Issues and challenges Empowerment of women in India

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Issues and challenges- Empowerment of women in
India

• Ms. Latha Reddy, Ambassador of India

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Approach to the Presentation

• Section I Background
• Section II- Institutional and policy environment
• Section III- Issues, challenges, strategies and
  way forward

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Section I

• Background

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Indian Women-stepping stones

• paving their way
• through times

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Reproductive and productive roles
Multi-tasking-A balancing act
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Section II

• Institutional and policy environment

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Internationally agreed MDGS

• Goal 3-Promoting gender equality and empowerment
  of women
• Goal -5 Improving maternal health

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Key International conventions on women adopted by
India

• Beijing platform for Action adopted at the fourth
  world conference on Women in 1995-accepted by
  India
• CEDAW ratified in 1993

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National laws and policies on Women

• The Constitution of India recognises equality of
  right of women
• one-third of seats reserved for women in the
  urban and local self-government
• free and compulsory education - a justiciable
  fundamental right for all children between 6-14
  years
• National Commission for Women- 1992
• The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence
  Act-2005
• National Policy for the Empowerment of Women-2001

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Panchayati rajA system that can get village
communities things that they need

• drinking water,
• electricity
• and teachers in the schools
• doctors and vets,
• and get the bridges and culverts repaired
• and direct the resources to areas of critical
  requirements

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Women in decision making
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Women in Civil Service
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Indian Women in public life
H.E Mrs. PratibhaPatil President of India
Sanya Mirza- Tennis
First woman Officer from Indian police Service
Peace keeping in UN mission
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Section III
Issues, challenges and strategies Way forward
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Economic empowerment of Women- Issues

• Womens work in India
• Invisible, unrecognised and unremunerated
• 31 of Indian workers are women
• 96 of women are in unorganised sector.
• Feminisation of poverty
• An estimated 20 of rural households are de facto
  female headed (widowhood, desertion, or male
  out-migration)
• 36 of women workers are poor

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Some positive impacts of globalisation

• Mobile revolution

• The proportion of women in the IT industry
  constitutes about 20 of total IT work force.

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Negative impacts of globalisation on women

• food security and livelihood concerns
• more migration and illegal trafficking
• EPZs target women as primary work force
• relocation of communities
• informalisation of work- sub-contracting and
  outsourcing
• Conditions of work in EPZs uncongenial
• Bio-piracy

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Strategies towards economic empowerment

• Dejure to defacto empowerment
• Macro level
• WTO negotiations on agriculture
• Royalty payments for traditional knowledge
  stewarded by women (IPRs)
• Laws to prevent sexual harassment at workplace
• to enforce legislation -congenial work
  environment and fair living wages

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Strategies at meso and micro levels

• Gender mainstreaming
• Gender budgeting- partnering with UNIFEM
• Gender disaggregated statistics
• Micro level
• Self-help groups
• Microfinance

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Some strategies to tackle challenges of
globalisation

• Utilize opportunities of improved communication
• Be change agents
• Accept life-long learning
• Create employment programs

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Social empowerment Women and education

educate a man and you educate an individual
educate a woman and you educate a family
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Women and education- gender development indicators
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Impact of globalisation on womens education

• Privatisation of basic education
• rising costs of education,
• Greater drop out rates for girls
• A skewed labour market unfavourable to women

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Social empowerment strategies

• Socio-cultural attitudes
• Participation of men and not just women
• Balancing the allocation of expenditure
• Imparting legal literacy
• Teachers training
• Public-private partnerships
• Improving infrastructure Reducing teacher
  absenteeism
• Supportive Media- women journalists
• Ensure that greater resources are allocated for
  education- gender budgeting

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Women and healthSome indicators
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Strategies for womens health

• improving the rate of institutional deliveries
• Training of primary health care workers
• Improving health infrastructure
• assistance for first two live births for women
  below poverty line and above 19 years of age.
• User charges - above poverty line
• Universal health insurance schemes
• Greater allocation of resources
• Private public partnerships

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Political empowerment of Women- issues

• Breaking traditional orthodoxy- A challenge
• Elected women- proxies ? dummy surrogates?
• Women left to serve vested interests?
• lack capacity -illiteracy
• Power brokering

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Political empowerment strategiesInstitutional
policies not enough

• Sensitisation workshops to
• Negotiate institutional rights

• Electoral reforms
• Civil society can help push the way forward
• International cooperation and partnerships

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Good governance at all levelsThe way forward

• demand from women for better governance.
• Women must become more effective in navigating
  institutional barriers,
• be skilled in demanding accountability from
  public actors,
• be able to expose corruption and other
  governance failures and
• to respond to violations of their rights.
• a political constituency to negotiate for their
  rights.

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Tennyson
The old order changeth yielding place to new-
the old order gradually makes way for the new
order
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Thank you