Women Empowerment through Reservation in Panchayati Raj Institutions in Himachal Pradesh
| Published date | 01 July 2014 |
| Date | 01 July 2014 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0019556120140304 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
WOMEN EMPOWERMENT THROUGH
RESERVATION IN PANCHAYATI
RAJ
INSTITUTIONS IN HIMACHAL PRADESH
SIMMI AGNIHOTRI
AND
VIJAY SINGH
The
women constitute
half
of
the society. The feudal attitudes
of
looking down upon the abilities
of
women and not promoting
them is still continuing in different degrees at various levels
of
our
society. Present article is
an
attempt to analyse the
situation
of
women
representation
in
Panchayati
Raj
Institutions (PR/s) in·Himachal Pradesh. With the increasing
violence against women
in
our society, it becomes necessary
to find out the problems
of
our
society regarding women and
give valuable suggestions to deal with the problem.
To
give
the representation to the women
in
local self-government is
also
a
step
to move
forward
in the direction
of
women
empowerment. Our society cannot run without women. A
woman
plays
several roles like mother, wife, sister,
and
daughter in our society. Therefore, it is the duty
of
everyone to
respect them equally.
INTRODUCTION
THE
CONCEPT
of
women empowerment has predominantly become a focus
on political participation. The latter in tum in the context
of
the debate on
the
81
st Constitutional Amendment Bill regarding reservation for women in
Parliament, has become a restricted discourse on the role
of
woman in formal
representative institutions
of
decision-making, whether it
is
Panchayati Raj
Institution
or
Parliament. In the process, empowerment
of
women emerges
as an extremely limited concept. The fact that empowerment should imply a
power to participate in the decision-making in all spheres
of
society, with no
separation
of
the public and private and in all social, political, economic and
cultural processes in society is completely obfuscated. The potentials
of
women remain largely unrecognised and their contributions are often
overlooked. Several factors are responsible for women's low participation.
The most important ones are literacy, traditionalism, prejudices, economic
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