The Importance Of Women Empowerment For The Development Of Society

Empowerment means give someone a power or authority to do something and it is a process through which one can control one’s life and raise voice for one’s rights. Women empowerment is defined as the freedom of action and freedom of choice to raise their voice to improve their own lives. Women empowerment helps women to take decisions confidently. An empowered women is self-confident, observe her environment and make decision accordingly and sensibly that may affects her life in a good way. Many people think that women empowerment is a foreign agenda but actually, it is nothing more than a misconception. If we observe women all over the world, we came to know that women are facing violence and challenges due to gender inequality since the time when the history begins. If we read Holy Quran, we came to know that Quran ordered to give protection to women and give them their rights including the rights of education, opinion, choice and worship. Islam improves the women status because before Islam women was treated like an animal. Females were killed just after their birth. They do not have rights to dictate that to whom they want to marry and rights of taking divorce from their husbands who pawn them and beat them relentlessly. However, after Islam women have all those rights that they deserve i. e. rights of education, marriage, worship, choice, opinion etc.

In Pakistan, empowering women is still a big challenge. In today’s Pakistan, women are facing serious problems that mentally and physically affect the lives of women. Due to early marriages, women are not getting proper education, which leads to the low literacy rate of women. They are also facing serious problems in employment. For example, female doctors, high qualified females, female engineers, graduates and PhDs, sitting idle in homes just because of the fear of male dominant society and fear of being harassed at workplace. Government is putting much effort to improve the gender equality and improving gender equality is a great challenge for government. In today’s world, women are facing many issues including no access to education, less employment opportunities, gender based violence, child marriages, lack of gender equality etc. A report by UNESCO was publish in 2013, according to this report about 3 million of girls (5-15 age) were not going to school and one out of every four women never completed their primary educations.

Even a developed country like US is also facing gender inequality at workplace. One out three women is facing violence, abuse and sexual harassment due to gender biasness. It is an estimate that from 2011 to 2020 about 140 million girls will become child brides. Anti-women practices are becoming common everywhere in the world and that practices may cause violence against women and this violence can affect the mental and physical health of not only women but also affects their children families and communities. Anti-women practices (violence against women) negatively affect women’s physical, mental, sexual and reproductive health. Globally, estimated that about 38% of murders of women are committed due to anti women practices. Such violence may be result in fatal outcomes like suicide. Similarly, children who are living in such society, which is associated with anti-women practices, may effects the mental health of children is a bad way. From the previous discussion, we are now able to say that empowering women or women empowerment is very essential if we want to get rid of poverty, promote overall development of society, and if we want, better literature and want that our nation build strongly then we should encourage women. Our society and family can opt better lifestyle if we encourage women for cottage or small businesses. Development is not about getting opportunities for living and getting access to social services but it more than that. It is all about creating or making such environment where one can realizes one’s rights and participate in society. Full development of society cannot be achieved unless women contributed to development process. In many societies, women and men are different in their activities, men undertake women in many activities like access to resources, opportunities and decision-making. This gender inequality is the major constraint in the development of society because these inequalities limit the women to exercise their abilities for their own benefits as well as the benefit of society in which they are living. Development is directly proportional to the income generation of the members of the society. However, if we seek information we came to know that women earn only 10% of the world’s income as compare to men. So, if women are given opportunities to work side by side with men it will support their families, communities as well as it will share equal burden among men and women and it will automatically develop and build the whole nation and society and it leads to the economic development as well through which we can get rid of poverty.

Empowering women means empowering nation, building nation, strengthen economy and developing society. Our nation cannot reach to the height of glory unless women stand side by side with men everywhere. We are surrounded by evil customs; women are prison in their own homes and shut up within the four walls of their homes. Because the women are key factor of developing and building nation, this is very important to distribute and balance the equal resources between men and women. Empowering women is also important for the literature. Women empowerment leads to amazing books, better movies and more journalism. We can achieve women empowerment by giving education to women, freedom to think, speak and act, by following Quaid’s teaching, and changing overall mind set of people. If we realize the rights of women and protection of women, we will achieve the women empowerment. Globally about 60% of the 77 million children who are Girls not attending school if we ensure the education of women it empowers them and due to education, women can take important decision of their lives and can raise their voice for their rights. To ensure women empowerment we must follow the teachings of our Quaid who said that we cannot reach to the heights of glory until we empowers women and give opportunity to women to work side by side with men. We should give freedom to women so that they can raise voice for their rights, to give their opinions and can act according to what they want. Most importantly, women empowerment can achieve by changing the mindset of people who thinks that women should prisoned in their homes and women work is to clean and manage their homes only.

Empowering women is a big issue all over the world, women are facing serious problems and if we want to empower women in a true sense, we need to eliminate male dominancy from the society and change the mindset of people. In addition, there is a need to give equal rights of education, employment, opinion, etc. also there is a need to change the mindset of people and we should follow the teachings of Islam etc. without any sense of discrimination.