Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment

Gender equality is not only a basic human right, but also essential foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world. Gender equality is achieved when women, men and transgender enjoy the same rights and opportunities across all sectors of society, including socio-economic participation and decision–making. It also includes the different behaviours, aspirations and needs of women and men are equally valued and favoured. Gender equality also describes the nonexistence of apparent or veiled disparities among individuals based on gender. Although government has constituted several laws and Acts in favour of women, but unfortunately, in spite of all the support by the constitutional and legal rights their freedom is overlooked, in reality, they still lag behind to enjoy to them. They are often exposed to discrimination, oppression, exploitation, degradation, aggression, humiliation, sexual harassment, moral discomfort etc. The condition are worse in the rural areas and urban slums where they are exposed to all possible uncivilized, unprecedented activities, possibly more because of lack of education, awareness of their rights. The role of the women in the development of a human being’s personality and the growth and progress of society cannot be either denied or undervalued. Acknowledgement of women with law is not enough to pave way in their empowerment but needs very effective practical approaches and education so that they can empower themselves. Now in the age of science, computerization, knowledge and independence, and for the progress and development of the society, our cultural boundations and limitation are started being broken down. Women’s empowerment has been a major concern for the world community particularly during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Women empowerment is commonly associated for social justice and equality. It is a process aimed at changing the nature and direction of systematic process that marginalize women and other disadvantaged sections of society. Now women empowerment becomes a very important issue for policy makers, intellectuals, social activists etc. This book deals with numerous burning issues, views, arguments, problems, aspect and different perspective of women’s empowerment and gender equalities in India.