At the same time, after finishing their work in the evening, women can take their children back home with them. About Us Report an Article Sitemap Contact Us, women power essay. Women Empowerment means providing the women more powers regarding their own will and wish, and making them financially independent and socially recognizable. What is the hardest exam in the world? In basic terms, it means to diminish the gender gap and providing equal women power essay and rights to men and women. They only need to take positive steps and be involved in every activity rather than engaging in household chores and family responsibilities, women power essay, they should know about all the happenings around them and in the country. It enables them to make independent decisions for their personal development, the position of women in Indian society is still backward due to gender inequality.
Short and Long Essays on Women Empowerment
Many more women provide visible leadership today than ever before. Opening up higher education for women and winning the battle for suffrage brought new opportunities, along with widespread availability of labor-saving devices and the discovery and legalization of reliable, safe methods of birth control, women power essay. Despite these developments, women ambitious for leadership still face formidable obstacles: primary if not sole responsibility for childcare and homemaking; the lack of family-friendly policies in most workplaces; gender stereotypes perpetuated in popular culture; and in some parts of the world, laws and practices that deny women education or opportunities outside the home.
Some observers believe that only a few women want to hold significant, demanding leadership posts; but there is ample evidence on the other side of this debate, some of it documented in this volume. Historic tensions between feminism and power remain to be resolved by creative theorizing and shrewd, strategic activism. Nannerl O. Keohanewomen power essay, a Fellow of the American Academy sinceis a political philosopher and university administrator who served as President of Wellesley College and Duke University. She is currently affiliated with the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University and is a Visiting Scholar at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford University.
Her books include Philosophy and the State in France: The Renaissance to the EnlightenmentHigher Ground: Ethics and Leadership in the Modern Universityand Thinking about Leadership She is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Women power essay. One of the most dramatic changes in recent decades has been the increasing prominence of women in positions of leadership. Many more women are providing leadership in government, business, higher education, nonprofit ventures, and other areas of life, in many more countries of the world, than would ever have been true in the past. This essay addresses four aspects of this development, women power essay.
I will note the kinds of leadership women have routinely provided, and list factors that help explain why this pattern has changed dramatically in the past half century. I will mention some of the obstacles that still block the path for women women power essay leadership, women power essay. Then I will ask how ambitious women generally are for leadership, and discuss the fraught relationship between feminism and power, women power essay, before concluding with a brief look at women power essay future that might lie ahead. A leader can define or clarify goals by issuing a memo or an executive order, an edict or a fatwa or a tweet, by passing a law, barking a command, women power essay, or presenting an interesting idea in a meeting of colleagues.
Sometimes a charismatic leader such as Martin Luther King Jr. can define goals and mobilize energies through rhetoric and the power of example. It is also helpful to distinguish leadership from two closely related concepts: power and authority. All leaders have some measure of power, in the sense of influencing or determining priorities for other individuals. But leadership cannot be a synonym for holding power. Leadership often involves exercising authority with the formal legitimacy women power essay a position in a governmental structure or high office in a large organization. Holding authority in these ways provides clear opportunities for leadership. Yet many men and women we would want to call leaders are not in positions of authority, and not everyone in a formal office provides leadership.
We can think of leadership as a spectrum, in terms of both visibility and the power the leader wields. On one end of the spectrum, women power essay have the most visible: authoritative leaders like the president of the United States or women power essay prime minister of the United Kingdom, or a dictator such as Hitler or Qaddafi. At the opposite end of the spectrum is casual, women power essay, low-key leadership found in countless situations every day around the world, leadership that women power essay make a significant difference to the individuals whose lives are touched by it. Over the centuries, the first kind—the out-in-front, authoritative leadership—has generally been exhibited by men.
Women as well as some men have provided casual, low-key leadership behind the scenes. But this pattern has been changing, as more women power essay have taken up opportunities for visible, authoritative leadership, women power essay. Across all the centuries of which we have any record, women have been largely absent from positions of formal authority. Such posts, with a few exceptions, were routinely held by men. Women have therefore lacked opportunities to exercise leadership in the most visible public settings.
