Women's empowerment and education: Panchayats and women's Self-help Groups in India

While women have made many advances, their inferior status to men continues to be a global phenomenon. At a time of unprecedented economic growth, India is experiencing a dramatic intensification of violence against women and the majority of girls are still not getting equal educational opportunity. In one of the most important steps for the empowerment of women, the Indian government gave constitutional status to village-level councils or Panchayati Raj institutions and reserved 33% of the seats in Panchayats for women. In addition, women were organized into Self-help Groups to mark the beginning of a major process of empowering women, although not much attention was paid to women's formal education. Our aim was to explore the impact of these measures on women's empowerment in the states of West Bengal and Mizoram. In general, we found that affirmative action does ensure that larger numbers of women enter politics but it does not ensure that the women participate in politics and function as elected representatives, because of lack of education. Empowerment needs to be seen as a holistic outcome of processes of critical education that enables women to lead autonomous lives and the freedom to act. Both affirmative action and education are necessary to empower women who have suffered discrimination and lack of power always.