Which are the factors to improve and increase the Empowerment of Women?

Empowerment of Women

        Empowerment in the present existence has become one of the most comprehensively used terms that indicates progress and development of women. Women’s groups, non-governmental development organizations, activists, politicians, governments and international agencies refer to empowerment as one of their main objectives. Empowerment leads to generation of awareness and understanding amongst women regarding programs, schemes, measures, strategies, policies, and rules. It is considered as a project, which normally individuals undergo, which eventually leads to changes and transformations. Empowerment is referred to as a process to change the distribution of power, both in interpersonal relations and in institutions throughout the society. Another meaning signifies, the process of acquiring, providing, bestowing the resources and the means or enabling access to a control over such means and resources. Given the above, the term is therefore, more relevant to the marginalized groups, the poor, the illiterates, the indigenous communities, and those women, who are struggling to acquire their rights within the society.

Diagrammatic of Violations of Women’s Rights

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        Empowerment is a complex issue, with varying interpretations in social, economic, cultural, and political frameworks. With empowerment of women, they began to acquire understanding of number of areas, these are participation in the decision making processes; domestic work should be carried out by both males and females and not just females by themselves; women should take control of the reproductive functions and decide on the size of the family; women should be allowed to spend the income, she has earned, according to her own needs and desires; working women should value and take pleasure in the performance of their job duties; they should be self-confident and learn to speak for their rights and should possess the ability to prevent criminal and violent acts.

        The measures that have been formulated to promote empowerment at the community or the organizational levels are, existence of women’s organizations, allocation of funds to women and women projects, increase in the number of women leaders in village, district, provincial and national levels, involvement of women in the design, strategy, development and application of technology, participation in the community programs, productive enterprises, politics and arts, involvement of women in non-traditional tasks, increase in the training programs for women and exercising the legal rights, where required. At the national level, these are, awareness of the social and political rights, incorporation of women in the general national development plan, existence of women’s networks and publications, extent to which women are publicly noticeable and acknowledged and the extent to which women’s issues can be addressed to the media.

        There are many factors that facilitate empowerment of women and these are, formations of women’s organizations, availability of support systems for women, availability of women specific data and other pertinent information, availability of funds, feminist leadership, networking, positive media coverage, constructive policy climate, promotion of education and skill development amongst them, helping them to stand for themselves, encouraging them towards attainment of employment opportunities and generating awareness amongst them regarding all important areas, so that they are able to live their lives in an efficient way. On the other hand, factors that constrain the empowerment of women include, work pressure, isolation of women from each other as well as from the community, low education or lack of literacy skills, traditional viewpoints that limit the participation of women in various functions and events, shortage of finances, occurrence of conflicts, disputes, wars, internal strife and militarization, unstructured policies and disagreements, policy environment that promotes discriminatory treatment against women, negative coverage of media and inability to raise their voice against violent and criminal acts.