Women Empowerment and Gender Equality Go Parallel
Women empowerment concept came from western culture because the era was changing with time and technology. Empowerment means power and it can be on life, situation, taking decisions, and human rights, etc. Empowerment word taken up by the women’s movement in the feminist and development sector related to poverty and women issues in the late 1980s.
The human development report 1995 states that “Empowerment is about participation: investing in women’s capabilities and empowering them to exercise their choices is not only valuable in itself but is also the surest way to contribute to economic growth and overall development.” (UNDP, Human Development Report, 1995, P.2.) women empowerment is possible in four ways, cognitive, Psychologically, economically, and politically. Empowerment is a process and that can be individual or in a group. So after understanding the definition of empowerment we can conclude that women empowerment is against patriarchy and its control and not against men. The aim of women empowerment is the development of stereotyped sex roles in society which will also free men from the boundaries of their traditional roles (breadwinner).
Equality between men and women (gender equality) refers to the equal rights, responsibilities, and opportunities of women and men and girls and boys. Equality does not mean that women and men have to become the same but it means that women’s and men’s rights, responsibilities, and opportunities will not depend on whether they are born male or female, whereas gender equity is the fairness of treatment for women and men in the context of their respective needs (UN Women, Gender mainstreaming, 2001).
In the race of contributing to society and economy, women face a lot of challenges at a personal level and professional level like they have two different roles at home and at the office. So they pissed off very badly mentally and physically. Women work more hours than men and they do a lot of work in the informal sector like care, nurturing, cleaning, household maintenance. But we can tackle the issue by distributing the roles and responsibilities at different levels. Like gender equality should be rooted very deeply at the early stage of a child from school. This can be implemented in school, the involvement of household activities in education can promote gender equality and this also can reduce the burden on women to achieve equal treatment and also women empowerment.
