Introduction
India is one of the oldest and most enriched civilisations, and the largest democracies in the modern world. From the age of cave-dwelling to the modern age of science and technology, and digitisation, Indian women have played crucial roles and have left the proofs of their excellence. Man and woman are the complementary creation of God. In contemporary society, a woman generally plays roles of a mother, daughter, daughter-in-law, sister, wife, friend, etc. Women are, in India, respected and honoured greatly and treated as mother-goddess, and they have immense social significance in Indian society. According to the mythological proofs of the Rig-Vedic period or Indus Valley Civilisation, the word ‘Sakti’ connotes ‘power’ implying women as the image of supreme power. In broader sense, the India term ‘paar shakti’ manifests power i.e. ‘supreme Goddess’ worshipped as a mother and the almighty female principle manifests ‘Devi’, which denotes ‘Prakrit’ i.e. nature having association with the subordinate male principle, ‘Purush’. A woman is also conceived as Jagatmata or Jagadamba i.e. Mother of the Universe, and worshiped in the images of Durga, Mahakali, Mahalaxmi, Mahasaraswati, etc. as the source of all powers. So, the empowerment of women is the matter of versatile significance in all ages.
Modern Prospect
Different organisations use the word ‘empowerment’ in diverse contexts. Empowerment denotes rise of spiritual, political, social or economic strength of individuals and communities, and often includes the situation where the empowered grow confidence according to their own capacities. Empowerment connotes the overall improvement gained by an individual, but not the development for them. Individuals must take part wholly in the decision-making manners shaping their lives. Empowerment is the first opportunity exquisitely necessary for the complete development of the individual and involves individual’s access to resources: finance, knowledge, and technology; training in skills and building of leadership, democratic policies, dialogues, participation in policy and decision-making, and techniques for conflict resolution.
Empowerment of Women in Modern Age
With the passage of time in the past of India, power of women had gradually faded, and as their power shrank, it became a crying of our society to empower women in order to make an all-round growth of our nation. At present, the poor performance of India in empowering women and controlling gender equality is reflected by many social institutions. According to the Census 2011, the sex ratio of India has increased to 933 females for 1000 males. In ‘Gender Inequality Index’ conducted by a wing of the United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2016, India ranked 131 out of 189 countries. Women from underprivileged sections: Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC) and minorities are the victim of deprivation, exploitation, discrimination, and limited employment opportunities.
Constituents of Women Empowerment
The five major constituents those are essential for the growth of society: Women’s sense of self-respect; their right to have and determine choices; their right to have access to opportunities and resources; right to have the power to control their own lives within and outside their home; and their ability to influence the decision of social change in order to develop a more congenial social and economic order, in terms of national as well as international.
The main and major objective of the Central and States Governments is to realise the development, advancement and empowerment of women.
The objective of creating an environment through economic growth and social policies for entire development of women includes:
1. To make them enable to understand their potential;
2. The de-jure and de-facto enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedom by women equally with men in social, economic, political, cultural and civil dimensions;
3. Right of women on equal access to participation and decision-making in social, economic and political walks of life;
4. Equal access of women to health care, standard quality of education at all levels, career and vocational guidance, occupational health and safety, employment, equal remuneration, social security and public office etc.
5. Strengthening legal systems targeting the eradication of all forms of discrimination against women; 6. Changing societal attitudes and community practices by active involvement of both men and women;
7. Streamlining a gender perspective in the development process;
8. Eradication of all forms of violence against women and the girl child; and
9. Building and strengthening partnerships with civil society, particularly women’s organisations.
So, the three main dimensions concentrated on women empowerment include— Political uprising of women and their participation; economic empowerment of women; and social empowerment of women.
Women Empowerment in India
The Constitution has given priority to the issue of gender equality. It grants equality to women as well as empowers the State to adopt appropriate measures of positive discrimination favouring women. The aim of the laws, development policies, plans and programmes of our country, in a democratic framework, is the advancement of women in spheres of life. There has been a considerable uplift in the approach to women’s issues from welfare to development, from the Fifth Five Year Plan (1974–1978). The Government of India has recognised the empowerment of women as the major issue in determining the current status of women.