And as both cause and consequence of this fact, leadership has been closely associated with masculinity. Yet despite this stubborn linkage between leadership and maleness, some women in almost every society have proved themselves capable of providing strong, visible leadership. Women exercised formal public authority when dynasty or marriage-lines trumped gender, so that Elizabeth I of England or Catherine the Great of Russia could rule as monarch. There are cultures in which wise women are regularly consulted, either as individuals or as members of the council of the tribe.
Women have led in situations where men are temporarily absent: in wartime when the men are away fighting, or in a community like Nantucket in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, where most of the men were whaling in distant seas for years at a time. The impressive accomplishments of Jane Addams and Eleanor Roosevelt stand as prime examples of female leadership. Women have been leaders in family businesses in many different settings. And countless women across history have provided leadership in education, religious activities, care for the sick and wounded, cultural affairs, and charity for the poor. This picture has changed dramatically in the past half-century.
Many more women today hold authoritative posts, as prime women power essay, heads of universities, women power essay, CEOs of corporations, presidents of nonprofit organizations, and bishops in Protestant denominations. Why has this happened in the past few decades, rather than sooner, women power essay, or later, or never? As we ponder this question, we must also note that the changes have proceeded unevenly. It is still unusual for a woman to be CEO of a major public corporation or the president of a country with direct elections for the head of government, as distinct from parliamentary systems. We will look at some of the barriers blocking change in these and other areas. And finally, are women as ambitious for leadership as men, or are there systematic women power essay between the two sexes in the appetite for gaining and using power?
Can tensions between the core concepts of feminism and the wielding of power women power essay us understand these issues? In the past half-century, fifty-six women have served as president women power essay prime minister of their countries. Women have been the CEOs of GM, IBM, Yahoo, and Pepsi-Cola. There are women judges sitting at all levels of the court system, and women leaders in several prominent international organizations. In the United States, the unprecedented numbers of women candidates in the midterm elections and the Democratic presidential primaries are striking examples of women tackling the long-standing identification of leadership with masculinity. One hundred and women power essay women won office inincluding ninety-six members of the House of Representatives, twelve senators, and nine governors.
Each of these was a record number, women power essay, compared with any year in the past. We can multiply instances from many different fields, from many different contexts: women today are much women power essay likely to provide visible leadership in major institutions than they have been at any time in history. Yet why have these changes occurred precisely at this time? First is the establishment women power essay institutions of higher education for women to-ward the end of the nineteenth century. Both men and women worked to open male institutions to women and to build schools and colleges specifically for women students. Careers and activities that had been beyond the reach of all women now for the first time became a plausible ambition. Higher education provided a new platform for leadership by women in many fields.
College degrees allowed women to enter professions previously barred to them and, as a result, become financially independent of their fathers and husbands and gain a measure of control over their own lives. The second crucial development, beginning in the late nineteenth century, was the invention of labor-saving devices such as washing machines women power essay dryers, dishwashers and vacuum cleaners, followed in the second half of the twentieth century by computers and, later still, electronic assistants capable of ordering goods online to be delivered to your door.
Women power essay women or men in charge of running a household today have far more mechanical and electronic support than ever before. Yet one might hope that these patterns could be more malleable than the punishing work required of our great-grandmothers to maintain a household. Even more than the efforts that opened colleges and universities for women, the suffrage movements were deliberate, well-organized campaigns in which women leaders used their sources of influence strategically to obtain their goals. Enfranchised women could vote for candidates who advocated policies with particular resonance for them, including family- and child-oriented regulations and laws that tackled discriminatory practices in the labor market.
Many female citizens voted as their fathers and husbands did; but the possibility of using the ballot box to pursue their priority interests was for the first time available to them. Women could also stand for election and be appointed to government offices. It is important to note, however, that in the United States, the success of the movement was tarnished by the denial of the vote to many Black persons in the South until the Voting Rights Act of Fourth factor: the easy availability of reliable methods of birth control. In the early twentieth century, there was for the first time widespread public discussion of the methods and moral dimensions of birth control. The opportunity to engage in family planning by controlling the number and timing of births gave women more freedom to engage in other tasks without worrying about unwanted pregnancies.
