International Women’s Day: From women’s development to women-led development | Current Affairs | Vision IAS
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International Women’s Day: From women’s development to women-led development

Posted 10 Mar 2025

2 min read

Women-led development (WLD) focuses on empowering women to take the leadership, set agenda for development, drive innovation, and shape policies from the forefront.

Significance of WLD

  • Inclusive Governance: It channelizes potential of women for actively shaping and driving economic, social, and political progress at all levels of governance.
  • Gender Equality: Tackles generational inequality (Global Gender Gap Index 2024: India ranked 129th out of 146 countries) by breaking gender stereotypes and rejecting norms that sustain gender disparity.
  • Economic Development: Underscores women role to achieve Government of India’s vision of ‘Developed India’ by 2047
    • As per National Family Health Survey study, advancing gender equality could potentially lead to 30% increase in India’s GDP.
  • Entrepreneurship Development: Promotion of entrepreneurship among women including Tribals, Scheduled castes etc. 

Challenges associated with WLD

  • Climate change: Affects WLD by compromising work participation, health, food security, family etc.
  • Gender digital divide: Only 15% of women in India have access to internet (Mobile Gender Gap 2021 Report).
  • Education: Average female literacy rate throughout world is 79.9%, while India lags behind at 62.3% 
  • Others: Low Female Labour Force Participation Rate, mental health, reproductive health, domestic violence etc.

Initiatives taken for Women-led Development

  • G20 Empowerment and Progression of Women’s Economic Representation (EMPOWER) Summit, Gandhinagar, Gujarat: To accelerate women’s leadership and empowerment in private sector.
  • Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, 2023: To reserve one-third of total number of seats for women in Lok Sabha, State Legislative Assemblies and Delhi Assembly.
  • Jal Jeevan Mission: Providing clean tap water supply, with women at core of planning, decision-making, implementation, and monitoring.
  • Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana: Provides clean cooking fuel resulting in improving environment and women health.
  • Tags :
  • Women-led Development
  • Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, 2023
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