Chapter 1 Introduction Empowerment-the concept The concept of women empowerment emerged during the 1980s when development thinkers and feminists started questioning the prevailing paradigm of development which was largely economistic in its orientation. It was increasingly realized that development process should be “participatory, accountable and transparent” with equal participation of all the sections in decision making process and outcome of development. According to this thinking empowerment entailed transformation of political, economic and social structures to ensure more participation and visibility of women in all spheres. Empowerment of women has been defined as the ability or the autonomy to exercise agency in different spheres of life. Kabeer (2000) has captured the meaning of the term in a complete way, defining empowerment as the “expansion in people’s ability to make strategic life choices in context where this ability was denied to them.” Also, empowerment is the process of change and women themselves must become the agents of that change. Kabeer explains the concepts in the terms of 3 components- “Resource”, “Agency” and “Achievement”. “Resources” refer to the factors that …show more content…
Himanchal Pradesh was conceived on _________________ while Uttarakhand was carved out of larger state of Uttar Pradesh on November 9, 2000. Both states are hilly states. The reason for taking these two states for the study was that both the states had similar geography and socio culture background. The present work intents at comparing the status of women in these two states on various dimensions of empowerment through carefully chosen indicators for each. Secondary data available from different authentic sources have been used to comprehensively examine the