Washington: Krishna Tirath, Indian Minister for Women and Child Development who is in Washington as a member of the Indian Ministerial delegation to participate in the 3rd India-U.S. Strategic Dialogue, made a forceful presentation on women’s empowerment. She highlighted the need for sustainable and inclusive growth of women within India and stated that it is essential to bring gender concerns at centre stage. Besides being a core development objective, it is also ‘smart economics’, the Minister stated.
The Minister stated that India is well poised to share its experiences related to women empowerment with other countries in the region. Although the South Asian region has been witnessing impressive economic growth, solutions need to be found for enhanced job opportunities for the skilled women entering labor market, support to small and medium enterprises, linking women to markets, and non-traditional livelihood opportunities. Similarly, capacities of women entering political space have to be built further in order to overcome gender biases and ensure more effective and inclusive governance, the Minister noted.
She welcomed the proposal to organize a regional South Asia Women’s Entrepreneurship conference bringing together the policy makers, women’s entrepreneurs, self-help groups, civil society organizations, public and private sector institutions and corporate entities, to work on concrete actions towards expanding women’s economic participation in the region and beyond.
Tirath stated that the issues identified in the Women Empowerment Dialogue between India and US for women’s social and economic empowerment, political participation, early childhood education, skill development and strengthening of institutional linkages and exchanges are of great relevance in the region. There is potential in cooperation in activities like training grass-root functionaries, women entrepreneurs, promoting energy efficient cooking stoves and Institutional cooperation, the Minister said.
Articulating on the initiatives taken up by the Government of India for empowerment of women, Tirath said that the efforts have been multipronged and driven through a combination of legislative measures, policies and programmes. Legislations like Right to Education, Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act are promoting social and economic empowerment of women. Whereas, programmes such as the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) represent one of the world’s largest and unique programmes for early childhood care, nutrition and health aspects of pregnant and lactating women. She also highlighted the benefits of Self Help Group movement, which covers 6 million SHGs and has benefited 97 million beneficiaries, and schemes such as SABLA which are designed for empowering adolescent girls, and the NMEW. These measures have resulted in better development indicators for women in various sectors including health, education, and work participation.
Measures of the Government of India towards political empowerment of women has resulted in election of 1 million women leaders at grass-roots levels of governance, both in urban and rural areas, Tirath informed the meeting.