Women Empowerment: An In-Depth Understanding of the Challenges Faced by Indian Women, Steps Taken by Government and Way Forward

Empowerment is the process of increasing the capacity of individuals or groups to make choices and to transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes. Empowering women implies giving them means to be financially and intellectually independent in their choices on one hand, and on the other hand, it also means seeding the belief that they are equal to everyone else, have the same rights and can choose what and where to be and to do in their lives. The present paper, which is largely based on secondary sources of data, has tried to make an assessment of various challenges faced by Indian women from cradle to grave. It has also looked into numerous governmental initiatives taken in this direction and finally few substantial suggestions have been put forward by the researcher in the form of an integrated approach so that women in our society can realize their complete potential.