Women Empowerment is one of the most critical and essential things that everyone should support. Women empowerment is empowering the women to take their own decisions for their personal development as well as social development. Empowerment of women would mean encouraging women to be self-reliant and Independent and generating confidence into them face any difficult situation.
In the ancient days, women were treated very badly by their families and society because India was a male dominated country. They were not given education and were restricted to doing household tasks only. Women have been subjected to injustice, through decades.
The men always had rights; however, the women didn’t have any of these rights, even a small right like voting. Things changed when women realized that they too need equal rights. This brought along the revolution by the women demanding their rights. It spread the awareness that gender shouldn’t be the reason for those things to go in their favor. It was in 1848, when India got its first woman educator in the person of Savitribai Phule. She busted the social norm that a woman cannot be educated. After 100 years, the nation accepted the leadership of a woman and Indira Gandhi became the first woman Prime Minister of India. It is said that sky is the limit, but Kalpana Chawla broke that thought and became the first Indian woman to travel in space.
There are several Women Empowerment Schemes in India like “Beti Bachao Beti Padhao” scheme, Women Helpline Scheme, “Ujjiwala” etc. A Comprehensive Scheme for prevention of women trafficking and rescue is Nirbhaya.
BDKS focuses its attention on the empowerment of the poor women of rural areas. Its aim is to train and provide them with opportunities of self-employment to improve their social and economic status. BDKS is working with women to generate awareness regarding their legal rights. Women Self Help Groups (SHG) has been recognized as an effective strategy for the empowerment of women in rural areas. They bring together women from all walks of life to fight for their cause. In rural areas women come together under Self Help Groups (SHGs) to address their common problems, such as by engaging in weekly savings to create corpus of funds. These savings allow them to get future credits for their group. The savings made by the SHG must be used to provide loans to members of the group. They are supporting their households and communities in achieving food, nutrition, generating income and improving rural livelihood and overall well-being. SHGs work on a variety of issues like health, nutrition, agriculture, forestry, income generation activities and so on.