This multifaceted movement encouraged countless women to reenvision their options and led to important changes in attitudes, behavior, and legal systems. The ideas of the movement were originally developed by women in Western Europe and the United States, but the implications were felt worldwide, and women in many other countries provided examples of feminist ideas and activities. Among the most important by-products of the feminist movement in the United States was Title IX, women power essay, passed as part of the Education Amendments Act in New opportunities for women in athletics and in combatting job discrimination followed the passage of this bill.
This puts more women in the workforce and thus on a potential ladder to leadership, despite remaining biases against women in jobs as varied as construction, teaching economics in a university, representing clients in major trials, and fighting forest fires. The more often it happens, the more likely it is that others will be inspired to follow that example, whereas in the past, it would never have occurred to a young girl that she might someday be CEO of a company, head of a major NGO, member of Congress, dean of a cathedral, or president of a university. If you simply project forward the trajectory we have seen since the s, women power essay might assume that the future will be one in which all top leadership posts finally become gender-neutral, women power essay, as often held by women as by men.
The last bastions will fall, and it will be just as likely that the CEO of a company or the president of the country will be a woman as a man; the same will be true of other forms of leadership, women power essay. Sometimes we act as though this is the obvious path ahead, and the only question is how long it will take. On this point, the evidence is discouraging. This is the scenario that appears to underlie much of our current thinking, even if we have not articulated it as such. This scenario, however, women power essay, ignores some formidable barriers that women ambitious for formal leadership still face.
The first and most fundamental obstacle to achieving top leadership in any field is that women in almost all societies still have women power essay if not sole responsibility for childcare and homemaking. Few organizations or nation-states have workplace policies that support family-friendly lifestyles, including high-quality, reliable, affordable childcare; flexible work schedules while children are young; and support for anyone caring for a sick child or aging parent. This makes things very hard for working parents, and especially for working mothers, women power essay.
Although hours worked are correlated with productivity in some jobs and professions, the situation is far more complicated than such a simple metric would indicate. Nonetheless, this measure is often used for promotion and job opportunities, explicitly or in a more subtle fashion. This expectation cuts heavily against a working mother, or a father who might want to spend significant time with his young children. We need more flexible pathways through the labyrinth so that women or women power essay can—if they wish—spend more time with their kids in their earliest years and still get back on the fast track and catch up. We need to work toward a world in which marriage with children more often involves parenting and homemaking by both partners, so that all the burden does not fall on the mother.
We urgently need more easily available high-quality childcare outside the home so that working parents can be assured that their kids are well cared for while they both work full time. Reaching women power essay goal will require more deliberate action on the part of governments, businesses, and policy-makers to create family-friendly workplaces. Such policies are in place in several European countries but have not so far been implemented in the United States. Other labyrinthine obstacles include gender stereotypes that keep getting in the way of women being judged simply on their own accomplishment.
Women also have fewer opportunities to be mentored.
book essay example
Everything that they do must be approved by the men in the family. A situation like this is absolutely unacceptable and poses a major hindrance to the development of a nation. There are various ways through which women empowerment could be achieved. Governments should establish a mechanism to ensure that women are provided equal opportunities in career and other fields as men. Special efforts must be made to educate women and girls so that they can be fruitfully employed. It is also the responsibility of the society to see that women get the proper opportunities in the entire spheres of life. Skill development programs, designed especially for women, are required to elevate their social and economic status.
Education and skill development must be given the utmost importance in the case of women. Not only the governments but also civic societies must be active in working towards the empowerment of women on a priority basis. The interest of women in all walks of life must be safeguarded for the lifetime. Women should be provided with proper healthcare facilities without any discrimination of any kind. Healthcare is a very important sector when it comes to empowering women. Proper health facilities to women will ensure their continuous improvement in all the spheres of life. Women Empowerment is the need of the day and very essential for the growth and development of a nation as well as that of the world.
