Women Empowerment and its relevance for Advancing Development

Development institutions keen on holistic empowerment of women, by and large, adopt above sustainable framework towards empowerment of women cutting across all the development themes and programmes which in turn create conducive atmosphere for women to chart their own development and well-being. Madurai Symposium 2019 would provide a platform broadly on the following thematic areas.

• Women and Social Capital, Leadership and Governance
• Women and Economic development and financial well-being
• Women and Education including digital technology, Environment and Health
• Emancipation – Rights, Taking control of destiny, violence, abolishing gender stereotypes
• Women empowerment - A Pathway to SDGs
• Remembering and reinforcing the lofty thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi and Poet Bharathiar on Women empowerment for societal advancement

These themes have been so closely inter-related in terms of equal rights, control and use over the resources, the requisites of building capacity and processes among these interconnected themes presents interesting challenges and opportunities.

Women and Social Capital, Leadership and Governance

Historically and culturally, women have been subjugated and treated as “Weaker Sex with Male dominance widely prevalent in the society”. This situation stems from being un-organized and inability to address their marginalization individually. There are growing evidences across the globe, that when women, more particularly from the poor segment have been organized, they have been able to meet the legacy challenges and charter their own way with confidence.

Self-Help Group movement of poor women, for instance, is the best example of how Social Capital has played vital role in women empowerment in multi-dimensional ways in different contexts. Even more noteworthy, from empowerment perspective is the assumption of leadership role and the attendant appreciation and practice of good governance at the grassroots with the potential to transform the quality of governance upstream. The experiences of the stakeholders on the theme when shared in Madurai Symposium would enhance our understanding of many effective processes in women empowerment.

Women and Economic development and financial well-being

The strong social capital of women lends itself for enlarging the process for empowerment. The foremost being finance and economic development. Enabling access to financial services, like SHGs, has enhanced the capabilities of women to identify and pursue the opportunities for their economic growth, Livelihood opportunities get broadened in the context of social capital providing them scale and strength, helping to seek new prospects including acquiring new skills. Savings first approach of SHGs transformed and continued to transform the financial landscape of poor households and smoothening access to credit and insurance from the formal financial system. Best practices and success stories in economic and financial empowerment of women will be showcased in the Symposium.

Emancipation – Entitlements, Rights, Taking control of destiny, violence, abolishing gender stereotypes

Emancipation is the process of moving towards higher order empowerment in equality with men folk. This involves getting what is due to them as a measure of equity vis-a-vis men, recognising, protecting and fulfilling their rights such as equal participation in legislative governance, policy making. More importantly, emancipation help women to deal with violence effectively and ensure their safety. The symposium would encourage debates on the process of different facets of emancipation which put women on equal pedestal with men.

Women empowerment - A Pathway to SDGs

From development perspective, SDGs are a global recognition of the imperatives of women empowerment, gender equality and justice. There are ample evidences globally on the contributions already made and the potential of women to augment and hasten the process of development towards desired goals and objectives. Sustainable Development Goals like No Poverty, Good Health and Well-being, Quality Education, Gender Equality, Clean Water and Sanitation, Decent Work and Economic Growth will get greater fillip towards reaching the various targets set with women empowerment and participation. Madurai Symposium will marshall the experiences for wider sharing.

Remembering and Reinforcing the lofty thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi and Poet Bharathiar on Women empowerment for societal advancement

Any debate/discussion on women empowerment will not be complete without mention of lofty thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi and Bharathiar on empowering women for larger social advancement. They were ahead of the time in emphasising the equal rights in all spheres for women with those of men. In fact, they became 'gospels' and advocated relentlessly in their speeches and writings. Madurai symposium will refresh and distill fresh dimensions of women empowerment from their lofty thoughts for the present cultural context.

Conferences, Seminars and Workshops

Highlighted in the above sections are few areas of coming out with essential process steps in empowering women in order to sustain the development and attaining some of the sustainable development goals across different contexts and development arena. There exists an imperative need to understand the challenges and gaps in women empowerment, opportunities for evolving policy amendments for by different social strata in different contexts in order to empower women and include them in equal social transformation processes, capacity building of bottom of the pyramid to make them part of equal and just society in bringing true freedom.

In the Madurai Symposium 2019, development stakeholders would get ample opportunities for deliberating on the issues of gender equality and equity in many conferences, seminars and workshops. Needless to say, these knowledge events would provide a stage to facilitate cross learning through best practices in the process of women empowerment.

For a day-wise schedule, please see our Participate page.

People Conventions

As the women empowerment challenges are multi-fold and region as well as context specific, the organizers of Symposium intend to involve the major stakeholders in sharing successful and best practices as well as processes by different social groups viz. community of women Self-Help groups, small and marginal farmers representing different natural eco-systems, fisher folks, landless etc. The conventions aim to elicit the experiences of these community stakeholders through dialogues, round-table and focus group discussions which ultimately result in greater learning that has to be taken out of those experiences for advancing women empowerment.

For a day-wise schedule, please see our Participate page.

Cultural Evenings

Reviving and preserving traditional folk and arts is need of the hour which is still relevant. The Symposium would create an opportunity for the folk and traditional artists to perform variety of cultural programmes to exhibit their talents. This would facilitate the development stakeholders to find a way for promoting and preserving the traditional folks and arts which are the symbols of ancient Indian culture.

Exhibition

There is need for greater awareness of the public about the development sector and more particularly resilience in SDGs and its contribution for the country's growth and development. The Symposium 2017 would attract the public from the city to get exposed to the talents and creativity of the poor people/communities through exhibition of crafts and wares made by them.

Development Film Festival

Screening development films for the development stakeholders including the public is important part of the Symposium. Exciting experiences of different development interventions would be displayed through this event to sensitize the stakeholders, communities and common public on various development initiatives and interventions. The best films would be recognized and suitably awarded.

Rallies

The members of micro finance groups, farmers associations, communities representing Panchayat institutions would organize rallies to create awareness and sensitize the public in Madurai City about the importance of resilience in achieving SDGs.

18 September 2019

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19 September 2019

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20 September 2019

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21 September 2019

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22 September 2019

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