Women Empowerment: Issues and Challenges

Women’s Empowerment has been an issue of immense discussions and contemplation over the last few decades world-wide. This as an agenda has been on top of the lists of most government plans & programs as well. Efforts have been made on a regular basis across nations to address this issue and enhance the socio-economic status of women. However, it has been observed that most of the policies and programs view empowerment in the economic sense only working in the belief that economic self-reliance empowers women ignoring other variables like health, education, literacy etc. Introduction In the history of human development, woman has been as important as man. In fact, the status, employment and work performed by women in society is the indicator of a nation’s overall progress. Without the participation of women in national activities, the social, economic or political progress of a country will be stagnated. Women constitute half of the humanity, even contributing two-thirds of world’s work hours. She earns only one-third of the total income and owns less than one-tenth of the world’s resources. This shows that the economic status of women is in pathetic condition and this is more so in a country like India. “Women constitute nearly 50 per cent of population, perform two-thirds of the work and produce 50 per cent of food commodities consumed by the country. They earn one third of remuneration and own 10 per cent of the property or wealth of the country” (Reddy et al., 1994).