Empowering Women

The empowerment strategy which is today emerging as an unique India response to the challenges of equality, development and peace. If women are to be empowered, it is necessary to provide an expanding networking of support services so that they are freed from some of their gender related shackles. If women are to be economically empowered, they are to be provided with additional channels of credit, training, employment, greater visibility, management skills and social security. If women are to be given access to knowledge, power and resources, they should be empowered to demand such education and knowledge resources. If women are to be persons in their own right, they must be in control of their own bodies and suitably empowered. New innovations however are invariably accompanied by new threats and fresh challenges. While Indian women are slowly emerging as active agents participating in and guiding their own destinies, there are certain global developments with major domestic implications which again threaten to marginalize women economically and technologically. The international economic order with its accompanying reverse flow of resources from the poor south to the rich north, the globalization of media, the global technological revolution and the economic restructuring process that invariably accompanies the race towards a free market economy, today have the potential of imposing a disproportionately high burden on poor women. During the last few years, this has emerged as an area of concern both within the government as well as outside. It is hoped that the book will be of immense importance to those dealing with the subject.