NEED ASSESMENT OF WOMEN EMPOWERMENT IN RURAL AREAS OF LUCKNOW DISTRICT
Pooja Rani*
Dr. M.S.Khan**
* Research Scholar, Department of Rural Management, School for Management Studies, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (A Central University), Lucknow.
** Head/Coordinator, MBA& M.Phil Programme, School for Management Studies, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (A Central University), Lucknow.
ABSTRACT
Women empowerment is a process by which women challenge the existing norms & culture, to effectively promote their wellbeing. The growing social awareness across the globe has brought a number of issues to discrimination against women in the form of male-female differentiation constitutes the core of the gender biased system. The present
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This article argues that true women empowerment takes place when women challenge the existing norms and culture, to effectively improve their well being while doing so, women in India. It is argued that only a fraction of these activities are truly empowering for the participating women, however, drawing inference from the household data, preliminary results indicate that SHGs could be leading to empowerment of women. The questions surrounding women's empowerment, the condition and position of women, have now become critical to the human rights based approaches to development. Women empowerment is for advancing gender equality and empowerment of women, elimination of all kinds of violence against women, and ensuring women’s fertility as the cornerstones of population and development related programmes. Microfinance programmes like the Self-Help Bank Linkage Programme (SHG) in India have been increasingly hailed for their positive economic impact and the empowerment women. This is based on the view that women are more likely to be credit constrained, have restricted access to wage labour market and have limited decision-making and bargaining power within the …show more content…
Poor people’s empowerment, and their ability to hold others to account, is strongly influenced by their individual assets (such as land, housing, livestock, savings) and capabilities of all types: human (such as good health and education), social (such as social belonging, a sense of identity, leadership relations) and psychological (self-esteem, self-confidence, the ability to imagine and aspire to a better future). Also important are people’s collective assets and capabilities, such as voice, organization, representation and
Looking over the course of time, women had overcome some abusive and intrusive periods in society to be heard and noticed as an equal to mankind. Woman have struggled for equal rights as early as the 1800’s, which in this time the role of the woman was franchised in every home, to be seen but not heard, to complete what were daily chores such as cleaning, cooking, sewing and motherhood,. Women were in a time warp, and were in need to speak out, be heard and not judged by their mother baring and homemaking skills. Women were force to communicate amongst themselves in society, and also force to discuss amongst themselves political views.
Women are part of our society and their tremendous performance is not less to those of men. They are competitive and superb in diverse areas, even beyond men in some situations. They constitute half of the world’s populace. Gender inequity subsists in many countries globally. Discriminating and preventing almost half of the world’s population from attaining its complete potential is an economic irrationality. Denying girls and women equality makes them endure, as well as obstruct development of whatever is left of society. In order to ensure we develop society as a whole, it is important to cultivate gender egalitarianism throughout all areas of our civilization.
Since the beginning of civilization, the role of men and women have been portrayed by their capabilities. During wars, men were asked to fight against enemies because they had the necessary strength to combat. On the other hand, women were asked to take care of the household chores and to give birth to increase the overall population of the country. This concept of roles has been highly present in our societies. Women fighting against the gender inequality have created a stir among the dominant group which are men. Since men are still more dominant and keep reigning in this world, often women are restricted from getting fair opportunities to achieve in their goals. Till now, women are forced to be obedient to men in certain societies. From past few decades, this perspective is slowly coming to an end in most of the society. Women are now being empowered by ideologies which is reshaping their identity in many societies.
It is true that there are people who need help more than others. It is also true that within those people who need help, there are certain groups who need more of it. The feminization of poverty is the rising amount of women who represent a disproportionate percentage of the world’s poor (Chant 202). In most cases, it is due to inequality that has been imbedded into societies for many generations. In the United States it is a common belief that every person should receive equal rights and o...
Most people of the society still blame the poor for their own predicament. They believe that "if there is a will there is a way". However, they do not think about their government that might had made bad decisions and policies that could actually harm successful development. This causes of poverty and inequality are usually less discussed and often neglected. We must recognize the effects poverty could have on the society and seek ways to create better understanding and resolve the issue before it is too late.
In summary, oppression of women is a serious issue because many women are not treated as men and withheld from every opportunity. However, because of these outcomes, women are prevented from achieving higher goals, such as getting an education, pursuing a career, and having word of their own. Therefore, women have to stand up for their rights and fight back to show men that women are not only housekeepers, but they are equal and smart as men are. Women will continue to waste their talents if they get used to the idea that they have to achieve their feminine roles because of oppression of man.
In all societies around the world, women are treated as if they are a minority group, just like any racial or ethnic group that is out of the norm. The justification for considering women as a minority group and the existence of sexism becomes clear through the examination of social indicators, including education, employment, and income.
Gender stratification can be described as unequal power, wealth, and privileges between men and women. This stratification is more generally aimed at women who are oppressed in the work place, economic class status, and many other aspects of life because of their gender. We can blame this on the patriarchal culture that we prescribe too, where males hold primary power and privileges in our society. Two of the most common aspects of gender stratification that we see in the United States includes the wage gap between men and women and the violence that women face. There are many more aspects to gender stratification, however, these two topics seem to be a gender stratification problem all over the world.
For hundreds of years, women have been discriminated against, but in the past decade, women have made an extensive amount of progress. Ever since the first feminist revolution, women have strived to achieve true equality. Gender equality sounds like a simple task, yet the world still has not reached this point. Although the progress has been slow, women have made major advancements, proving that they can achieve true equality.
Despite many assumptions, gender equality is not limited to creating advancement and advantages for women. Instead, it simply aims to promote equal rights and access to
Robbins, S. P., & Coulter, M. (2009). Management (10th ed., pp. 164-175). Upper Saddle River,
Tan Teck-Hong and Amna Waheed, Asian Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 16, No. 1, 73-94, January 2011, http://web.usm.my/aamj/16.1.2011/aamj_16.1.4.pdf
The modern world has resulted in earnings, wages and salaries for the women similar to that of men, but the women are continuously facing inequalities in the work force (Andal 2002). This2 can be attributed to the pre-established notion that women shall not be given access to finance or communication with the world outside of the home which is highly unethical and unfair (Eisenhower, 2002). In the past, they were considered as the underprivileged ones which were not thought of having equal rights but this fact has changed now. The status of women can be explicitly defined as the equality and the freedom of the women.
Throughout history, there have been constant power struggles between men and women, placing the male population at a higher position than the female. Therefore, in this patriarchal system women have always been discriminated against simply due to the fact that they are women. Their rights to vote, to be educated and essentially being treated equally with men was taken away from them and they were viewed as weak members of society whose successes depend on men. However, this has not prevented them from fighting for what they believe in and the rights they are entitled to. On the contrary, it has motivated them to try even harder and gain these basic societal rights through determination and unity.
Most poor people manage to mobilize resources to develop their enterprises and their dwellings slowly over time. Financial services could enable the poor to leverage their initiative, accelerating the process of building incomes, assets and economic security. However, conventional financial institutions seldom lend down-market to serve the needs of low-income families and women-headed households. They are very often denied access to credit for any purpose, making the discussion of the level of interest rate and other terms of finance irrelevant. Therefore, the fundamental problem is not so much of unaffordable terms of loan but rather of the lack of access to credit itself.