Practice Test 17

Women's empowerment has been a central and sustained theme of India's development agenda, reflecting the growing recognition that genuine progress requires the full and equal participation of women in the economic, social, political, and cultural life of the nation and that discrimination, violence, and exclusion based on gender impose enormous costs not only on individual women and their families but on the overall pace and quality of national development. The Beti Bachao Beti Padhao initiative, launched in January 2015 with a focus on districts with the most adverse child sex ratios, combines multi-sectoral interventions to prevent female foeticide and infanticide, improve the enrolment and retention of girls in schools, and change social attitudes towards the girl child through community awareness campaigns, school sensitisation programmes, and engagement with religious leaders, local elected representatives, and community influencers. The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, which provided free liquefied petroleum gas connections to over nine crore women from below poverty line households, has had a profound impact on women's health and wellbeing by eliminating exposure to the harmful smoke from cooking on biomass fuels, reducing the time and drudgery involved in collecting firewood, and giving women greater control over cooking fuel. Self-Help Groups, facilitated under the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana National Rural Livelihoods Mission, have emerged as transformative institutions in rural India, bringing together ten to fifteen women from similar economic backgrounds in weekly groups that accumulate savings, extend credit to members, and collectively access government schemes and market opportunities. Over ten crore women are organised into nearly ninety lakh self-help groups across the country, with these groups providing a platform for collective action, financial intermediation, and social support that has measurably improved women's economic independence, decision-making power within the household, and participation in community and political life. The Mahila Shakti Kendras established at the block level create a link between the government and rural women, facilitating awareness and convergence of welfare schemes. Women's participation in the formal labour force, while still lower than in most comparable economies, has been growing across sectors including manufacturing, information technology, retail, banking, and the self-employed informal economy, with government schemes providing skilling, credit, and market linkages to women entrepreneurs. The amendment to the Companies Act requiring companies above a specified size to have at least one woman director has increased female representation in corporate boardrooms. Constitutional provisions reserving one-third of seats for women in gram panchayats and urban local bodies have brought over fourteen lakh elected women representatives into local governance, a scale of political participation unmatched in most countries, though the substantive empowerment of women representatives in the face of patriarchal family and social structures remains a work in progress. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act and the Sexual Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act have strengthened the legal framework for protecting women's safety and dignity.