Empowerment of Women

568 Words3 Pages
Jawaharlal Nehru had said,”You can tell the condition of the nation by looking at the status of women.” And the following phrase of Manusmriti,”Na Stree Swathantryam Arhati” (women is undeserving for independence), reflects our whole attitude towards women in our country. 50-odd years ago, we Indians gave ourselves one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, which guaranteed equal rights to men and women, including the right to vote, to own property, to move about freely within the country and to earn a living. As we grew up, however, we began to see a parallel reality –notwithstanding the promises made in the Constitution, men in India, especially upper caste men, accrued more advantages by virtue of being born male. They are fed better, given better education, better treatment when ill, are mostly paid higher wages than women counterparts and have infinitely better access to markets and information of all kinds. Most Indian women, on the other hand, go through life in a state of great nutritional and educational deprivation. They continue to be married off at a very young age and have multiple pregnancies before their bodies are capable of bearing the burden. Only 54 per cent of the women are literate, and although girls are entered into school, the rate of girl dropouts remains large due to poverty and early marriages. Unlike men, working women in the informal sector have poor access to education, skill upgradation and health care. Over the years, Indian women’s literacy and life expectancy levels may have gone up a bit, but low pay, poor health and high rates of maternal mortality still haunt most of them through life. Aborting the female foetus has become a rampant practice in affluent states like Punjab, Delhi, Haryana, Gujarat and Maharashtra resulting in alarmingly adverse male-female ratio. Another major worry is the alarming rise in

More about Empowerment of Women

Open Document