Women Empowerment

 

WOMEN EMPOWERMENT

One method to describe women's empowerment (or female empowerment) is to embrace women's perspectives, make an effort to find them, and improve women's position via education, awareness, literacy, and training.  Women's empowerment empowers and enables them to choose how to live their lives in response to many societal issues. They could have the chance to redefine gender roles or other kinds of roles, giving them greater flexibility to achieve their objectives.

The economics and development fields now frequently debate the empowerment of women. Women who are economically empowered may use their resources, assets, and income to their advantage. Additionally, it enhances women's wellbeing and their capacity for risk management.                                                                                                                                                                         It may lead to efforts to defend trivialized genders in a certain political or social setting. Although the terms are frequently used interchangeably, the more inclusive idea of gender empowerment refers to persons of any gender and emphasizes the contrast between biology and gender as a function. Through literacy, education, training, and awareness raising, women's standing is raised. Women's empowerment also refers to their newfound freedom to make wise decisions in life that they were previously unable to.

The adoption of programs and policies that embrace the concept of female empowerment may be advantageous for nations, corporations, communities, and other organizations. The number and quality of human resources available for development are improved by the empowerment of women. One of the key procedural issues when talking about human rights and development is empowerment.

Women's empowerment is defined by a number of ideas, including the need that in order to be empowered, one must first be disempowered.

Instead than receiving empowerment from an outside source, they must actively pursue it. According to other research, people who are empowered have the capacity to make significant decisions about their life and have the ability to follow through on those decisions. Disempowerment and empowerment were once related to one another; empowerment is a process rather than a finished good.

Political and economic empowerment are the two categories of empowerment that scholars have recognized.

ECONOMICALLY

 Since the 1980s, the drive for neoliberalism has placed a premium on competitiveness and independence as indicators of economic success. People who, together with their identifying communities, do not adhere to society's preferred neoliberal ideals are treated with contempt and are more likely to suffer from poor self-esteem. The jobless and members of the lower working class are two categories that do not suit the idealized neoliberal vision.

Through its welfare reform programs, neoliberalism has specifically had a detrimental effect on women's sense of self-worth. According to Mary Corcoran and colleagues, conservative welfare reformers think poverty is caused by welfare reliance. This prompts welfare reformers to enlarge the requirements for someone to be a receiver of assistance, hence reducing the number of individuals who rely on it. These restrictions, which force women into the workforce quickly, include job obligations and time constraints. The persistent campaign to get more women into the workforce serves to support the idea that unpaid carers and single moms are a drain on the American economy. As a result, women are compelled to accept low-paying, precarious employment while juggling their home and parenting duties.

According to academics, welfare reform's overarching goal is to weaken women's autonomy and economic independence in order to disempower them. The societal effects of neoliberalism and welfare reform can be resisted by women through fostering chances for women's empowerment, such as employment training.

 Additionally, it is advised that authorities fund employment training to help with entry into the formal markets. One suggestion is to provide women greater formal education chances so they may have more negotiating power at home. They would have more access to higher paying jobs outside the house, making it simpler for women to find employment there.

POWER IN POLITICS

Political empowerment advocates for the development of laws that best support women's rights to equality and agency in both the public and private realms. The creation of affirmative action laws with quotas for the proportion of women in parliamentary and policy-making positions is one of the recommended approaches. The average percentage of women serving in lower-level, single-house parliaments throughout the world as of 2017 is 23.6 percent. More suggestions have been made to improve the rights of women to vote, express their ideas, and run for office with a decent chance of winning.  Women devote less time to joining the workforce and managing their enterprises since they are often responsible for child care and household duties at home.

Policies that take into consideration divorce cases, policies for greater welfare for women, and policies that allow women control over resources (such property rights) all strengthen their negotiating power inside the family. Participation, however, is not just restricted to the political sphere. It might involve taking part in family life, going to school, and having the freedom to make one's own decisions. Some thinkers contend that before women can engage in more extensive political engagement, they must first establish their autonomy and negotiating power in the home.

Cultural emancipation

We need to stop seeing culture solely as a hindrance to women's rights in order to be a progressive society that supports women's rights and empowerment. Culture is a vital and significant component of diversity and a tool for promoting women's equality in the workplace. It acknowledges their right to be proud of their values, whether they are traditional or contemporary in character. This is not to imply that decades of mistreatment covered in cultural garb ought to be tolerated, much less praised. Certainly, in light of feminism, customs that promote empowerment should be rejected.

For instance, according to some studies, women only have an equal probability of having their writing accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals if the reviewers are completely unaware of the author's gender. It has been amply proven why all cultural legacies cannot and should not be cherished or supported because of the historical habitual culture that has resulted in the underrepresentation of women in literature. Equal cultural rights for women must be recognized and put into practice in order to help reshape gender in ways that transcend women's inferiority and subordination.

Furthermore, according to Farida Shaheed, a UN specialist in the area of cultural rights, this would materially improve the overall environment for their ability to fully and equally exercise their human rights.

Shaheed continues by stating that women's perspectives and contributions must move from the periphery of cultural life to the core of the processes that are now forming and defining cultures all over the world. "Women must be seen as equal spokespersons with the power to choose which of the traditions of the community are to be honored, preserved, and passed down to future generations.