According to the Act of Parliament in 1990—to protect the rights and legal entitlements of women—the National Commission for Women has been established. The 73rd and 74th Amendments (1993) to the Constitution of India have provided provision for reservation of seats in the local bodies of Panchayats and Municipalities for women, by giving priority to their participation in decision-making at the local levels. India has also consented formally various international conventions and human rights organisations pledging to secure equal rights of women.
However, there still prevails a wider gap between the goals enunciated in the Constitution, legislation, policies, plans, programmes, and related mechanisms and the execution and the harsh reality of the status of women in India. This condition has been analysed thoroughly in the Report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India, titled, ‘Towards Equality’, 1974 and also brought into light in the National Perspective Plan for Women, 1988–2000; the Shrama Shakti Report, 1988; and the Platform for Action, Five Years After—An assessment. The continuous trend of reducing female ratio in the population, social stereotyping and violence at the domestic and societal levels are the demonstrations that manifests the growing gender inequality in India. Girl children, adolescent girls and women still suffer deprivation, ruthless torture and discrimination in many parts of India. The reasons behind gender inequality lie on social and economic structure on the basis of formal and informal norms, and practices. As a consequence, the access of women—especially belonging to the backward and underprivileged sections: ST, SC, OBC and minorities, majority of whom live in the rural areas detached from modern progress and prosperity—to education, health and hygiene, and productive resources, among others, is inadequate and thus women are largely marginalised, poor and deprived.
Modern Initiatives For appropriate check-out, India has openly endorsed many of the national and international schemes aiming at the upliftment of women and helping them attain a true sense of empowerment. Some of such schemes are: the Mexico Plan of Action (1975); the Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies (1985); the Beijing Declaration as well as the Platform for Action (1995); and the ‘Outcome Document’ adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Session on Gender Equality and Development and Peace for the twenty-first Century with the title, ‘Further Actions and Initiatives to Implement the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action’. The initiatives undertaken by India also take note of the commitments of the Ninth Five Year Plan (1997–2002) and the other sectorial policies regarding the empowerment of women. The women movement and a network of Non-Government Organisations spread widely strongly rooted to pay deep insight into women’s concerns have contributed in inspiring the initiatives for the empowerment of women. The initiatives undertaken by Government of India for the empowerment of women also include the efforts made to achieve the ‘Millennium Development Goals’ of UN.
Challenge of Gender Inequality in Development
In India, gender inequality creates development challenge significantly. According to the 2016 annual Global Gender Gap Index compiled by Geneva-based World Economic Forum, India ranked 108. The ranking is based on a country’s ability to reduce gender discrepancies in areas of education, economic participation and opportunity, health and survival, and political empowerment. Violence against women and girls is common phenomenon in private as well as public places. India introduced ‘gender-responsive budgeting’ (GRB) in 2005 in order to react to such challenges. GRB is a system of planning, programming and budgeting to help advancing gender equality and women’s rights as well as to serve as an indicator of governments’ commitment to responding those objectives. In India, till now 57 Government Ministries or Departments have established Gender Budgeting Cells which is certainly a bold step to improve the lives of millions of Indian women in near future. An analysis of GRB in India shows that it will be an important indicator of the growth and development of women.
The sum of allocations for schemes relating to women can be by the Gender Budget Statement (GBS) introduced in the 2005–2006 budget. The analysis shows that over the last eight years the allocations for women as a proportion of the total budget have remained constant at approximately 5.5 per cent. Further, only about 30 per cent of the demands for grants, or estimates of expenditure, presented by Ministries/departments to the Union government are reported in the GBS.
Further, allocations to the nodal agency, the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD), for women in the country, show a marginal increase over the last three years—from `18,584 crore in 2012–2013 to `21,193 crore in 2014–2015. With respect to ‘Women Welfare’, the allocations actually show a downward trend—from approximately `930 crore in 2011–2012 to around `920 crore in 2014–2015. And almost 87 per cent of the 2014–2015 budget of the MWCD was allocated for the Integrated Child Development Services Scheme, leaving only five per cent for schemes exclusively meant for women.
The UN Committee on Elimination of Discrimination against Women has emphasised the need for increased investments for the MWCD and for gender budgets across Ministries. Following its review of the fourth and fifth periodic reports submitted by the Government of India (in 2014), the Committee—which monitors States’ implementation of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)—also reiterated the need to strengthen institutions such as the National Commission for Women and the State Commissions.
