What is Women empowerment?

What is women empowerment?
There is no doubt that many organization are doing wonderful job in the field of empowerment of women. There are many women who have started to speak, there are many women who have never dreamt of going outside her village but now they have started to go out, all this are changing and thanks to all the wonderful people who are working for women empowerment.

We have been seeing many organization working for the empowerment of women and usually the approach which we have seen for empowerment is through SHG. In SHG they usually link them with some savings and credit and then they think that they are on the path of empowerment.

Is this the real empowerment?

Now we need to move one step.

Yes, If they are really talking about the empowerment then why don’t the organization move one step ahead and say you are doing a wonderful job in the community by taking care of your own group and then also helping other groups in the village, raising the voice against the atrocity and participating in all given platform. Now we are taking one step ahead and want to give you a job in our organization. This is the recognition of all your hard work and the growth which we have seen in you.

Now as part of the real empowerment I have seen you grow from the shy women, to the leader of the group, to community leader and now from there to a employment opportunity.

I have been asking this question to the organizations, as you always complain that staff attrition is high, in that case why don’t you promote someone from your SHGs women to the employment in your organization. As they are also competent to do all the work of an animator. Yes, she definitely need the guidance and the support from the organization, but she is a potential candidate for the post. We need to give them the chance as they stay in the same locality and if she has grown to such a level, she will be an asset to the organization and she will also be a role model for the community and in return the respect for the organization will also increase in the community.

The next level of the empowerment would be that the Group women are applying for jobs.

Yes, making the group women so empowered that now they have started to search for jobs, here I am not talking about the work which they are doing over the years but of different kind and in different places.

This is how the empowerment takes place from one step to next step. Organization needs to understand that just by linking them with the banks and providing them with loan is one step in the path of empowerment.