Women Empowerment and Role of Public Policy

Abstract

Women are strong..Not because they never break, but because they know how to pick up the pieces and put themselves back together again.  Gone are the days when women were confined to domesticity.  Now, they have entered almost all walks of life such as education, politics, journalism, science, administration, law, medicine and the three wings of armed forces. Women in India are neither housemaids nor decoration of the drawing-room.  Gender equality is a human right.  Women are entitled to live with dignity and freedom.  But it is an irony that we still live in a male-dominating society where individuality of a woman has been lost somewhere.  A woman is recognized by relations and she is regarded as a human being only when she is a mother or a sister or a daughter or a wife.  If she does not fit in any of these relations, she is merely a sex object. Nirbhaya case is a slapping example. It is most unfortunate that women still face indignity and prejudice. Policies on women empowerment exist at the national, state and local levels in many sectors but unless we transform and change our patriarchal mindset, substantial gaps between policy progressions and actual practice at the civic level will remain.