Scenario of Women Empowerment of India

Abstract

Women empowerment is an issue of global importance today. The socioeconomicempowerment of women in the family and in the society in reality is the needof the day. The main objective of the study was to analyse the present scenario ofwomen empowerment in India on the basis of their participation in decision making,access to money and credit card, literacy rate, work participation rate, status ofemployment, infant mortality rate, maternal mortality rate, life expectancy etc. Thesecond objective was to suggest some policy measures on the basis of the results of thestudy. Secondary data has been used to achieve the objectives of the study. For theanalysis of data, simple averages and percentages have been calculated and thetechnique of correlation analysis has been applied.

The findings of the study reveal that women in India are going to be empoweredas their access to education, health, money, property and decision making is graduallyimproving. In India, the female literacy rate has increased to 65.5 percent, female lifeexpectancy has increased to 64 years, female infant mortality rate has declined to 55,sex ratio has increased to 940 as per 2011 census. Female work participation rate hasreached to 25.4 as per National Sample Survey Organisation estimates 2007-08.

However, as per study results the changes are rather little and slow. The level ofsocial, economic and political empowerment of women is low due to various socioculturalconstraints. Still women continue to be the victims of social humiliation ofdivorce, rape, crime and even death before birth.

Globalization has opened up new challenges for the realization of the goal ofwomen empowerment. In view of all this, it is suggested that government should designsuch strategies which may enhance the capability of women to empower them to copewith the negative effects of globalization. Here also, as a policy, a change in the socialvalue system may be advocated for the real empowerment of women in India.

Key words: Women, Empowerment, Female literacy