Gender Equality

Womens Work and Economic Empowerment

In nearly every country, women work longer hours than men, but are usually paid less and are more likely to live in poverty. In subsistence economies, women spend much of the day performing tasks to maintain the household, such as carrying water and collecting fuel wood. In many countries women are also responsible for agricultural production and selling. Often they take on paid work or entrepreneurial enterprises as well. Unpaid domestic work from food preparation to caregiving directly affects the health and overall well being and quality of life of children and other household members. The need for womens unpaid labour often increases with economic shocks, such as those associated with the AIDS pandemic or economic restructuring. Yet women's voices and lived experiences whether as workers (paid and unpaid), citizens, or consumers are still largely missing from debates on finance and development. Poor women do more unpaid work, work longer hours and may accept degrading working conditions during times of crisis, just to ensure that their families survive.

Intergenerational gender gaps

The differences in the work patterns of men and women, and the 'invisibility' of work that is not included in national accounts, lead to lower entitlements to women than to men. Womens lower access to resources and the lack of attention to gender in macroeconomic policy adds to the inequity, which, in turn, perpetuates gender gaps. For example, when girls reach adolescence they are typically expected to spend more time in household activities, while boys spend more time on farming or wage work. By the time girls and boys become adults, females generally work longer hours than males, have less experience in the labour force, earn less income and have less leisure, recreation or rest time. This has implications for investments in the next generation. If parents view daughters as less likely to take paid work or earn market wages, they may be less inclined to invest in their education, women's fastest route out of poverty.

UNFPA in action
UNFPA is committed to actions to attack poverty and powerlessness, especially among women. About half of the UNFPA programme countries have developed strategies to provide women with economic opportunities. The Fund has supported economic empowerment and micro-credit initiatives in Bangladesh, Chad, Kenya, Morocco, Palestinian womens centres, Tajikistan and elsewhere. As part of its Campaign to End Fistula, UNFPA also supports skills training for who have been marginalized by this debilitating injury of childbirth. UNFPA strongly supports addressing the feminization of

poverty through the integration of gender concerns in macro economic policy and in poverty reduction strategies. In Chad, a two-pronged programme unites microcredit and reproductive health education: while young women receive support that can lead to economic independence, they also learn to protect themselves against HIV and other reproductive health problems. In the Lao People's Democratic Republic, a seed fund is helping women gain respect as economic partners, as well as mothers and wives. Women are learning about reproductive health issues through the programme as well. In Bangladesh, a UNFPA-supported microcredit project provides skills training and small business loans to women, and also supports reproductive health and family planning services. In Viet Nam, UNFPA and partners support national efforts that link economic empowerment, environmental management and reproductive health services. Participation involves 500 Womens Savings Groups in nine provinces with a membership of over 12,000 women.

Empowering Women through Education

"Education is one of the most important means of empowering women with the knowledge, skills and self-confidence necessary to participate fully in the development process." ICPD Programme of Action, paragraph 4.2 Education is important for everyone, but it is especially significant for girls and women. This is true not only because education is an entry point to other opportunities, but also because the educational achievements of women can have ripple effects within the family and across generations. Investing in girls' education is one of the most effective ways to reduce poverty. Investments in secondary school education for girls yields especially high dividends. Girls who have been educated are likely to marry later and to have smaller and healthier families. Educated women can recognize the importance of health care and know how to seek it for themselves and their children. Education helps girls and women to know their rights and to gain confidence to claim them. However, womens literacy rates are significantly lower than mens in most developing countries.

Education has far-reaching effects

The education of parents is linked to their children's educational attainment, and the mother's education is usually more influential than the father's. An educated mother's

greater influence in household negotiations may allow her to secure more resources for her children. Educated mothers are more likely to be in the labour force, allowing them to pay some of the costs of schooling, and may be more aware of returns to schooling. And educated mothers, averaging fewer children, can concentrate more attention on each child. Besides having fewer children, mothers with schooling are less likely to have mistimed or unintended births. This has implications for schooling, because poor parents often must choose which of their children to educate. Closing the gender gap in education is a development priority. The 1994 Cairo Consensus recognized education, especially for women, as a force for social and economic development. Universal completion of primary education was set as a 20-year goal, as was wider access to secondary and higher education among girls and women. Closing the gender gap in education by 2015 is also one of the benchmarks for the Millennium Development Goals.