Without equal opportunities provided to each and every woman on the planet, the dream of a sustainable development society will be a distant reality. Governments, people and organizations all must work together to provide equal opportunities to the women in all fields of life. Essay on Safety of Women in India. Problems faced by Women in India Essay. Role of Women in Society Essay. Status of Women in India Essay. Women Education in India Essay. Violence against Women in India Essay. Essay on Barriers to Empowerment of Women in India. Women Empowerment. Women Empowerment Quotes. Speech on Women Empowerment. Paragraph on Women Empowerment. Slogans on Women Empowerment. Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana. Beti Bachao Beti Padhao Scheme. Essay on Beti Bachao Beti Padhao. Essay on Save Girl Child.
Female Foeticide Essay. Slogans on Educate Girl Child. An Entrepreneur Director, White Planet Technologies Pvt. Masters in Computer Application and Business Administration. A passionate writer, writing content for many years and regularly writing for Indiacelebrating. com and other Popular web portals. Always believe in hard work, where I am today is just because of Hard Work and Passion to My work. I enjoy being busy all the time and respect a person who is disciplined and have respect for others. Find all. Please Help us to improve, Contact us. Women Empowerment Essay. Previous Road Safety Essay. But this pattern has been changing, as more women have taken up opportunities for visible, authoritative leadership. Across all the centuries of which we have any record, women have been largely absent from positions of formal authority.
Such posts, with a few exceptions, were routinely held by men. Women have therefore lacked opportunities to exercise leadership in the most visible public settings. And as both cause and consequence of this fact, leadership has been closely associated with masculinity. Yet despite this stubborn linkage between leadership and maleness, some women in almost every society have proved themselves capable of providing strong, visible leadership. Women exercised formal public authority when dynasty or marriage-lines trumped gender, so that Elizabeth I of England or Catherine the Great of Russia could rule as monarch.
There are cultures in which wise women are regularly consulted, either as individuals or as members of the council of the tribe. Women have led in situations where men are temporarily absent: in wartime when the men are away fighting, or in a community like Nantucket in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, where most of the men were whaling in distant seas for years at a time. The impressive accomplishments of Jane Addams and Eleanor Roosevelt stand as prime examples of female leadership. Women have been leaders in family businesses in many different settings. And countless women across history have provided leadership in education, religious activities, care for the sick and wounded, cultural affairs, and charity for the poor.
This picture has changed dramatically in the past half-century. Many more women today hold authoritative posts, as prime ministers, heads of universities, CEOs of corporations, presidents of nonprofit organizations, and bishops in Protestant denominations. Why has this happened in the past few decades, rather than sooner, or later, or never? As we ponder this question, we must also note that the changes have proceeded unevenly. It is still unusual for a woman to be CEO of a major public corporation or the president of a country with direct elections for the head of government, as distinct from parliamentary systems. We will look at some of the barriers blocking change in these and other areas. And finally, are women as ambitious for leadership as men, or are there systematic differences between the two sexes in the appetite for gaining and using power?
Can tensions between the core concepts of feminism and the wielding of power help us understand these issues? In the past half-century, fifty-six women have served as president or prime minister of their countries. Women have been the CEOs of GM, IBM, Yahoo, and Pepsi-Cola. There are women judges sitting at all levels of the court system, and women leaders in several prominent international organizations. In the United States, the unprecedented numbers of women candidates in the midterm elections and the Democratic presidential primaries are striking examples of women tackling the long-standing identification of leadership with masculinity. One hundred and seventeen women won office in , including ninety-six members of the House of Representatives, twelve senators, and nine governors.
Each of these was a record number, compared with any year in the past. We can multiply instances from many different fields, from many different contexts: women today are much more likely to provide visible leadership in major institutions than they have been at any time in history. Yet why have these changes occurred precisely at this time? First is the establishment of institutions of higher education for women to-ward the end of the nineteenth century. Both men and women worked to open male institutions to women and to build schools and colleges specifically for women students. Careers and activities that had been beyond the reach of all women now for the first time became a plausible ambition. Higher education provided a new platform for leadership by women in many fields.
