''To awaken the people, it is the women who must be awakened. Once she is on the move, the family moves, the village moves, the nation moves''.

Q3b. ‘’To awaken the people, it is the women who must be awakened. Once she is on the move, the family moves, the village moves, the nation moves’’. – Jawahar Lal Nehru (10m) Theory

Introduction

This quote is talking about the women empowerment and its relevance for family, society and the nation. “If you educate a man, you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate a nation.

Women’s empowerment can be defined to promoting women’s sense of self-worth, their ability to determine their own choices, and their right to influence social change for themselves and others.

Body

To awaken the people women must be awakened because–

Women are the first point of contact for child and her role is critical for character and personality of a child.
- E.g.- Role of Swarupa Rani (mother of Nehru) to cultivate cultural values through the stories of Mahabharat and Ramayana.
Women awakening are crucial for social capital development. Or else society may not have peace and prosperity.
- E.g.- Broken family and lack of care and proper child care access are few of the reasons for heinous crime of Delhi gang rape incident 2012.

Role of women in building family, village and nation–

Family– Women role is crucial for social cohesion and integration, and nutrition and health of family. This in turn can give health Labor Work force for Indian economic development. Ex- A child’s future health depends on proper nutrition during the first 1,000 days of life. Here empowered women can take care of not only the child’s health but also the family’s health and nutrition.
Village– Role of women is crucial for the economic development of rural areas of Kerala through Kudumbashree (SHG program) of Kerala.
National level- Women with approximately half of the population of India, the benefits of skilling and empowering Indian women amount to a staggering 27% increase in GDP of India, as per Christina Laggard, Former MD of IMF.
Social awakening– Fighting against the social evils and fight for social rights of women. Ex- Kalpana Dutta who Contributed to the women’s rights movement in India and worked towards women’s education and empowerment.
Economic empowerment– many women in India are contributing to the family income and also contributing to the GDP of the nation. Ex- Studies show that women reinvest up to 90 percent of their incomes back into their families, compared to just 30-40 percent by men.
Political empowerment– Women played crucial role in India politics and they played major role to remove cultural taboos associated with women capacity. Ex- Indira Gandhi as PM took tough decisions during her tenure like Indo-Pak War, balancing the bipolar world by signing the Friendship treaty with USSR etc.

Challenges to women empowerment-

However there are certain challenges to the women empowerment in terms of – secondary treatment of girl child in family, cultural taboos related to menstruation, lack of gender sensitive infrastructure at public places, work place safety, low Female Labour Force participation rate, and low representation of women in Indian Parliament etc.

Conclusion-

You can tell the condition of a nation by looking at the status of its women.” Because, the status of women depicts the social, economic, and mental conditions of a nation. So addressing the above issues are crucial for women empowerment.

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