Women, Education and Empowerment
Contents: Foreword/Suman Krishna Kant. I. Introduction: 1. Education and women empowerment/J.C. Sharma and Aruna Sharma. II. History and Archaeology: 1. Woman education in India in 19 century/Gita Srivastava. 2. Contribution of women in Indian numismatics/Rita Sharma. 3. Women's contribution in Indian arts and crafts; with special reference to Indian hand embroidery/Anamika Pathak. 4. Some educated women of prominence of early India/Rajeev Ranjan. III. Women in Gandhian perspective: 1. Amelioration of women under Gandhian perspective/R.S. Agarwal. 2. Relevance of Gandhian principles in empowering women in present day's context/Aruna Sharma. IV. Women in socio-economic perspective: 1. Determinants of status of women in Indian society/S.S. Sharma. 2. Education of women: a socio-economic perspective/Anshu Singh. V. Women in decision making: 1. Empowering women through democratic decentralization: some reflections of Indian experience/J.C. Sharma. 2. Education, awareness and decision making among women/Nisha Shukla. VI. Voice, literature: 1. Portrayal of womenhood in the post colonial Indian English fiction: a journey from self effacement to selfhood/Malti Agarwal. 2. Class, education and freedom of women projected in landmark Indian comparative fiction/G.L. Gautam. 3. Education and women empowerment: point of view by women writers in English literature/Poonam Sharma. 4. Tagore's views on women's education and empowerment expressed through his articles, novels and short-stories/Ram Sharma. VII. Women in planning era: 1. Women's rights; still a dream/Surinder Kaur Makkar. 2. Education and health status of women in India/Preet Kamal Bhatnagar. 3. Educational profile versus health line of Indian women/Jyoti Kochar. 4. Women's health problems: a life cycle approach/Ruchi Bhatnagar. Index. [10 articles are in Hindi]
"India, with its phenomenally long historical traditions has presented several contrasting images of women, praised as a goddess, extolled as the mother of humanity and skyrocketed as the real creator of mankind. In actual practice, however, women are stigmatized as the weaker sex meant to bear all kinds of human oppression and male atrocities.
In the post-independent India, especially since 1980s, the empowerment of women has been recognized as a central issue in determining the reality of their status, yet all the provisions of the Constitution and the spate of legislations enacted to empower women have not been adequate to set them free from their traditional bondages, liabilities and restrictions. How could a woman take her rightful place in the socio political system that does nothing to build her capacities, nor creates access to information? It is very important that women are empowered and that their capacities are enhanced through a process of imparting literacy and educating them, as it has been rightly believed that education and empowerment of women are genetically linked phenomenon and they can be delinked only at a great peril of vast humanity.
This book is based on the selected papers presented in two days to University Grants Commission sponsored by National Seminar on "Role of Education in Empowering Women in India". Based on the multidisciplinary approach, authors expressed their views on the concept and the process of women empowerment and identified the obstacles being faced in the way of empowering women and identified as well the strategies that could be adopted for their empowerment in reality." (jacket)
