Gender and Development Empowerment of Sociology YouTube Lecture Handouts

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Introduction

  • Pressing problem
  • Overshadows other kinds of inequalities like of caste and class
  • Two perspectives:
    • Women՚s development
    • Women՚s empowerment
  • Beijing conference in the 90s led to the rise of women՚s empowerment perspective
  • Problem in perception
    • Antagonism against men effort to achieve gender equality
  • Failure of different schemes devised for the development of women:
  • Traditional gender role bias is seen in developmental schemes
  • Efficiency in their existing roles increased rather than enabling them to transcend their stereotyped roles
  • Failure to understand the nature of gender and equality
  • Unconscious gender prejudices
  • Capitalistic and patriarchal models
  • Caroline Moser in 1989 pleaded for gender planning and devising gender development index by the UN
  • GAD - Gender and Development - Deals with neglected marginalization of women
  • WAD- Women and Development - deals with gender planning and development

Definition

  • Beteille - The main point behind empowerment is that it seeks to change society through a rearrangement of power
  • Women՚s empowerment is adding to women՚s power - Griffen

Concept

  • Molyneux in 1985- Mobilization without emancipation
  • Distinction between women՚s practical needs and strategic interests
  • Practical needs fulfilled but strategic interests are neglected
    • practical needs include child care interest, provision of maternity, efficient training in domestic department
  • Neglect of power dimension
    • Include women in the decision making process
    • Participation in domestic and community power structure not only in economic position

Gender Awareness by Sara Long We

  • Empowerment?
  • Increase in women՚s power to achieve equality with men
  • Based on her formulation in 1991,

Five Levels of Gender Equality

Table Supporting: Five Levels of Gender Equality
Control
ParticipationIncreased equalityIncreased empowerment
Conscientisation
Access
welfare
  • Welfare - material welfare
  • Access to resources and benefits
  • Conscientization - debunking the belief and natural determination of gender and equality
  • Participation in decision making process
  • Control over one՚s life and levels of power
    • Gender gaps are at all five levels
    • Cover social economic psychological and political dimensions
    • Diagram can be viewed from upside down and downside up
Illustration: Five Levels of Gender Equality

Issues

Three aspects

  • awareness generation about gender gaps, sex ratio, mortality rate
    • access to resources and benefits like education, wage, employment land, credit
    • participation in decision-making process within the family and in public organizations like Parliament
  • debunking of the beliefs
    • gender gaps ⟋ God-given ⟋natural order of things
    • They are man-made and they can be altered
  • organization and mobilization of women to attend end of gender equality

Gender Gaps

Illustration: Gender Gaps

Approaches of Women Empowerment

  • Sponsored
    • Efforts made by the State
    • Importance of polity and laws
  • Self-striven
    • Self-mobilization e. g. mass women՚s movements
    • Organizing themselves
    • Both approaches work in harmony

Empowerment and Development

Table Supporting: Empowerment and Development
Women՚s empowermentWomen՚s empowerment
It is political projectIt is political project
Improving their performance in political spaceImproving their performance in political space
Measured by UN standardized Gender Empowerment Measure or GEMMeasured by UN standardized Gender Empowerment Measure or GEM
  • They are empirically interrelated and analytically separable
  • Dialectically linked
    • if women gain power they will use it as a resource for development
    • if they experience development and lack power they will strive for power
    • two approaches are essentially linked strategies

Ninth FYP

  • First time in the history of planned development in India
  • Reservation
  • Appraisal at work
  • Education , health- equality plans
  • Development Bank for Women Entrepreneurs for MSMEs

Way Ahead

  • Need for gender sensitive strategy of development and gender responsive index of development
  • Treating women as partners not as beneficiaries of the developmental schemes
  • Recognition of women՚s economic agency in development that is ‘her productive roll over and above her reproductive role’ (The Fundamental text for the UN decade for women in 1990)

MCQs

Q.1. Assertion (A) : Empowerment of women is closely associated with women՚s participation in unorganized sector.

Reason (R) : Empowerment of women is related to enhancement of women՚s capabilities and decision.

(A) Both (A) and (R) are true.

(B) (A) is false, (R) is true.

(C) Both (A) and (R) are false.

(D) (A) is true, (R) is false.

Answer: (B)

Q.2. Assertion (A) : Empowerment of women is possible through entrepreneurship development.

Reason (R) : Entrepreneurship development is the only indicator for empowerment of women.

Codes:

(A) Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A) .

(B) Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is not a correct explanation of (A) .

(C) Both (A) and (R) are false.

(D) (A) is true and (R) is false.

Answer: (D)

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Manishika