What UNFPA is doing

UNFPA advocates widely for universal education and has been instrumental in advancing legislation in many countries to reduce gender disparities in schooling. The 2003 UNFPA global survey on ICPD+10 showed that most programme countries formally recognize the important of reducing the gender gap in education between boys and girls. UNFPA supports a variety of educational programmes, from literacy projects to curricula development with a focus on reproductive and sexual health. Because of the sensitivity of these issues, the focus and names of the educational programmes have gone through a number of changes over the past decades. Gender issues now receive more attention than they did in past programmes, and instruction methods have changed, from a didactic approach to one emphasizing student participation and communications skills. In Jamaica, through an alliance with the Womens Centre of Jamaica Foundation and funding from the European Union, UNFPA supported a programme that enabled thousands of girls to return to school following pregnancies and to acquire technical skills. In a UNFPA-supported project in Bolivia, women are learning to read in their indigenous language while learning about reproductive health, safe motherhood and health insurance. In Mali, a literacy project reaches adolescents both in and out of school, with a focus on migrant girls, domestic workers, victims of violence and abuse, and those living on the margins of society.

In Mauritania, UNFPA is collaborating on an educational initiative in four of the poorest regions of the country. The initiative aims to reduce the dropout rate by half and equip at least 5,000 girls with a range skills, from home economics and information technology to environmental preservation.

Political Empowerment
Throughout much of the world, womens equality is undermined by historical imbalances in decision-making power and access to resources, rights, and entitlements for women. Either by law or by custom, women in many countries still lack rights to:

Own land and to inherit property Obtain access to credit Attend and stay in school Earn income and move up in their work, free from job discrimination

Moreover, women are still widely under-represented in decision-making at all levels, in the household and in the public sphere. Addressing these inequities through laws and public policy is a way of formalizing the goal of gender equality. Legal changes, which most countries have now implemented, are often a necessary step to institute gender equality, but not necessarily sufficient to create lasting changes. Addressing the gaps between what the law proscribes and what actually occurs often requires broad, integrated campaigns.

UNFPA at work
Effective advocacy requires partnership and coalition building. UNFPA alone is a relatively small agency, but when it works together with other international agencies and non-governmental organizations to address gender biases in laws and policies at the national level, it can be very effective. Formal international agreements, such as the ICPD Programme of Action and the Millennium Development Goals, provide key areas for policy changes. With its development partners, UNFPA advocates widely for legislation to advance gender equality, to eliminate all forms of discrimination based on sex, and to prevent gender-based violence and increase penalties for those who inflict it. The Fund has established partnerships with parliamentarians in developing countries for political and legislative support for population and development challenges, of which the empowerment of women is central. Affecting changes in laws can require considerable patience and a deep understanding of the cultural context. In most countries, serious gaps still exist in available data on womens economic and political activity and decision-making ability. The Fund works to fill gaps in collecting

sex-disaggregated data that is needed to put benchmarks on or monitor policy or programme effectiveness. In many countries, UNFPA supports capacity-building for womens NGOs and for government to use the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, because it provides a legally-binding basis for the realization of womens rights political, economic, social and cultural in the 179 countries which have ratified it (as of October, 2004) Reference: http://www.unfpa.org/gender/empowerment1.htm

Rural Education Program in India

Education is one of the main and basic need of the life of everyone. Without education man is like an animal. In our country Lord Macauly in 1853 started the education of English. Lord Macauly wanted to establish a new segment or class of Babu for working in the Government offices of British Govt. After independence Government started a big programme of spreading education all over the country. in this programme primary, secondary, higher secondary schools and Graduate and Post Graduate colleges were open. The basic thought behind the establishment of these schools is that there must be a primary school in every villages and must be a Inter College between three or four

villages. There are almost 5,51,137 villages in India and almost 6,50,000 primary schools about 1,50,000 primary schools are going on in the cities and urban areas and almost 5,00,000 schools are in villages. About 2,00,000 Inter colleges are running in the country in which about 1,20,000 are going on in Urban areas. Government of India and the Provincial Government is regularly working for the progress of education in the country and their main emphasis on the development of rural education. There are a lot of problems in rural education. Those teachers are appointed in the schools and colleges of the rural areas they dont try to gave the students good education their main aim is to kill their time here and they do efforts of their transfer and they have no interest in performing their duty well. The villagers are not very serious about the education of their children. They feel very hesitation in sending their children to school. They thought that if their children getting the education then they dont do their agricultural works and this thought also prove right. The women education in the rural areas is also in a very bad condition. The villagers dont send their daughters to school. They said that the daughters dont need education their main work is working in the house, if their daughters go to school then her thought should be changed and it will not good. The society of village still cant leave the conservative thought they think that it is not right that the boys and girls sitting together in the class, so they dont ready to sent their daughters in school. From more than hundred years our farmer robbed and cheated by the money landers and Mahajans. They gave loan to the farmers against their property (Agricultural land, animal or house etc.) and this farmer spent his whole life under this debt. In spite of doing payment the money lender captured its land or house and sometimes the loan of father was paid by his son. By this the Mahajans and moneylenders became richer and richer and the farmers had to live his whole life into dept. The main reason of this poorest condition of farmers was the illiteracy. Now a days we also find illiteracy in thousands of villages. The reason of the illiteracy was the somewhere the lack of education facilities and some where the passiveness of the people about education. It is right that Government is working to extension of schools. Colleges in villages but we have to change the mentality of the teaching staff as well as our villagers. If the teachers dont pay any attention towards their duty then these schools and colleges become empty. The teachers encourage the village people to send their children into schools and colleges aware them about the benefits of education and told them that with education your child can live a good life and he can move towards his progress. These children come to schools and colleges they must educate them in this way that they understand the meaning of education and feel better than the time of illiteracy. A educate child motivate many other children to come to school this is the main thing which become a milestone of our vast scale educational establishment. Now many social workers are working with Government for the rural education. The Government very fastly spreading the education facilities in villages and also spreading

