National conference on Gender equality and Women Empowerment
Introduction :
National conference on Gender equality and Women Empowerment was held on 6th March 2018 by Maharashtra State Commission for Women. The conference was organised by Renaissance College of Computer Science & Advance Technology in collaboration with the Association of Interdisciplinary Policy, Research and Actions(IPRA).
The conference was held 2 days before International Womenâs Day. The conference brought together over 109 academicians and professionals from Maharashtra to share their experiences and researches for mutual learning and improvement. The conference has precious presence of Honoable Dr. Puranchandra Meshram, Registrar of Rashtra Sant Tukdoji Maharaj University(RTMNU), Â Honorable Sau. Neeta Thakre, member of Maharshtra State Commission for Women(MSCW) and Honorable Dr. Shailendra Lende, Head of Department of Marathi, RTMNU. The conference structured into four technical sessions dividing the study of participants into Social Development, Health and Safety, Legal and Entrepreneurship & Employment. This structure of conference allowed all participants to present their research papers and involve in practical discussions. Â
Feedback from the conference was very positive â participants greatly enjoyed the chance to meet like-minded people from so many countries, the opportunity to network and to learn from one another, and the chance to explore ideas.
Since the formation and development of society for women and men, women have been given second the status of second gender. This secondary status till today has proved biased for the women in the society and has been oppressing the rights of women as human. But according to science, Gender does not exist. Genderâ is a socio-cultural term referring socially defined roles and behaviours assigned to âmalesâ and âfemalesâ in a given society; whereas, the term âsexâ is a biological and physiological phenomenon which defines man and woman. In its social, historical and cultural aspects, gender is a function of power relationship between men and women where men are considered superior to women. Therefore, gender may be understood as a man-made concept, while âsexâ is natural or biological characteristics of human beings. Most surprising our society has kept the notion before science and have always treated women as a weaker sex and subordinate to men.
The system of patriarchy finds its validity and sanction in our religious beliefs. As a result of Hindu law given by Manu, still in present modern day social structure, few exceptions here and there, women have no power to take independent decisions either inside their homes or in outside world. Socially-embedded problem like gender inequality requires coordinated social policy and long-term measures from any developing state.
As a rapidly developing country, India is plagued with societal issues related to sociocultural hegemony and gender inequality that result in disparities of income and opportunity. Women do 2.6 times more unpaid care and domestic work than men. While families, societies and economies depend on this work, for women, it leads lower earnings and less time to engage in non-work activities. In addition to equal distribution of economic resources, which is not only a right, but accelerates development in multiple areas, there needs to be a fair balance of responsibility for unpaid care work between men and women. Sexual and reproductive rights are critical in their own right. Shortfalls in these multiply other forms of discrimination, depriving women of education and decent work, for example. Yet only 52 per cent of women married or in a union freely make their own decisions about sexual relations, contraceptive use and health care.
The goal of the conference was to promote gender equality and womenâs empowerment in all state level programmes, policies and organizational practices for strong, inclusive, sustainable and resilient economic and industrial growth and the effective integration of the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. Growth that is premised on inequality is not inclusive growth. Although there have been significant achievements since, many challenges remain, and womenâs socioeconomic disadvantage is reflected in pervasive gender inequalities in earned income, access to productive resources and services, educational attainment, liberty to pursue a profession, property ownership, the ability to obtain credit, and time-use. State recognizes that everyone must benefit from industrial growth, and prosperity should be shared equally among women and men in all countries.
Women constitute half power of the country so in order to make this country a fully powerful country, women empowerment is very necessary. It is empowering women to understand their rights to be independent in every area for their proper growth and development. Women give birth to the baby means future of the nation so only they can better involve in making the bright future of the nation through the proper growth and development of the children. Women need to be empowered instead of treating as a helpless victim of male chauvinism.
SUB-THEMES FOR PAPER PRESENTATION:
1. Laws related to gender equality
2. Implementation of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO)
3. Violence against Women
4. Sexual Equality
5. Discrimination at work place
6. Health & gender
7. Differential vulnerabilities leading to inequitable health outcomes.
8. Differential exposures to health-damaging factors.
9. Women empower through Skill Training and Employment
10. Different tools to Empower women
11. Challenges in women Empowerment
12. Develop women Skills for bring them spirit and Self Confidence
13. Gender and cyber crime
14. Technology used for protection of women
15. Science & women empowerment
Papers on other topics not included in the sub themes but relevant to the main theme will also be considered for inclusion.
Key recommendations:
- Increase the ability of women to participate in the labour force by ensuring the availability of affordable child care and equal treatment in the work place. More generally, improving the position of women in society and promoting entrepreneurship generally will have benefits in terms of womenâs entrepreneurship.
- Listen to the voice of women entrepreneurs. The creation of government offices of women’s business ownership is one way to facilitate this. Such offices could have programme responsibilities such as providing women’s business centres, organising information seminars and meetings and/or providing web-based information to those wanting to start and grow a business.
- Incorporate a women’s entrepreneurial dimension in the formation of all SME-related policies. This can be done by ensuring that the impact on women’s entrepreneurship is taken into account at the design stage.
- Promote the development of women entrepreneur networks. These are major sources of knowledge about womenâs entrepreneurship and valuable tools for its development and promotion. Co-operation and partnerships between national and international networks can facilitate entrepreneurial endeavours by women in a global economy.
- Periodically evaluate the impact of any SME-related policies on the success of women-owned businesses and the extent to which such businesses take advantage of them. The objective should be to identify ways to improve the effectiveness of those that should be retained. Good practices that are identified in this way should be disseminated and shared internationally.
- Improve the factual and analytical underpinnings of our understanding of the role of women entrepreneurs in the economy. This requires strengthening the statistical basis for carrying out gender-related cross-country comparative analyses and longitudinal studies of the impact of important developments and policies, especially over time.
Conference Closing :
At the end, Rubina Patel a social influencer in Nagpur was invited on stage. She was felicitated with the event momento and shawl for her work on womenâs right. Later, she gave a presentation to explain gender and description. She said that the gender is natural. There is Men, women and third gender. But, gender based description is created by the society. Those discriminations are biased and made purely to control women and stop them from developing.
After her presentation, Mr. Prashant Jambhulkar gave a vote of thanks to all the guests and participants. He also thanked village care society, all staff of Renaissance College of Computer Science & Advance Technology and students for their effort in whole preparation of the conference and ended the conference by expressing his expectation that the discussions and sharing through the research paper would be used at their level to shape the future of the society in the best interest of all the women in the country.Â
Conclusion :
The empowerment and autonomy of women and the improvement of their political, social, economic and health status is a highly important end in itself. In addition, it is essential for the achievement of sustainable development. The full participation and partnership of both women and men is required in productive and reproductive life, including shared responsibilities for the care and nurturing of children and maintenance of the household. In all parts of the world, women are facing threats to their lives, health and well- being as a result of being overburdened with work and of their lack of power and influence. In most regions of the world, women receive less formal education than men, and at the same time, women’s own knowledge, abilities and coping mechanisms often go unrecognized. The power relations that impede women’s attainment of healthy and fulfilling lives operate at many levels of society, from the most personal to the highly public. Achieving change requires policy and programme actions that will improve women’s access to secure livelihoods and economic resources, alleviate their extreme responsibilities with regard to housework, remove legal impediments to their participation in public life, and raise social awareness through effective programmes of education and mass communication.
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