia, including Chinaand South Asia.Empowering may be understood as enabling people, especially women to acquire and possess power resources, in order to make decision on their own or resist decisions thatare made by others that affect them. A p erson may said to be powerful when he/she hascontrol over a large portion of power resources in society. The extent of possession of various resources such as personal wealth, such as land skills, education, information,knowledge, social status, position held, leadership trains, capabilities of mobilization.T h e N a t i o n a l P o l i c y o n E d u c a t i o n ( 1 9 8 6 ) s u g g e s t e d c e r t a i n s t r a t e g i e s t o e m p o w e r women. Accordingly, women become empowered through collective reflections anddecision making enable them to become agency of social change. The global conferenceon Women Empowerment (1988), highlighted empowerment as the best way of makingown partners in development the development of women and children in Rural Areas( D W C R A ) p r o g r a m w a s i n i t i a t e d a s a s u b s c h e m e o f t h e n a t i o n a l w i d e p o v e r t y alleviation program i.e., the Integrated Rural Development Program (IRDP). It aims atimparting self reliance to rural areas through income generating skill s along with grouporganization skills. Keeping this in view the year 2001 was celebrated as The WomensEmpowerment Year. Human resource development and empowerment of women unlock the door for modernization of society,. Instated of remaining as passive beneficiaries, women must become active partner. Participation and control over resources of power areconsidered as the critical indicators in the process of development discharged womenespecially in rural areas, possess the least proportion of these resources and as a result they are powerless and dependent on the powerful and wealthy. Focusing On India While there is something to cheer in the developments I have just been discussing, and there is considerable evidence of a weakened hold of gender disparity in several fields int h e s u b c o n t i n e n t , t h e r e i s a l s o , a l a s , s o m e e v i d e n c e o f a m o v e m e n t i n t h e c o n t r a r y direction, at least in one aspect of gender inequality, namely, natality inequality. This has been brought out particularly sharply by the early results of the 2001 decennial nationalCensus of India, which are now available. Early results indicate that even though theoverall female to male ratio has improved slightly for the country as a whole (with acorresponding reduction of the proportion of "missing women"), the female -male ratiofor children has had a substantial decline. For India as a whole, the female-male ratio of the population under age 6 has fallen from 94.5 girls for hundred boys in 1991 to 92.7 girls per hundred boys in 2001.While there has been no such decline in some parts of the country (most notably Kerala),it has fallen very sharply in others, such as Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat and Maharashtra, which are among the richer Indian States. Taking together all the evidence that exists, it is clear that this change reflects not a rise in female child mortality, but a fall in female births vis--vis male births, and is almost certainly connected with increased availabilityand use of gender determination of foetuses. Fearing that sex -selective abortion mightoccur in India, the Indian Parliament banned some years ago the use of sex determinationt e c h n i q u e s f o r f o e t u s e s , e x c e p t w h e n i t i s a b y - p r o d u c t o f o t h e r n e c e s s a r y m e d i c a l investigation. But it appears that the enforcement of this law has been comprehensivelyneglected. This face of gender inequality cannot, therefore, be removed, at l east in theshort run, by the enhancement of women's empowerment and agency, since that agency isitself an integral part of the

cause of natality inequality. Policy initiatives have to takeadequate note of the fact that the pattern of gender inequality seems to be shifting inIndia, right at this time, from mortality inequality (the female life expectancy at birth is by now two years higher than male life expectancy in India) to natality inequality. Indeed,there is clear evidence that traditional routes of changing gender inequality, through using public policy to influence female education and female economic participation, may notserve as a path to the removal of natality inequality.A sharp pointer in that direction comes from countries in East Asia, which all have highl e v e l s o f f e m a l e e d u c a t i o n a n d e c o n o m i c p a r t i c i p a t i o n . D e s p i t e t h e s e a c h i e v e m e n t s , compared with the biologically common ratio across the world of 95 girls being born per hundred boys, Singapore and Taiwan have 92 girls, South Korea only 88, and China amere 86. In fact, South Korea's overall female-male ratio for children is also a meagre 88girls for 100 boys and China's 85 girls for 100 boys. In comparison, the Indian ratio of 92.7 girls or 100 boys (though lower than its previous figure of 94.5 ) still looks far lessunfavourable.However, there are more grounds for concern than may be suggested by the current all-India average. First, there are substantial variations within India, and the all-India averagehides the fact that there are States in In dia where the female-male ratio for children isvery much lower than the Indian average. Second, it has to be asked whether with thespread of sex-selective abortion, India may catch up with - and perhaps even go beyond -Korea and China. There is, in fact, strong evidence that this is happening in a big way in parts of the country.There is, however, something of a social and cultural divide across India, splitting the country into two nearly contiguous halves, in the extent of anti-female bias in natality and post-natality mortality. Since more boys are born than girls everywhere in the world, evenwithout sex-specific abortion, we can use as a classificatory benchmark the female-maleratio among children in advanced industrial countries. The female-male ratio for the 0-5age group is 94.8 in Germany, 95.0 in the U.K., and 95.7 in the U.S., and perhaps we cans e n s i b l y p i c k t h e G e r m a n r a t i o o f 9 4 . 8 a s t h e c u t - o f f p o i n t b e l o w w h i c h w e s h o u l d suspect anti-female intervention. The use of this dividing line produces a remarkableg e o g r a p h i c a l s p l i t o f I n d i a . T h e r e a r e t h e S t a t e s i n t h e n o r t h a n d t h e w e s t w h e r e t h e female-male ratio of children is consistently below the benchmark figure, led by Punjab,H a r y a n a , D e l h i a n d G u j a r a t ( w i t h r a t i o s b e t w e e n 7 9 . 3 a n d 8 7 . 8 ) , a n d a l s o including,a m o n g o t h e r s , H i m a c h a l P r a d e s h , M a d h y a P r a d e s h , R a j a s t h a n , U t t a r P r a d e s h , Maharashtra, Jammu and Kashmir, and Bihar (a tiny exception is D a d r a a n d N a g a r Haveli, with less than a quarter million people altogether).On the other side of the divide, the States in the east and the south tend to have female -male ratios that are above the benchmark line of 94.8 girls per 100 boys: with Kerala,