Vol. 7, Issue 11 (2018)

Author(s):
Dr. Susan Sam

Abstract:
This paper attempts to analyze the status of women empowerment in India and highlights the challenges and remedies in its relation. Today, the empowerment of women has become one of the most important concerns of the 21st century, but practically women empowerment is still an illusion of reality. Women empowerment refers to the increase in the spiritual, political, social, educational, gender and economic strength of individuals and communities of women, and building up of a society wherein women can breathe without the fear of oppression, exploitation, apprehension, discrimination, and the general feeling of persecution which goes with being a woman in a traditionally male dominated structure. The review reveals that women of India are relatively disempowered and they enjoy a somewhat lower than status men, in spite of many efforts undertaken by the Government. Masculinity tends to be associated with dominance, aggressiveness and leadership while femininity with compassion, serviceability, tenderness, flexibility, and relationship orientation. In today's world women need to have positive characters like that of men eg. Assertiveness, leadership along with their own positive characteristics, similarly men need to have positive characteristics like that women along with their positive characteristics as that of perseverance, flexibility to march forward in this developing world. The review concludes by an observation that the access to education, employment, and change in social structure and the mind set of men folk at large are only the evolving factors to women empowerment.