They need acknowledgement
National Conference (NC) President Dr Farooq Abdullah announced that time has come to give women their rights to build a strong nation and added that a women centre will be established in Jammu and Kashmir soon.
The senior Abdullah said that the nation cannot progress until the women get their rights. The former Chief Minister’s assertion hold lot of meaning and weight as women have been an ignored lot in Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere.
Notably, the conflict and the societal pressures have ensured a lesser working space for the fairer sex in Jammu and Kashmir. Though empowerment of women is a worldwide slogan and one of the Millennium Development Goals, we have failed on this front.
Though lot is being said about empowering of women in different spheres of life statistics reveal that JK too lags far behind on this front. Women’s empowerment in a general sense refers to empowering women to be self-dependent by providing them access to all the freedoms and opportunities, which they were denied in the past only because of their being women and in specific it refers to enhancing their position in the power structure of the society.
However, the ground reality is that women in Jammu and Kashmir constitute a meagre 19.11% of the state’s overall workforce.
In terms of the contribution of women in overall workforce, J&K has performed poorly in urban areas with share of female population in workforce being only 14.4 per cent. Comparatively, women constitute 26.3 per cent of the overall workforce in rural areas of the region.
The main reason attributed to these poor figures is cited as the lack of employment opportunities, especially in the private sector, which is creating a hurdle for women’s empowerment.
Besides, the women’s representation is also dismal in the corporate sector and small businesses. Many other regions which have a better rate of women participation in workforce have female employees working in small business setups.
Jammu and Kashmir does not have the best of figures to boast on the education front as well where the girl child is not being provided all the necessary support during her young days so as to have full access to education and other facilities. This phenomenon results in her lagging behind in competition and seeking a better participation for her during the later part of her life.
We have not been able to provide a secure and welcoming atmosphere for the women work force in the private sector. The only jobs and facilities that are provided to the women work force are menial in nature which also discourages them to be part of the private sector.
All this needs to change and women need to be accepted as a force to reckon with when it comes to acknowledging their contributions.
