Paper short abstract:

In last two decades India has seen massive reforms, pandemic and economic growth, the current government’s focus on ‘Nari Shakti’ and women’s consolidation as strong voters makes it imperative to understand the changes in the women’s empowerment across its various dimensions, and across the states of India. To do so the paper utilises the three rounds of NFHS data.

Paper long abstract:

Women’s empowerment is instrumentally important for achieving positive development outcomes and well-being of women which lies in the doing and being what she values and have reason to value, i.e. agency. Sen made a strong claim for increasing the agency of the individual to enable them to be an effective agent of their own well-being and development. Within CA framework, women’s empowerment is conceptualized as the enhancement of their substantive freedoms across various dimensions, including education, healthcare, property rights, autonomy, and socio-economic status. Using our earlier work (Mishra & Tripathi 2014) we measure women empowerment as combined measure of ownership of basic resources, agency and autonomy, where ownership of basic resources are measured in year of schooling, economic activity, bank account, mobile & internet, agency making strategic decisions of life, autonomy freedom to choose, utilising the three rounds of NFHS data. In last two decades India has seen massive reforms, pandemic and economic growth, the current government’s focus on ‘Nari Shakti’ and women’s consolidation as strong voters makes it very critical to understand the changes in the women’s empowerment across its various dimensions, and across the states of India.

The paper is divided into two parts the first part analysis the change in the indicators of empowerment of two decades and across the Indian states, to understand the trend and pattern. The second part of the paper builds a composite index to explore the trend and rate of change in women empowerment across the major states of India.

Our analysis suggest promising trends in women’s educational attainment, reflecting improvements in access to schooling and higher education opportunities. However, persistent disparities remain, particularly in rural areas and among marginalized communities, limiting women’s freedom to pursue educational goals and fully participate in social and economic life. Further the analysis suggest the complexities of women’s autonomy, reflecting variations across socio-economic groups and states of India. While there have been advancements in women’s decision-making power, but the entrenched gender norms, socio-economic constraints, and cultural barriers continue to restrict women’s freedom to make choices about their education, health, and participation in public and political sphere. Similarly the results highlights improvements in healthcare accessibility and utilization among women, driven by government’s initiatives to improve maternal and child health outcomes. However, disparities persist, particularly in rural areas where access to quality healthcare remains limited. Lastly our analysis reveals positive trends in women’s labor force participation and ownership of banks account due to ‘Jan Dhan Yojana’. However, gender disparities persist, with women getting lower wages, occupational segregation and dual work burden. The result across all the dimensions suggest rapid improvement in the states like Tamil Nādu, Karnataka, Telangana and Kerala, but a very slower improvement in the northern states followed by western states like Rajasthan and Haryana. Very impressive improvement is shown by one of the states in east i.e. Orrisa.

Capability Approach offers a valuable framework not only for understanding and analysing the trajectory of change in women’s empowerment but importantly in addressing these challenges, through government action, public policy reforms, public action, and investments in human capital. By enhancing women’s capabilities and expanding their freedoms, India can tap the remaining half of the human capital attain several SDGs and advance towards a more equitable and inclusive society.

Keywords: Women Empowerment, Autonomy, Agency & Public policy