College degrees allowed women to enter professions previously barred to them and, as a result, become financially independent of their fathers and husbands and gain a measure of control over their own lives. The second crucial development, beginning in the late nineteenth century, was the invention of labor-saving devices such as washing machines and dryers, dishwashers and vacuum cleaners, followed in the second half of the twentieth century by computers and, later still, electronic assistants capable of ordering goods online to be delivered to your door. The women or men in charge of running a household today have far more mechanical and electronic support than ever before. Yet one might hope that these patterns could be more malleable than the punishing work required of our great-grandmothers to maintain a household.
Even more than the efforts that opened colleges and universities for women, the suffrage movements were deliberate, well-organized campaigns in which women leaders used their sources of influence strategically to obtain their goals. Enfranchised women could vote for candidates who advocated policies with particular resonance for them, including family- and child-oriented regulations and laws that tackled discriminatory practices in the labor market. Many female citizens voted as their fathers and husbands did; but the possibility of using the ballot box to pursue their priority interests was for the first time available to them.
Women could also stand for election and be appointed to government offices. It is important to note, however, that in the United States, the success of the movement was tarnished by the denial of the vote to many Black persons in the South until the Voting Rights Act of Fourth factor: the easy availability of reliable methods of birth control. In the early twentieth century, there was for the first time widespread public discussion of the methods and moral dimensions of birth control. The opportunity to engage in family planning by controlling the number and timing of births gave women more freedom to engage in other tasks without worrying about unwanted pregnancies. This multifaceted movement encouraged countless women to reenvision their options and led to important changes in attitudes, behavior, and legal systems.
The ideas of the movement were originally developed by women in Western Europe and the United States, but the implications were felt worldwide, and women in many other countries provided examples of feminist ideas and activities. Among the most important by-products of the feminist movement in the United States was Title IX, passed as part of the Education Amendments Act in New opportunities for women in athletics and in combatting job discrimination followed the passage of this bill. This puts more women in the workforce and thus on a potential ladder to leadership, despite remaining biases against women in jobs as varied as construction, teaching economics in a university, representing clients in major trials, and fighting forest fires.
The more often it happens, the more likely it is that others will be inspired to follow that example, whereas in the past, it would never have occurred to a young girl that she might someday be CEO of a company, head of a major NGO, member of Congress, dean of a cathedral, or president of a university. If you simply project forward the trajectory we have seen since the s, you might assume that the future will be one in which all top leadership posts finally become gender-neutral, as often held by women as by men. The last bastions will fall, and it will be just as likely that the CEO of a company or the president of the country will be a woman as a man; the same will be true of other forms of leadership.
Sometimes we act as though this is the obvious path ahead, and the only question is how long it will take. On this point, the evidence is discouraging. This is the scenario that appears to underlie much of our current thinking, even if we have not articulated it as such. This scenario, however, ignores some formidable barriers that women ambitious for formal leadership still face. The first and most fundamental obstacle to achieving top leadership in any field is that women in almost all societies still have primary if not sole responsibility for childcare and homemaking.
Few organizations or nation-states have workplace policies that support family-friendly lifestyles, including high-quality, reliable, affordable childcare; flexible work schedules while children are young; and support for anyone caring for a sick child or aging parent. If a ruler is effective he or she understands what the people want. An effective ruler gives his or her people what they want and understands the needs of his or her people. Women do have a harder time with keeping power. They have to be extreme with their actions and do whatever it takes. We see this in Irene's and Wu Zhao's case. Wu was very extreme and deliberate in her actions. She was ruthless. She made sure that no one would stand in her way when it came down to her power.
She would have people killed and tortured just to keep herself where she was. She would have her own family members tortured so that the power would never leave from her. Irene acted a little differently. She was very conniving. Irene was not always on top. She had to work if she wanted to be the leader.
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