Women all over the world celebrate International Women's Day on March 8. The official UN theme for this year is "Be Bold for Change".
This calls for more power to women. Gender equality can be achieved when men and women enjoy equal rights and opportunities. Despite interventions like legal provision, programmes and policies, gender equality is not yet a reality for most Indian women. Women work hard in providing for their families, in sustaining communities and helping management of natural resources. Yet too many lack the means to improve their own lives. Sexual and reproductive rights of women get affected by these existing inequalities.
Let us examine the existing programmes and policies to safeguard these rights of women and assess where they have fallen short of expectations. India launched the first national programme in the world on family planning with the avowed objective "to stabilise the population at a level consistent with the requirement of national economy". Since its inception in 1951, the National Family Planning Program has been dominated by demographic goals. However the scope of these programmes has been enhanced several times. Presently it envisions not only achievement of population stabilisation, but also reduction in maternal mortality rate, infant mortality rate, morbidity amongst mother and child, and promotion of reproductive health.
According to population experts, population stabilisation cannot be achieved just by adopting clinical services and by providing the basket of choices of contraception or obstetric care to the eligible individuals or couples. Socio-economic and cultural factors like lack of knowledge, misconception, inaccessibility, fear of side effects, shame, opposition from the family, act as a barrier for women in the adoption of family planning methods.
Majority of women who are poor, uneducated, migrant, slum dwellers, adivasi and tribal, are not aware of family planning programmes, counseling and services for healthy reproduction. Also women in general do not have the power to take decision about their pregnancy. Further the percentage of girls getting married before the age of 18 is quite high, which often leads to early and repeated pregnancies. To avoid unintended pregnancies it is very important that women have a say in decision relating to reproduction. But to exercise this reproductive right, women need to have gender equality and empowerment within and outside the household.
The participants of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) spelt out a guided set of principles on women empowerment and advancing gender equality. Such advancement in the socio-economic status of women, abrogation of violence against women and enabling women to control their own fertility are fundamentals of population and development-related programmes all over the world. When women are empowered to improve their own lives, they tend to have smaller families and population growth becomes slow. Women's reproductive activities and fertility is influenced by their own sense of empowerment.
Women need to be empowered through better education, equal economic opportunity and accessible health care including family planning. Different dimensions of women empowerment like education, autonomy, control over household decision making, economic empowerment, and the balance of power within sexual relationships should be addressed as these have direct bearing on the fertility control of women. Modernisation can also be a powerful factor for promotion of the contraceptive behaviour. Education is an important component in leading women towards modernisation. An educated woman is likely to become mother at a later stage of her life.
The scheme of "Mahila Shakti Kendra" at village levels to empower rural women with opportunities in skill development, employment and health has been proposed in the Budget of 2017. It is expected to improve the image of hitherto neglected village womenfolk. This empowerment is a must for sustainable world progress and the inhabitants of this planet. Apart from achieving balanced population growth, women empowerment helps to manage women's fertility and improve their health.