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| Sunday, January 25, 2004 |
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| Sunday, January 25, 2004 |
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Alternative routes to women’s empowerment Gender Issues: A Roadmap to Empowerment IN the past 50 years, international action on gender issues has translated itself into a movement for the empowerment and mainstreaming of women as a necessary pre-requisite for the process of sustainable development itself and as a matter of the rights of women. With the coming of globalisation, empowerment is now being increasingly applied to the economically poor nations and the weaker and subaltern masses. In India, empowerment has assumed different dimensions. We find its common use in two ways: empowerment of the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and women. The second meaning, which is very popular with the government, is 73rd Amendment. The Panchayati Raj has given new power to women at different tiers of the local government and the government is planning to extend it to the state and Central Government. This book attempts to study the policy issues relating to gender equality and empowerment, ongoing state programmes for empowerment and their evaluation and those of the NGOs concerned with grass-root initiatives. It looks at empowerment as a process of self-development instead of mere acquisition of power on transfer by outside forces and initiatives. The book has been divided into seven chapters, apart from introduction with four annexures (notably the National Policy for the Empowerment of Women, 2001). The book traces how globally there has been a concern for the empowerment of women with special focus on the UN initiatives. It traces the genesis of the gender policy in India and discusses the initiatives taken in different five-year plans and on the National Policy for the Empowerment of Women. The book critically reviews various schemes for the development of women and various models of empowerment through organisation. It statistically analyses how much women in India have achieved in education, health and work participation. It shows that, generally, women are lagging behind in every sphere of life as compared to men. The authors also discuss the sex segregation in employment by showing how different occupations are classified as gender-specific and accordingly discriminated in wages. On the basis of their study, they conclude that the women managers follow high-task-high-relationship pattern as their basic pattern of leadership and that there is no difference in the basic leadership pattern due to the type of job. The study reveals that women are not deficient in characteristics that are necessary in decision-making. The authors argue that it is important to create an enabling environment by improving access to various types of social services, educational development, constitutional safeguards and legislations facilitating human rights and protection of women against crime and injustice, but this by itself would not lead to women’s empowerment in the absence of a change in the mindsets of the people (men and women alike), their attitudes towards the issue of gender inequality in different spheres. The basic thrust towards empowerment has to come from the women themselves. The book suggests an alternative paradigm for empowerment, which may be given a practical shape of an action programme. However, the authors have not been able to make analytical distinction between femaleness, feminity and feminism. Moreover, the Road Map to Empowerment seems to be more theoretical than practical. It focuses on personality development and not on the real issues such as changes in patriarchy, alleviation of poverty, minimizing sex discrimination or extending of opportunities to women etc. Overall, this book is thought provoking and useful for sociologists, planners, administrators, women’s activities and general readers who are interested in gender issues. |
