Women empowerment implies the ability in women to take decisions with regard to their life and work and giving equal rights to them in all spheres like: personal, social, economic, political, legal and so on.
Women empowerment is the much-talked about issue today. Women are increasingly getting empowered to decide the course of their life and professions and realize their fullest potential.
We are providing here four articles on women empowerment useful for all people especially for students. All the articles are written in simple English language with different word counts of 300, 500, 600 and 800 respectively.
Women Empowerment Articles
Article on Women Empowerment 1 (300 words)
Women Empowerment: Winds of Change
Women empowerment has become the buzzword today with women working alongside men in all spheres. They profess an independent outlook, whether they are living inside their home or working outside. They are increasingly gaining control over their lives and taking their own decisions with regard to their education, career, profession and lifestyle.
With steady increase in the number of working women, they have gained financial independence, which has given them confidence to lead their own lives and build their own identity. They are successfully taking up diverse professions to prove that they are second to none in any respect.
But while doing so, women also take care to strike a balance between their commitment to their profession as well as their home and family. They are playing multiple roles of a mother, daughter, sister, wife and a working professional with remarkable harmony and ease. With equal opportunities to work, they are functioning with a spirit of team work to render all possible co-operation to their male counterparts in meeting the deadlines and targets set in their respective professions.
Women empowerment is not limited to urban, working women but women in even remote towns and villages are now increasingly making their voices heard loud and clear in society. They are no longer willing to play a second fiddle to their male counterparts. Educated or not, they are asserting their social and political rights and making their presence felt, regardless of their socio-economic backgrounds.
While it is true that women, by and large, do not face discrimination in society today, unfortunately, many of them face exploitation and harassment which can be of diverse types: emotional, physical, mental and sexual. They are often subjected to rape, abuse and other forms of physical and intellectual violence.
Women empowerment, in the truest sense, will be achieved only when there is attitudinal change in society with regard to womenfolk, treating them with proper respect, dignity, fairness and equality. The rural areas of the country are, by and large, steeped in a feudal and medieval outlook, refusing to grant women equal say in the matters of their education, marriage, dress-code, profession and social interactions.
Let us hope, women empowerment spreads to progressive as well as backward areas of our vast country.
Article on Women Empowerment 2 (500 words)
Women Empowerment: Making the World a Better Place
We are living in an age of women empowerment. Women the world over are working shoulder to shoulder with men. By and large, they are now empowered to take decision about different aspects of their life and profession.
Benefits of Women Empowerment:
Women empowerment adds to confidence of women in their ability to lead meaningful and purposeful lives. It removes their dependence on others and makes them individuals in their own right.
- They are able to lead their lives with dignity and freedom
- It adds to their self esteem
- It gives them a distinct identity
- They are able to gain positions of respect in society
- As they are financially independent they are able to spend on all their needs and desires
- They are able to make meaningful contributions to the well-being of society
- They act as capable citizens to make the country achieve enhanced Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth
- They get fair and equitable access to resources of the country
Necessity of Women’s Empowerment
- Without women’s empowerment, we cannot remove injustice and gender bias and inequalities.
- If women are not empowered, they cannot enjoy security and protection in life
- It also provide them a safe working environment
- Empowerment acts as a powerful tool against exploitation and harassment of women
- It is a great means to get adequate legal protection for women
- If not socially and economically empowered, women cannot develop their own identity
- If women are not employed, the global economy will be adversely affected as women constitute a vast chunk of the world’s population
- Women are highly creative and intelligent which makes it imperative to receive their contributions in socio-economic activities
- For a just and progressive society, women need to be provided equal opportunities for work
Means of Women Empowerment
Education: Without proper and adequate education, women cannot become empowered individuals. They need to be encouraged to go for higher studies so that they can contribute significantly in the creation of a knowledge society
Communication Skills: Without developing skills for effective communication, women cannot make their voices heard. It is essential for them to communicate effectively to become successful. As leaders, they need to put across their points to the people so that a family, team or company can be effectively managed.
Disposable Income: Women need to earn well to have their say in important financial decisions governing their lives. Being financially independent gives women power over lives and also contributes to the growth of businesses.
Power of Internet: Access to the internet has opened the floodgates of knowledge and awareness and increased social interaction reach and influence of women. The liberalizing influence of the World Wide Web has broken all taboos, myths and misconceptions regarding women.
Conclusion: Women Empowerment helps to make the society and world a better place to live in and march forward on way to inclusive participation. It means increase happiness for the family and the organizations where women make a difference.
Article on Women Empowerment 3 (600 words)
Women Empowerment: Key to Social and Economic Growth
Women empowerment can be defined as a process leading to enhancing women’s control over financial, human and intellectual resources in society. In any nation, the women empowerment can be measured by extent of their involvement in social, economic and political fields. Women can be made said to be truly empowered only when all the factors such as self-worth of women, their right to control their own lives, their ability to bring about social change, are addressed simultaneously.
Need for Holistic Empowerment of Women: Participation of women in politics through reservation is undoubtedly a positive development of recent times. Still, only the election should not be the end, but the active participation of women in decision making process and in planning and implementation of development programmes is also required.
Women’s lives must converge effectively and all the efforts in this direction should be focused towards the goal to bring about a social change leading to manifestation of balance between male and female forces in the society.
