Gender Equality Through Women’s Empowerment: Strategies and Approaches

Gender Equality’ and ‘Women Empowerment’ are the key-terms that define and determine the direction of diverse discourses on women, nationally and internationally. The Beijing Conference (1995), was the most significant milestone in the journey towards ensuring gender equality and enriching pragmatic insights in to questions concerning women’s empowerment. This volume, containing thirty well-written essays on diverse dimensions of gender equality, takes an objective view of the current reality of the women’s situation in India in backdrop of Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. These essays authored by the distinguished social scientists discuss the dynamic of gender disparity, highlight the various dimensions of girls’ and women’s abuse and exploitation; evaluate the policies and programmes for women’s empowerment; examine the possibilities and potentials for increased participation in the national mainstream; outline and strategies and approaches for women’s steady march towards their all-round development. Taken together, the essays cover a vast ground and a wide range of subjects and analyse and explore new ideas that deserve attention. They provide a blueprint for an energetic and effective action on women’s empowerment front and call for vigorous action to dismantle the stonewalls of women’s inequality and discrimination. They call upon the feminists to pool their resources to persuade and/or/ pressurize the Government to translate women’s empowerment rhetoric into a living reality. The challenge, the essayists assert, is to Convert promises into action, and action into results. The volume, we feel, would prove to be of enormous relevance and immense use for social scientists, social activists, social planners and programme executives connected and concerned with the subject.