Women Empowerment and Panchayath Raj System In India

The Women Empowerment has become one of the most important concerns of the 21 century. Empowerment can enable women to participate as equal citizen, in the economic, politics, and social and sustainable development in the country. This agenda has been on top of the list of most government plans and programs. Effort have been made on a regular basis across nation to address this issue and enhance the social, economic and political status of women. However, it has been observed that most policies and programs view empowerment in the economic sense only, working in the belief that economic self-reliance empowers women, but ignoring other variables like health, education and literacy. This paper attempts to understand the concept of women empowerment on a holistic basis and critically examines initiated to words empowering women with special emphasis upon the schemes, programs, components, strategies of women empowerment and decentralization for women in India.