Ground Reality about Women Empowerment: Though women comprise almost half of the total percentages of world’s population, they are still deprived of their rights in most of the developing countries across the globe. Particularly in the South and East Asian nations apart from the African countries, the women are leading deprived lives, due to prevalent gender discrimination.
Rural-urban divide: Situation of women in rural areas is more miserable than their counterparts living in urban spaces. It has been widely prevalent that the women are mostly deprived of an equal status vis-a-vis men and thus they remain as passive beneficiaries in the societies in these countries. They remain powerless, due to their less participation and involvement in the generation of resources critical for development. Therefore, women must become active partners with men, if the goal of women empowerment is desired to be achieved in totality.
To make the efforts leading to modernization of any society successful, it is urgent to bring the women in the mainstream of development. We need to strike a perfect balance between male and female contributors in rural societies by providing equal opportunities to women without being biased towards men.
For this to happen, it is required to empower women on all fronts: social, economic, political as well as religious — in such a manner that they can participate actively in all the efforts meant to provide growth to the society. If empowered with equal opportunities in different spheres of life such as social, economic and political, the women will have the choice to lead a publicly active life which may also bring about a positive change in the society. We need to create conducive environment in the society so that the women become confident enough to be able to articulate their thoughts and become more productive in their actions. They are required to be given equal opportunities to be involved in taking decisions for their family as well as society and the country altogether.
Conclusion:
Contemporary societies across the world have been exposed to the major processes of transformation on social and economic development front. However, these processes have not been implemented in a balanced way and have augmented gender imbalances throughout the world in which women remained the ultimate sufferer. The situation has adversely affected the pace of women empowerment. Therefore, we require a completely transformed society in which equal opportunities of growth can be suitably provided to women so that they can co-exist with their male counterparts contributing equally in all the factors responsible for the growth of society in a larger sense.
Article on Women Empowerment 4 (800 words)
Playing multiple roles in families, women have already proven their worth, but still their condition on social and economical fronts has not been up to the mark and in many parts of the world they are forced to lead a miserable life. In such a scenario, it calls for immediate attention to empower them and create conducive environment for their social and economic upliftment.
Women Empowerment is Urgent for Integrated Development
Women empowerment is a must for the betterment of any country’s future as they play dual responsibilities of managing their families while simultaneously juggling to earn to contribute in fulfilling the material needs of their families. No one can ever ignore the importance of the role of a mother, sister, or a daughter in their families. At the same time, women have also established themselves as equal contributors in managing the financial requirements of their homes. On international level as well, women have successfully created their unbeatable position, but they are just a handful in comparison to their not so fortunate counterparts.
Remarkable Performance in sports: On various international platforms, women have successfully proved that if given a chance they can perform no less than their male counterparts and the recently concluded RIO Olympics bears a testimony to this fact. No one can ever forget the names of RIO stars – Sakshi Malik, PV Sindhu and Dipa Karmakar – who became successful in breaking the barriers of gender to raise India’s national flag high in front of the whole world. There is no denial to the fact that in a male dominated country like India, it would have been really hard for them to emerge out of the various prevalent taboos to achieve such positions of eminence.
Victims of Discrimination: Due to long prevailing gender discrimination and dominance of men in the Indian society, women have been suppressed in their families and society at large. Even they have been prone to violence and various discriminations by the male members, even in their own families. The situation is no different in many other countries of the world. Except some European nations most of the other countries in the world are prone to serious gender discrimination, akin to India.
A Long Way to go: In rural areas, the condition of women is far from satisfactory and their contribution to the economy is also negligible. Though they make for almost 50% of the population of the country, they have not been empowered enough to get equal opportunities in realizing their fullest potential. In such condition, we can say that our country cannot become a developed nation unless we empower women in the true sense of the term. It is very necessary to pay proper attention to their development by providing them equal opportunities in all areas of human activity.
Winds of Change: Though Women have been given a special place in every religion, many ill practices have been going on against women as a norm since ages. But positive changes are now visible and the patriarchal system of society has been gradually eroding. Women are now claiming the socio-political rights (right to work, right to education, right to decide, etc) for themselves.
The successive governments have implemented various constitutional and legal rights to help women lead purposeful and meaningful lives. There is an increasing awareness about women’s rights which is evident in the emergence of several NGOs and self-help groups. At the individual level too, women are now breaking the shackles of suppression and making their voices heard for their rights.
The Parliament of India too has passed various legislations to save women from various forms of injustice and discrimination. Following are some of these laws to empower women: Equal Remuneration Act-1976; Dowry Prohibition Act-1961; Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act-1956, Medical termination of Pregnancy Act-1971; Maternity Benefit Act-1961; Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act-1987; Prohibition of Child Marriage Act-2006; Pre-Conception & Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act-1994; and Sexual Harassment of Women at Work Place (Prevention, Protection and) Act-2013.
More recently, in the wake of Nirbhaya case involving the rape and brutal murder of paramedical student in Delhi, the government has passed the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Bill, 2015. This Act makes a significant departure from the earlier Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000, as the juvenile age inviting punishment for offence now stands reduced from 18 to 16 years.
Conclusion: If we want to bring about women empowerment in the true sense, there is a crying need for the elimination of the male superiority and patriarchal mindset. Also, women need to be given equal opportunities for education and employment without any sense of discrimination. Unless there is attitudinal change in society towards women, merely arming them with legal and constitutional rights will be simply inadequate.
Related Information:
Essay on Barriers to Empowerment of Women in India