the awareness about the education in the villages. Mahatma Gandhi once said that India cant progress without the progress of the villages, so if we develop our villages then India must be develop but without education any type of development is impossible, so we must educate the people of rural India. The educated people of rural India must play very important role in the development of country. Reference: http://currentessays.blogspot.in/search/label/Educational%20Essays _________________________

Child Labour in India

Child Labour is a phenomena prevalent mostly in developing countries of Asia and Africa. This is not to be seen in the advanced countries of the West. The reason for this is very obvious, those who feel the need for financial support of the children only allow them to work and earn. In the Western countries, where education is compulsory, the question of children found working does not arise. Let us analyse in some detail why, this child labour is commonly found in India, or for that matter in any if the developing countries. It is these only which have teaming millions of poor people. These poor people have to make every member work for his/her own food. With the earnings of all the members of the family, they are able to make their two ends meet. This same situation prevails in all the developing countries. I do wonder if any parents prefer to see their little children work for their food, instead of enjoying at school. When the school can only be a dream for the poor, we find the little boys at tea stalls, small restaurants, in mechanic shops, cleaning cars and working as shoeshines. We also see small girls engaged in industries like match making, candle making etc., I am sure that, given a choice, all these parents would love to see these little slogging children enjoy their childhood at home or at school, but how is the moot point. The children who are working are adding their little mite to the family income, and it may be so that, if they do not work, they may not be blessed with even one square meal a day. Besides this, if the child does not go to school, what does he do throughout the day. Time will be wasted, and he will only learn wrong things of life, as, an idle brain is a devils workshop. So, in this situation, I personally feel that, though the condition is deplorable it is the lesser evil, and in the bargain the child gets food to eat. From the side of the child also, it is a certainty that, if he/she is asked for a preference, it will be for going to school. So when both, the parents and the children would prefer going to school then why this labour. It is obvious that they are thus working due to compulsions and not out of choice. The compulsion is of course, the meager income of the family, who cannot afford to even feed the children if they do not work, and besides this a lot more comes into play for creating this unhappy situation. Our Governmental agencies, private agencies and NGOs, often shout from rooftops regarding this menace of child labour. This is a menace is accepted by all and sundry but, by shouting about it and passing legislations for it, we do not reach anywhere near the solution of the problem. No one has, as yet suggested some solution of the problem. When it is amply clear that, the children work to get their basic

