Women Empowerment through Employment Guarantee Scheme in Kashmir Valley

Since rural women remain untouched by rural development their empowerment is a must for ensuring and mobilizing their greater participation in developmental activities. Women empowerment is synonymous with the achievement of equality of men and women. In the concept of empowerment the word power entails the capacity to act independently and the ability to influence others. Empowerment of women was one of the nine primary objectives of the ninth plan and every effort was made to create an enabling empowerment where women could freely exercise their rights within and outside their home as equal Partner with men. Several poverty alleviation and employment generation programmes were introduced by different state governments, Union Territories and Government of India. But those schemes not effectively and efficiently worked to reduce poverty and increase the living standard of the people in rural India especially women population. As a rural wage employment programme, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was enacted on 23rd of August 2005 and got presidential assent on 5th of September 2005. This Act recognized the relevance of incorporating gender equity and empowerment in its design. An empirical analysis on the change brought by this programmes and the even though empowerment is slightly higher in case of beneficiaries than that of non-beneficiaries yet difference between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of MGNREGS in terms of overall empowerment was not found to be significant. +e reason may be that no doubt MGNREGA has provided employment opportunities to women but empowerment is more social than economic phenomena