Powerpuff plan
A novel scheme for women that looks beyond health and maternity issues

One of the most important ‘pro people’ project announced by the new UPA government is the National Mission for Empowerment of Women. The project is unique in many aspects. The most striking feature being, it plans to take a holistic view on the issue of gender discrimination.
With the ministry of women and child development (WCD) as the nodal agency, the mission will coordinate with 14 social sector ministries, including health and family welfare, rural development, human resource development, urban employment and poverty alleviation, youth and sports affairs, labour, social justice and empowerment, tribal affairs, drinking water, small-scale industries and agro and rural industries, science and technology, non-conventional energy sources, textiles and agriculture.

This is a novel approach; previously for development of any specific social sector, the government usually set up specific ministries, which were compartmentalised by design and hence scope of operations. The WCD was a prime example of the same, where it was till date reduced to addressing only health related issues of mothers, new-borns and children. Now, it is to be granted a broader canvas to address different issues plaguing women in this country.

Gender discrimination has been a bane for human societies, and we have not really overcome it even in the 21st century. Human civilization has never been fair to the ‘fairer sex’. Health neglect, social and physical exploitation, regressive social biases, abuses, dowry deaths etc are all proof of the patriarchal society that we have build, endorse, and live in. female foeticides are perhaps the biggest proof of how unwanted women are in our society. It is ironic indeed, as the society cannot survive without women giving birth to the next generation!

The issue of gender empowerment is a big issue for society per se. The issue has been discussed at length in political science and sociological paradigms, with the much-abused feminism developing as another potent ‘ism’ in human development. It has more to do with changing the social outlook on the issue. And there are two ways to go about it; convince those imposing this hierarchy to rethink their follies, or force them. Women empowerment essentially seeks to do the second. It aims to empower women, so that they can reclaim their rights.

Empowerment can be of various forms. The ongoing debate of 33 per cent reservation for women in the Parliament is one such form. Reservation in the decision-making institution of the country is giving direct political power to a section of the society which can then use it to address its problems.

Political representation by itself is meaningless unless it is used to change socio-economic realities. Thus, any proposal to give political reservation is incomplete as it is not a solution, just the means to reach the latter. While the strong and often open opposition to the proposal not only reflects the deep-rooted bias, but also teaches us a very valuable lesson; the change cannot imposed on the top, in the expectation that it will trickle down. The change must come at the base which is the core of the society.

That is where the national mission comes into play. Increasing the coverage of anganwadi programme, introducing special incentives for female child education, gender budgeting at the core of the Union Budget structure to allocate resources for women centric programmes, special focus to provide more micro credit to women to help self sustenance, the SABLA initiative, aimed at providing health nutrition and education to adolescent girls, active initiatives to encourage and enable women participation in mainstream work force, encouraging defence, power, telecom, communications, transport and industry to adopt practices to determine the gender impact of their expenditure and also more attention on these issues etc are some of the broad initiatives being discussed under this mission. The idea is to ensure that the new generation of women are equipped to step out into the modern world and truly become part of it through active participation and engagement.
The battle is not only to ‘liberate’ the women from the domain of the household, but to also ensure their protection in the male-dominated ‘mainstream’. Historically it has been seen that women have been often welcome into hardcore labour- intensive jobs, which to the simple observation might seem as a change. But there has been a dark side to the story! For example, it was found that in the South Asian countries during the boom in the 90s, women participation in the work force rose dramatically. This was often pointed out as one of the benefits of the South Asian rapid industrialization model which supposedly brought women emancipation as well! However, it was soon found that with the crisis, it were the women who were sacked the earliest and the easiest! Women workers were paid less than there male counterparts for the same amount of job done (and hence the surge in their employment as they came cheaper), they were more disciplined (read bullied) with lower unionization and easy targets for layoff. Such problems persist in our country as well. Be it agricultural labourers, women engaged in construction activities (the one’s you and I see carrying the bricks on their heads in any construction site) and even in the NREGA it is complained that the problem persists. Moreover, sexual harassment of women in work places is perhaps the biggest problem across all fields of employment, be it at the rural hinterlands or the urban elite section of society.

The Mission thus seeks to address these shortcomings as well. Ensuring strong corrective measures against sexual harassments in workplaces or educational institutions, ensure equality in participation in the same through monitored sex ratios at different levels of hierarchy in such institutions, extended maternity benefits in work places, developing greater women participation in erstwhile male dominated areas by developing special provisions like all women police stations or all women bus or taxi services etc are some of the possibilities bring explored to increase the domain of activities for women.

As an economist we are constantly engaged in how to best utilise our limited resources to maximise our wellbeing. In the same light, we seek to develop our human capital as it is the biggest asset for a developing country like India. However, a sizeable section of this capital is handicapped due to social neglect, bias and ignorance. Empowering them will enable them to realise their full potential, which in turn will help our national human capital to reach greater heights.

The WCD is in the process of developing, revising and updating the reports of Gender Development Index and Gender Empowerment Measure for India. We usually
focus only on the GDP or the sensex to judge the performance of our nation, overlooking other measures like unemployment, poverty and mortality rates, which portray the true picture of the development of a nation. I hope that the gender development index too is not relegated to the background like them.