needs fulfilled, no one can say that, it is wrong. The practical approach to the problem would be that we attempt to find some means for providing for them, and then, the children can be forced to attend Government schools. In the absence of a practical alternative arrangement it is no use just shouting about the problem. I personally feel that the Government should first provide for such families by means of subsidies, free ration and free education. Only after such provisions are made, and the Government gets the confirmation of the solution working smoothly and honestly, can we expect children to get out of the rut of working to earn a living from an early age when they should be enjoying and playing and of course, studying and learning. Another point closely linked with the problem of child labour comes to the fore, when these young labourers grow up into suffering adults. They are absolutely hardened and most of them tend to become anti-social. Their feeling is, and rightly so that, why should they bother about any social norms, as, what has society given to them. With this attitude, when they enter the adult world they tend to take up professions that are tained with crime. They become, smugglers, hardened criminals robbers and murderers. With such children having lost their childhood at the altar of poverty being to believe and rightly so, that in this world what really counts is riches. With this forethought, they enter the world of crime, to become rich and enjoy. Thus we may say that these criminals, are usually the creation of unhappy childhoods. So let us understand that, child labour is not an isolated problem that has to be dealt with as a single problem but, it brings in its trail a host of more complicated problems which are the offshoot of this one. The biggest problem that follows the problem of child labour is the creation of a force of criminals, and thus an increased crime rate. The only practical and feasible solution to this problem of child labour which can be conceivable in the present scenario is provided necessitis to the families and making free education compulsory for all children. Before providing the essentials, no one can tell the poor that they should not allow their children to work, for, if they do not work, who will feed them isnt this a pertinent question. Child labour is not a problem that can be tackled by just talking and debating about it on various platforms. Neither can it be dealt with by making it illegal, as, no law can ban a person big or small from earning his bread. All this drama will not be able to fill the hungry stomachs of the poor. We must deal with the problem with a more practical approach and provide what the child earns for. I am sure no child does this labour for fun. It is their necessity which makes them work. No one can deny that, fulfillment of necessities has to be tackled before doing anything else. When the necessities are provided for, I am sure that, the problem that is defying a solution will automatically get solved by itself. Let us all get together and pledge to make the Government and other agencies take up a more authentic approach to this problem, and, I am sure, a solution will be at hand. Reference: http://currentessays.blogspot.in/search/label/Socio-Cultural%20Essays ________________________________

Influence of Cinema in India

Cinema is by far the most common and cheapest means of entertainment in cities in India. The maximum we Indians can look to cinema is as an exposition of art. In a country like ours, where most people are illiterate and so poor that they can ill afford any other recreation, Cinema has taken its toll. Poor, hard pressed and illiterate people find that the cinema is the only means by which they can break the monotony and drudgery or their routine mundane lives. The village or urban labour class are casual about pictures because they de not have the time, the means or occassion to dabble with any of the luxuries they see on the cinema screen. However, it is the urban lower class and small children of all classes who treat movies as something more than mere entertainers. Thus we see that the urban population is mostly influenced by the cinema. The influence of cinema can not be underestimated for, cinema is a visual aid to learning. So what is seen on the cinema screen is automatically assimilated by those who see the picture. Now, what is to be measured is the depth and amount of influence on different individuals. As we all know the most impressionable people are the illiterates and the young minds so, when picture are seen by the masses, the greatest and deepest influence is on the young and illiterate, while all other categories only get their share of entertainment and forget about it all. The educated may view the cinema as an art, besides it being entertainment but the influence on the illiterate and children is seen in their trying to copy or imitate what they see. Besides, these categories also start visualising the screen to be a picture of real life which leads them to disappointment and frustration. The cinema being a very important visual aid can play a vital role in educating the masses. If pictures are based on realities and deal with society evils and the like, the impressionable minds will understand life and society better, and the cinema will be playing its role. The cinema can play a positive educative role in the spheres of photography, art, dancing and singing and this would be a positive contribution of cinema to the teaching of all these fine arts. What we said in the previous paragraphs is just what could be achieved by the cinema as its influence is tremendous. However, at least in India the influence is just the opposite Cinema is not at all educative in its role instead, it is only influencing impressionable minds in the negative. That would go to mean that, the quality of our cinema is very low. The impressionable minds are, as expected, learning what they see in the cinema. They behave as they see, they dress as they see and act as they see. So, the influence is undoubtedly full and complete but absolutely negative. This has to be because, the young and the illiterate learn and ape all of what they see as, they do not possess the capacity to clean the hay from the chaff. Another very dampening effect of the cinema to day is in causing depressions, frustrations and then suicides. People who see that life is all roses as depicted ok the screen, life is all glamour and money, expect the same from life for themselves. When this is mot to be, they are sadly disappointed with what life has to offer them in reality. Cinema can be of great utility and influence if the cinemas made are educative and provide clean entertainment, clean songs and dances of some standard. However, in our country, like all other things, cinema has also become an industry highly commercialised

each picture produced must be a commercial hit no matter what it may all be about. The producers and directors get together to produce picture to earn a fortune and not to provide quality education or entertainment for people. This is why to day the picture we see are mostly those which cater to the lower classes if people, and children, as, only they can be frivolous and appreciate as fun, meaningless gestures and overtures. Thus, the influence of cinema has got to be tremendous and it is being so. We are getting the return of our cinemas in all our crimes and violence and sex. So it is playing its role of teaching no doubt but what, is just nobodys business. If the cinema has to play the role it is meant to play, the quality of cinema must improve no matter ever if quantity is not retained. It is not important to know how much we learn, it is all important to know what all we learn, as the influence of cinema is great and irrepairable. Reference: http://currentessays.blogspot.in/search/label/Socio-Cultural%20Essays ________________________________