Women are embracing the concept of empowerment because of their situations—their disempowerment and their unmet needs. As women have increasingly discovered their commonalities through improved means of communications and through international conferences such as the 1995 NGO Conference in Beijing, they have attempted to understand the global and local political, economic and cultural forces that shape these situations. While there are many factors that play a role in gender-based stratification, an examination of international development during the past half-century provides insight into some of these factors. The changes in the world since the end of World War II have been profound; in the Third World, many of these changes—positive and negative—have occurred under the rubric of development. In India especially, the special provisions have been made in the constitution for the empowerment of women by reservation of jobs in the administration, legislatures and local bodies, like the municipal corporations and the panchayats. This book highlights the efforts made in India for the empowerment of women in its successive five year plans. An effort has been made to evaluate the work done so far.
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