Women Empowerment is the process and the outcome of the process by which women challenge gender based discrimination in every institution and structures of the society.
- Women empowerment means freedom of women from the vicious grips of social. economical, political, caste and gender-based discrimination.
• Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, said “when women move forward the family moves, the villages move, and the nation move”
WOMEN EMPOWERMENT AND POLITICAL PROCESS
- Women empowerment means equal status to women, opportunity and freedom to develop herself. The focus of empowerment is equipping women to economically independent, self-reliant, have a positive self esteem to enable them to face any difficult situation and they should be able to participate in the process of decision-making.
- Feminists assert that until the condition of equal participation of women in public life is fulfilled, the concept of citizenship cannot be brought to its logical conclusion. In India a beginning in this direction has been made by making reservation of one-third of the seats in Panchayats for women. This will encourage women to join politics at grass-root level.
- In our country though we find anomalies in Panchayati Raj, where a women is selected as sarpanch, it is possible that her way of working is mostly influences by a male member of her family. However this tendency should not be taken for granted.
- 73rd and 74th amendments to the Indian Constitution in 1992 and 1993, provided with 33 percent reservation for women in panchayats and urban local
- Over a million women are represented in the three-tiered panchayats.
Women empowerment 