WomEn EmpowERmEnT

Women bear almost all responsibility for meeting basic needs of the family, yet are systematically denied the resources, information and freedom of action they need to fulfill this responsibility.

* The vast majority of the world's poor are women.

* Two-thirds of the world's illiterates are female. Of the millions of school age children not in school, the majority are girls.

* And today, HIV/AIDS is rapidly becoming a woman's disease.

The current world food price crisis is having a severe impact on women. Around the world, millions of people eat two or three times a day, but a significant percentage of women eat only once. And, now, many women are denying themselves even that one meal to ensure that their children are fed. These women are already suffering the effects of even more severe malnutrition, which inevitably will be their children's fate as well. The impact of this crisis will be with us for many years.

Studies show that when women are supported and empowered, all of society benefits.Their families are healthier, more children go to school, agricultural productivity improves and incomes increase. In short, communities become more resilient.

In India, our Women's Leadership Workshop has empowered 71,000 women elected to local councils to be effective change agents in their villages. They are forming district- and state-wide federations to ensure that their voices are heard at top levels of government.

When women, who have traditionally been denied a voice in decision-making, come to power, they transform the development agenda toward the human component - focusing on health, nutrition, education, water, sanitation and better family income. They tackle long-ignored problems such as domestic violence, alcoholism and corruption.

Effective bottom-up strategies for ending hunger and poverty combine three factors: mobilizing people at the grassroots level to build self-reliance, empowering women as key change agents and forging effective partnerships with local government. In India, these come together in our Panchayati Raj Campaign.

National Girl Child Day is a national strategy that seeks to improve the status of and end discrimination against girls in Bangladeshi society.Since 2000, Bangladesh has celebrated National Girl Child Day each September 30. It has been chosen as one day of the annual Children's Rights Week. Actions are organised at both the national and local levels.

A unified campaign. The Hunger Project is working with a broad network of government ministries, NGOs, women's organisations, schools, colleges and the media to awaken people across the nation to the critical importance of providing better health, education and nutrition to girls as the highest leverage investment for the future of the country. This network, called the National Girl Child Advocacy Forum, joins more than 300 organizations.

Panchayati raj refers to India's local democracy, based on elected local councils known as panchayats. The 73rd amendment to India's constitution, passed in 1993, mandates local elections every five years and reserves one-third of all seats for women.

So to keep the nation working, women of the nation should keep working......

FEMALE FOETICIDE

Some of the worst gender ratios, indicating gross violation of women’s rights, are found in South and East Asian countries such as India and China. The determination of the sex of the foetus by ultrasound scanning, amniocentesis, and in vitro fertilization has aggravated this situation. No moral or ethical principle supports such a procedure for gender identification. The situation is further worsened by a lack of awareness of women’s rights and by the indifferent attitude of governments and medical professionals.

The killing of women exists in various forms in societies the world over. However, Indian society displays some unique and particularly brutal versions, such as dowry deaths and sati. Female foeticide is an extreme manifestation of violence against women. Female foetuses are selectively aborted after pre-natal sex determination, thus avoiding the birth of girls. As a result of selective abortion, between 35 and 40 million girls and women are missing from the Indian population. In some parts of the country, the sex ratio of girls to boys has dropped to less than 800:1,000.

The sex ratio has altered consistently in favour of boys since the beginning of the 20th century and the effect has been most pronounced in the states of Punjab, Haryana and Delhi. It was in these states that private foetal sex determination clinics were first established and the practice of selective abortion became popular from the late 1970s. Worryingly, the trend is far stronger in urban rather than rural areas, and among literate rather than illiterate women, exploding the myth that growing affluence and spread of basic education alone will result in the erosion of gender bias.

Religion operates alongside other cultural and economic factors in lowering the status of women. The practice of dowry has spread nationwide, to communities and castes in which it had never been the custom, fuelled by consumerism and emulation of upper caste practices. In the majority of cases, the legal system has no impact on the practice of dowry. It is estimated that a dowry death occurs in India every 93 minutes.

The need for a dowry for girl children, and the ability to demand a dowry for boys exerts considerable economic pressure on families to use any means to avoid having girls, who are seen as a liability. Sonalda Desai has reported that there are posters in Bombay advertising sex-determination tests that read, ‘It is better to pay 500 Rs now than 50,000 Rs (in dowry) later’.

The removal of this practice in Indian society is a serious challenge.

It must involve:

* A move away from religious teachings and the advocacy of a scientific, rational,and humanistapproach.

*The empowerment of women and a strengthening of women’s rights through campaigning against practices such as dowry, and ensuring strict implementation of existing legislation.

*Ensuring the development of and access to good health care services.

* Simple methods of complaint registration, accessible to the poorest and most vulnerable women.

*Wide publicization in the media of the scale and seriousness of the practice. NGOs should take a key role in educating the public on this matter.

*Regular assessment of indicators of status of women in society, such as sex ratio, and female mortality, literacy, and economic participation.

IT IS ONLY BY A COMBINATION OF MONITORING,EDUCATION CAMPIGNS AND EFFECTIVE LEGAL IMPLEMENTATION THAT THE DEEP-SEATED ATTITUDES AND PRACTICES AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS CAN BE ERODED.