Schemes focussed exclusively on women either received reduced allocations or were not implemented, as seen from the revised estimates for 2013–2014 vis-à-vis the budget estimates of the same year. Revised estimate figures are presented for the ongoing fiscal year based on the performance in the first six months of that year. The Domestic Violence Act is a case in point. The legislation, enacted a decade ago, received an allocation of `20 crore in 2012–2013. Revised estimate figures for 2013– 2014 show zero allocation, which indicates that the scheme launched to operationalise the Act did not take off that year. Renamed SAAHAS, the scheme was allocated `50 crore last year. The coming budget will reveal how much of this was actually spent.
Some other schemes like restorative justice for rape victims have also proved a failure to gain its objective. The scheme ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’ by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government is commendable, but will end in smoke if equal attention is not paid to implement the laws and specific steps for the most marginalised women are not taken, as spotlighted in the election manifesto of the BJP.
By giving their emphasis on women, the increased expense must be ensured in social sections: Education, health, and sanitation. Mostly women handle the heavy burden of unpaid works such as child-care; invalid-care; cooking, washing and cleaning works, etc. The demand for recognising, redistributing and cutting down the number of women’s unpaid work has already earned a global impetus. So, it is high time that the sum of allotments to the social sector should be increased.
A Progressive Trend Over the last few years, the Finance Ministry has been organising pre-budgeting consultations with the intention of ensuring women’s opinions in the budget-making process. Besides, meeting women’s rights organisations, this year the Ministry also arranged a dialogue with UN Women as well as the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) to discuss key issues relating to Gender Responsive Budget (GRB).
At last, the final budget can have an on-time correction emphasising on the empowering the key institutions, adequate investments for schemes addressing gender concerns and the successful execution of those schemes.
By adopting the post-2015 global development agenda and reviews of countries’ performance with regard to the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (Beijing+20), in the oncoming months the government will concentrate predominantly on development as well as gender issues. The inclusion of the independent target on gender equality and women’s empowerment in the Sustainable Development is undoubtedly a greater achievement for women’s rights that advocates across the world. But it will be hard to achieve the target provided not supported by sufficient investments. The first full year budget of the government has a tremendous opportunity for taking restorative measures by recognising the mistakes.
Conclusion
Almost everywhere in the world, women have been getting treatment as subordinate citizens since ancient times. The patriarchal society has been relegating women to secondary roles despite their competency in successfully executing the leading roles, in most cases discriminated. This social negligence is the vital reason behind their loss of self-esteem and dignity, though they constitute almost half of the present world’s population.
In Indian society, however, women had honourable position in parallel to men and actively took part in social as well as religious affairs. In recent time, Indian women have a considerable growth in diverse walks of life and are successfully handling their responsibilities. But still there are a large number of women prone to superstition and are deprived of modern education. The few must be highlighted with a view to improving the many in our society with appropriate measures and their exact execution on time. Under such situations, we need to think and devise new plans and scheme in order to increase the growth opportunities of women by awaking them from the grassroots of our society where the considerable number of deprived and neglected women live. Men and women together should decisively develop in the fields of health, education, infrastructure, industry and financial services. In India for about two centuries, social reformers and missionaries have also endeavoured to improve the social standards of women and make them aware of their social accountabilities. The female literacy rate has risen to 65.46 per cent (according to 2011 census) from 54 per cent (according to 2001 census) and is about to touch the male literacy rate (over 80 per cent, 2011 census) by the next census. Our past is the testimony of women empowerment of our nation. From the Vedic period to Modern age some the most significant women figures played leading roles in different walks of life in our society are Lopamudra, Sulabha Maitreyi, Razia Sultana, Kittur Chennamma, Sucheta Kriplani, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Captain Prem Mathur, Indira Gandhi and Kalpana Chawla who are radiating instances of women empowerment.
The Indians should bring a sea-change in their mindset to realise the prospect of women empowerment. It is high time men and women of India should wake and endeavour to grow in parallel to the current growth of the world towards equality and equity. Swami Vivekananda’s words in this regard are apt mentioned: ‘Arise away and stop not until the goal is reached’. In this way, India can be shaped into an advanced nation of integrity, equality, equity, best-in-class science and technology, economic superpower and empowered women.