Study on Various Components of Women’s Empowerment

Women and men in India enjoy de jure equality. Article 14 of the Constitution of India guarantees equal rights and opportunities to men and women in political, economic and social spheres, Article 42 directs the State to make provision for ensuring just and humane conditions for work and maternity itself and Article 51 (A) e imposes upon every citizen, a fundamental duty to renounce the practices derogatory to the dignity of women. However this de jure equality has not yet materialised into a de factor equality, despite the efforts made in the Five Year Plans. The First Five Year Plan sought to “promote the welfare of women” by helping them to play their legitimate role in the family and the community but emphasised that the major burden of organising activities for the benefit of the female population had to be borne by the private agencies. Five Year Plans continued to reflect the same welfare approach to women’s interests though they accorded priority to education for both, men and women and launched measures to improve maternal and child health services and supplementary nutrition for children as well as expectant and nursing mothers. Sixth Five Year Plan in which the focus on women’s interests shifted from ‘welfare’ and ‘development’. Planners and policy makers began to recognize women not only as partners but also as stake-holders in the development of the country. The Seventh Five Year Plan saw developmental programmes which aimed at raising the economic and social status of women and at ensuring that they get the benefits of national development. This is when ‘beneficiary oriented programmes extending direct benefits to women in different developmental sectors began. There was a stress upon the generation of both skilled and unskilled employment through formal and non-formal education and vocational training. The Eight Five Year Plan had a Human Development focus. It tried to ensure that the benefits of development do not bypass women and it implemented special programmes for women to complement the general development programmes and to monitor the flow of benefits to women in education, health and employment. The Ninth Five Year Plan was rather ambitious. It took up ‘empowering women as agents of socio-economic change and development’ as a major commitment. To begin with, it adopted the ‘National Policy for Empowerment of Women’, which among other objectives, sought to organise women into Self Help Groups to work for their own empowerment, accorded The tenth five year plan high priority to schemes for maternal and child welfare and most importantly, made a bid at easy and equal access to education through the Special Action Plan of 1998, plans for the free education of girls up to the college level (inclusive of professional courses) and vocational training. Education as such, results in positive externalities. Not only does it have an intrinsic value in the sense of the joy of learning, reading etc, but it also has instrumental, social and process roles. Moreover education may spread through interpersonal motivation. When one individual sends her child to school, her neighbor is likely to do so as well. Women’s education too, often spreads this way, more specifically, through same sex effects. i.e. an educated woman is far more likely to send her daughter to school than an uneducated woman. Also, she is likely to maintain better conditions of nutrition and hygiene in her household and thereby improve her family’s health (Sen 1997). The presence of a larger number of female teachers may encourage parents to send their daughters to school. Thus education is a fundamental tool for women’s empowerment. In this paper, I have taken up the girls’ education schemes of the Ministry of Human Resource Development and the Ministry of Women and Child Development and I have evaluated them with respect to their public policy design in terms of aims, objectives and implementation tactics with reference to the extent to which they involve the grassroots. Prior to the evaluation of the schemes however, I have provided statistics representing the extent of gender inequality in current and initial enrolment, literacy and retention, listed variables that have been statistically proven to increase girls’ enrolment and given a few reports on education for empowerment.