Women’s empowerment is the ability of a woman to make strategic life choices in a context where this ability was previously denied to her…
Deepa Kylasam Iyer—the first place winner for the category “Women and Participation,” in CIPE’s 2010 International Youth Essay Contest—envisions women’s empowerment starting at the most basic level: the individual. For Deepa, approaches to women’s empowerment should take a more multi-dimensional approach starting with women’s autonomy within her home and village.
To accomplish her vision, Deepa takes a three-pronged approach that: introduces incentives for gender sensitive public policy making; supports greater enforcement of existing marriage laws and introduces new provisions into the Penal Code that give harsher sentences to crimes targeting women; and creates a conditional-cash transfer scheme that pays families for sending their girls to school, making their children eligible to receive part of the savings when they reach eighteen years of age.
Second place winner, Claris Gatwiri Kariuki, also tackles the social, economic and political barriers to empowerment but starts from the macro-level:
“Empowerment for the young Kenyan woman is a process where she is fully aware of her rights and resources at her disposal to enable her to voice her concerns about her community and government.
In her essay, Claris offers a blue print for removing the myriad barriers to political empowerment. Namely: stepped-up literacy programs; segregating voting stations to reduce the influence of men on how female family members vote; creating civil society organizations with the sole mission to help female candidates fundraise; and encouraging greater entry points into politics at the grassroots level.
In realizing her platform for greater political inclusion, Claris could team up the third place winner who runs a social venture in India that takes up grassroots education and entrepreneurship training through the help of volunteer students.
The most significant outcome of this project was not the generation of profits [for the women]. It was the resurrection of self-esteem. Today those same women are treated differently…some of them make more than their husbands.
Visit www.cipe.org/essay to view all winners, and download their winning essays as originally submitted.
Published Date: October 21, 2010