Gender Equality: The Importance Of Women's Empowerment

Women form nearly half of the world 's population and a sustainable development can not be achieved without equal participation of men and women. Thus gender equality is not only a goal in its own right but also crucial factor for the sustainable development of any country. A route to sustainable development can only be achieved by providing men and women equal opportunities in all the spheres and both 's interests should be given parallel preference while allocating the resources. Women empowerment is imperative for gender equality which in turn leads to sustainable development. In 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) made important provisions for the recognition of women’s contributions and their full participation in sustainable development. Equal

From each of these global conferences emerged a more powerful recognition of the crucial role played by women in different sectors of society which in turn led to the progressive strengthening of the role of women in the legal, economic, social and political sectors. While women have made significant advances in many societies, women’s concerns and issues are still given secondary importance almost everywhere. This can be illustrated by the Report of the World Conference of the UN Decade for Women, Copenhagen, July 1980: “While Women represent 50 per cent of the world adult population and one third of official labour force, they perform nearly two-thirds of all working hours, receive only a-tenth of world income and own less than one per cent of the world property”. The picture is not different in India. Despite development planning, and the special status accorded to women in the Indian Constitution, there has not been a substantial qualitative improvement in the position of a large majority of women living in rural