NATIONAL SEMINAR

ON
‘FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION OF PANCHAYATI RAJ INSTITUTIONS IN UTTAR PRADESH’

(MARCH 30 – 31,2010)
WOMEN EMPOWERMENT IN PRI IN UP: AN OVERVIEW
- VIDUSHI RASTOGI

INSTITUTE OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

UNIVERSITY OF LUCKNOW
LUCKNOW
INTRODUCTION
 Empowerment is a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional and multi-layered
concept. Women’s empowerment is a process in which women gain greater
share of control over resources - material, human and intellectual like
knowledge, information, ideas and financial resources and control over
decision-making in the home, community, society and nation, and to gain
‘power’
 According to the Country Report of Government of India, ”Empowerment
means moving from a position of enforced powerlessness to one of
power”.
 The UN document ‘Women’ lists out six areas of concern to women world
over. These are legal literacy, health, education, work, politics and
violence. The data shows that women constitute 70% of the world’s poor
and two thirds of the world’s illiterates.
 In India the study of women development can be categorized into three phases-
in 50s the focus was on the 'welfare' which shifted to ‘development’ in the
70's and from 90’s onwards to ‘empowerment’. ‘Empowerment stage’ started
in 1992 through the 73rd Constitutional Amendment which declared 33%
reservation of the total seats of PRI for the women. This institutional change
has brought 10 lakh women to political field for the first time
 With the introduction of reservation or quota system women empowerment was
hoped through equally collective voicing and participation in the development
stream. in this presentation efforts have been made to throw some light on how
far these steps has been really effective in involving women in the decision
making process and getting them integrated with the mainstream of decision
making? Has it really worked in solving the basic issues and problems faced by
women in the society?
RESERVATION IN REPRESENTATION
 Schedule castes -- 11%

 Schedule tribes -- 12%

 Other Backward Class -- 27%

 Women -- 33%
SOCIO-ECONOMIC PROFILE

 Mean age of female member is 44.5 years-majority of them

belongs to the age group of 46-55 years.
 All of the female members are married.
 Education –literacy rate is low among the women members to
55%,out of which only two were post graduate. In comparison
90% of male members are educated.
ECONOMIC PROFILE

• 50% of women members belong to the lowest income strata i.e.

Rs.10,000-20,000 and 50% to the highest income strata, i.e. Rs.
50,000 and above. Similar trend was seen in the case of women
member’s land holding. The same trend has been observed in the
case of the men members too.
POLITICAL PROFILE

 Majority of the women members was first time entrants in the

field of politics , reservation has helped in bringing women to the
political forum, but there is a significant difference between the
level of political awareness among men and women members.
FINDINGS REGARDING THE PARTICIPATION
OF WOMEN IN LOCAL GOVERNANCE LEVEL
 The quality of participation of the women members in the meetings at all
the three tiers was observed to be low.
 Major decision making power was in the hands of male members only.
 The women members have not been able to take up women related issues
in the meetings in a major way.
 Women seem to give importance to the issues that the men consider
important.
 The participation of the women members in the meetings and their taking
interest in the village activities is directly correlated to the attitude of the
Head towards reservation for women.
CONTD.
 The participation of the women members was seen to vary
within the three tiers that is, gram panchayat, panchayat samiti
and Zillah parishad.
 There is no variation in the functioning of the Panchayati Raj
System (PRS) on the basis of the gender of the head of the tier.
 A significantly high degree of positive correlation of 0.89 was
observed between education and awareness of the issues
related with women.
 Almost all the women gram Pradhans agreed that granting
reservation and thus paving the way for political participation
in the rural local bodies is a praiseworthy step towards women
empowerment but about 80% held the view that employment
and asset generation for women will prove to be a better and a
more effective delivery vehicle for empowerment.
 CHALLENGES IN FRONT OF THE FEMALE MEMBERS

Despite the reservations made for the women, they still face considerable handicaps to
their involvement in politics-
 Inadequate information and education, illiteracy and lack of awareness are common
deterrents to participation.
 The burden of reproductive and productive roles of women leads to immobility which
is a serious impediment in their performance.
 Lack of financial independence or control of assets.
 Pradhan patis (elected women’s husbands) are a most common phenomenon in gram
panchayat meetings .There are cases where women were forced to contest by male
members of their families. they merely acted as dummy gram Pradhans who simply
sit through the meetings without any active participation .
 Lack of information , training and political visibility
 It is observed that there are gender biases in the bureaucratic set up towards women
elected representatives.
SUGGESTIONS AND STRATEGIES FOR THE EFFECTIVE ROLE OF
WOMEN

The strategy should be such that bring women into political structures
and support the backward and forward linkages of women’s presence in
politics ,linking household and family priorities with macro-planning
processes.
 Focus of building capacities of women in local governance-

1.through education .
2.through ensuring involvement in managing and decision making on
various issues.
3. through intensive training for elected members for functional literacy.
 Strengthening women’s networks and advocacy through interface with
planners and policy makers so as to interact and articulate their
concerns and influence policies
 Documentation of the process-ensuring research
documentation and publication on women in local governance
will help in wide dissemination of information to improve
replication. Documentation of capacity building strategies
include the holistic approaches, training material and
methodologies ,and larger processes of planning at local
levels.
 A symbiotic relationship between PRI system and Self Help
Groups will help in providing financial empowerment along
with the administrative empowerment and also help in
reduction of gender discrimination .
CONCLUSION

After going through the previous slides , it is clear that decentralization

process has provided representation , but representation does not necessarily
mean participation. A concurrent awakening process is required on the
objective of decentralization and women empowerment to insure participation
of all social groups and accountability of governance. It would only be fair to
conclude that the provision of reservation of seats in PRI’s , although seems
apparently laudable, has merely inducted a few women in the political process
and raised their status temporarily, without, evincing any desirable signs of
their active participation in decision making in the interests of women.
Thank you