Educational Status of Women in Jammu and Kashmir with Special Reference to Rural Areas

In India, though much emphasis is being laid on the gender equality in terms of education, yet discrimination in access to education does exist. There is a rural and urban divide in access to education for women. In Jammu and Kashmir too, female literacy rate is quite low and stands at 58.01 percent. The rural female literacy rate in J&K is 53.36 percent to 70.19 percent for urban females which earlier in the Census of 2001 was 36.7% at rural and 61.9% at the urban level, respectively. Also, there is a large gap in the male and female literacy levels in this border state. The present study examines the issues of education for empowering women in the rural areas of Jammu and Kashmir and seeks to address the challenges towards education of rural women in Jammu and Kashmir.