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Friday, April 3, 2015

What is Women Empowerment? Why is it needed?

To understand what women empowerment is we should first try to understand what "Empowerment" is. As per Wikipedia -

"Empowerment refers to increasing the economic, political, social, educational, gender, or spiritual strength of an entity or entities. Sociological empowerment often addresses members of groups that social discrimination processes have excluded from decision-making processes through..."

The meaning is clear, we need to increase strength of those "weaker" entities or people or community so that they can participate in decision-making processes.

What is women empowerment?
As is clear from above - Women empowerment is nothing but realizing that somehow over the period of time when the concept of society was being formed we left women behind.



Why is it needed now?
Some may question that why do we need to include women in decision-making now as everything in our society is going fine when men are taking decisions. Are they taking wrong decisions? No it is not about men being wrong or women being smarter. It is needed because we have realized that if we continue in the same way we can achieve "something" but if we include the women we can achieve much better and faster results. It is needed because two brains are always better than one. It is needed because some women still don't understand whether the switch should be up or down to turn off the fan. No they are not dumb. They were never allowed to use their brains since childhood. So why is it needed again..

1) Family planning - We all know that this is a very important aspect of our life. This alone can decide that in future a family will grow or shrink financially. We see many women, especially poor, with many kids and wonder why didnt they plan? The answer is quite simple - as you will agree, most of the time it is the woman signaling or reminding about the precautions. Men although mutually agree with the planning easily forget. So in a family where women are not allowed to think or speak or are scared of being beaten up end up having many kids.

2) House management - We all have seen our mothers taking care of the house and know that although we cant see what she does, she is always busy doing something. Her work involves lots of things - minimal wastage of food, water and electrivity, dealing with plumber, gardener, cleaner etc, keep the house clean, buying grocery etc. Here the knowledge and power of decision making is essential. Decisions may be small but can help in day-to-day activities of the house thus making the husband free to focus on work (of course when both are working the household chores should also be shared)

3) Raising Kids - If a mother can decide what is right and what is wrong, then she can guide her kids to become better human being. Fathers are not always there. Mothers are available most of the time (even if they are working) and they know each action of their kids, it's in their nature, but to understand what their kids are doing or asking permission for, she should have some basic education. Or else she will not have the confidence to question them further or say "No"

4) Travel - Although the railways and airways will not like this idea but I see so many husbands going to and fro just to leave their wives at some destination because they dont know or are scared to travel alone. Need I say more...

5) Self protection - Needless to say if a woman is given support from her family and society she will feel more secure. Many times girls hide eve teasing incidents  because they know if they inform their parents they wont be allowed to go out alone. But we also know that cities like Mumbai, where women travel in over crowded local trains, have almost no eve teasing. This is mostly because the men are scared that they will be beaten up by the Ladies crowd. If we empower our women they will be able to protect themselves and other women and will share the burden from men.


But giving power to women is scary?
Yes it is. It is scary to give or share your power with anyone; but the woman we are talking about is your wife, or your mom, or your daughter. We are asking you to be her strength like she is yours. We are asking you to allow her to decide what is good and bad for the family. And we are asking to give a chance to keep her say understanding that she may not be always right and you still have the right to not agree to her.

What is NOT women empowerment?
To all the ladies out there it is very important to understand what is good and what is bad. When we get power we can change things and when we take decisions it has its positive/negative outcomes. This power comes with a great responsibility. For instance, to have or not to have kids should still be mutually decided. Your partner should not feel cheated. If you are not happy in your relationship then having an affair outside of marriage is still wrong unless your partner knows and has no issues (which is rare). When we ask for our rights we should ensure we will not misuse them and that we can be trusted.

Lastly, thanks to all men who are already empowering females around them. We know its not easy to enable someone to question you. We are indeed incomplete without each other.

2 comments:

  1. Its the best one I have read so far...dont know how I missed it before.. Great work and research sis. So proud

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