Women Empowerment and Welfare: Paradigm Shift in the ideas of Governance

In post-Cold War scenario, we can see a paradigm shift in the ideas of governance. Due to shift of threat from „external‟ to „internal‟, „protecting border‟ now replaced with the motto „protecting human‟. Human security is started getting similar importance along with national security where not only human growth is important, but also their empowerment and welfare is equally important. But, with composite human development, we cannot secure development of women as they have their own specific problems for survival and development. Therefore, along with Human Development Index, international organizations has introduced separate indices for highlighting gender disparity and started to give grants to different states that are lagging behind according to different reports of gender disparity indices. Countries are also slowly raising their budgets for women welfare and empowerment as this is now important component for gaining and/ or retaining status in world order. Often indices made by First World countries get criticized by Third World countries for not considering holistic disparity in all spheres between „rich‟ and „poor‟ counties. Moreover, many data of these indices are not properly collected/ cannot be collected in many nation-states. Therefore, many countries alter some of the indices and make it friendly according to the data available as well as relevant for identifying gender inequality. The present paper will illustrate the evolution of the process of evaluation about condition of women in post-Cold War scenario in general and will highlight the Indian Social Values in specific. As society is the main pressure group of Government and their policies, therefore mere reports are not enough to increase awareness about the necessity for more women-oriented budgetary allocations and women-friendly policies. But also we need to change our mindset of society towards women both at the individual level as well as collective level. Not only men, in fact women also sometimes act biased towards women and criticize many path-breaking attempts of women itself. In India, the latest example of it is the Sabarimala temple case where one woman got beaten by her female family member for entering in a temple, where women of „menstruating age‟ were not permitted to enter. Thus, this paper will throw some light about the mentality of society about women empowerment and disparity in conclusion However, for the convenience of analysis, this paper is divided into three parts: first part deals with the Introduction; second part deals with the evolution of the process of the evaluation of the condition of women in the post-cold war era esp. indices by the international organizations and also by India; the third part emphasize women‟s role in social change; and, finally, sum up has been presented as part of conclusion.