Women Empowerment: Are We Ready For? B.Sanjay

You can tell the condition of a nation by looking at the status of its women.
- Jawaharlal Nehru

Background
The Millennium Summit of the United Nations held at its Headquarters, New York in September 2000. It was the largest ever gathering of world leaders in the history well attained by 147 heads of States and Governments out of the 191 UN Member Countries. With their commitment for a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of time-bound targets, with a deadline of 2015, adopted an eight points UN Millennium Declaration widely known as the Millennium Development Goals.
Out of these eight goals first (Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty), second (Achieve Universal Primary Education),third ( Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women), and fifth(Improve Maternal Health) are directly associated with women empowerment worldwide.
This ‘women empowerment’ is for attaining a very simple and obvious target i.e. gender equality and a prosperous, developed, happy global society in the near future. Today’s entire development discourse, as articulated by governments, non-profit organizations, donors and the U.N., revolves around the term “empowerment.”
Indian Scenario
In India a lot has been done in this regard, of which, the most remarkable ones are the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments passed by the Indian Parliament in 1992. These amendments started the process of decentralization and democratization of grassroots governance in the country. One of the most striking features of these amendments was the provision for reserving not less than 33 per cent of seats for women at the local government level. According to the published statistics, an estimated 5 million women have entered local politics, directly or indirectly, within a decade due to this single move.
But the much awaited target of implementing the Women’s Reservation Bill is still a far cry, which was first introduced on September 4, 1996 the 81st Constitutional Amendment Bill. Later it was referred to a Joint Parliamentary Committee chaired by the late MP Geeta Mukherjee. This JPC handed over its report to the Eleventh Lok Sabha on December 9, 1996. It was re-introduced in the 12th Lok Sabha as the 84th Constitutional Amendment Bill by the National Democratic Alliance Government on June 26, 1998. The same Vajpayee Government introduced it for the third time in the 13th Lok Sabha on November 22, 1999. The present UPA Government has also announced its intentions to pass the Women’s Reservation Bill.
Starting from 1996 till date, during these ten years, no parties with a national stature has left without sharing power at the Centre. Under these circumstances the questions that crops-up in mind are:
• Whether all the political parties are behaving hypocritically? Or,
• Apart from all the technicalities involved in passing the bill, whether Indian society itself is ready for providing a lead to the women folk?
For that matter, we need to study the prevailing attitude of those social institutions or organizations towards women empowerment, who proclaimed to be self-motivated for the cause of over all development of the society. Trade Unions/organizations can be treated as one of the most active, self-motivated organization of this kind.
India has a century old rich Trade Union history, which, acted upon as a most powerful pressure group for the political parties and many a time forced to change the policies of governance in the favor of the masses. According to the Chief Labor Commissioner (Central), India has a workforce of 31.479 crore (314.79million) which constitutes 37.3 percent of the total world workforce. Out of these 314.79 million Indian workforces, all the 12 trade unions (BMS, INTUC, CITU, HMS, AITUC, UTUC (LS), UTUC, NFITU, TUCC, NLO, HMKP and IFFTU) affiliated to the Central Trade Union Organization; jointly claim to have a direct membership of 105.47 million of workforce.
Let us analyze the state of women leadership in those two trade union organizations who hold a 1st and 2nd position as per the strength of their membership is concerned.

Analysis

INDIAN NATIONAL TRADE UNION CONGRESS
INTUC

INTUC was established on 3rd May 1947. As per its own constitution, INTUC, the trade wing of Indian National Congress, used to elect its National Executive Body once in three years which includes National Office Bearers, Working Committee Members, Permanent Invitees, Special Invitees and Special Invitees (Substitute). Out of these, the power for Policy Framing and Decision Making lies only with the body comprising National Office Bearers and Working Committee Members. Naturally talking about meaningful representations means ensuring a berth in this circle. Let us analyze the state of women’s representation in INTUC after the year 2000.
Since the year 2000 till date INTUC has underwent twice through the process of National Executive Body formation once in the year 2004 and the other in the year 2006.


Year No of NOB No of WCM No of PI No of SI Total Strength
T M F T M F T M F T M F T M F
2004 34 33 1 18 17 1 22 21 1 162 146 16 236 217 19
2007 41 40 1 13 12 1 47 43 4 256 236 20 357 331 26
Source: Worker’s Diary-2004, 2007
NEC-National Executive Council/Committee
NOB-National Office Bearers
WCM-Working Committee Members
PI-Permanent Invitees
SI-Special Invitees
T-Total, M-Male, F-Female

• In the year the total number of office bearers was 34 which reached to 41 in 2007 but in both terms women folk was allotted with a single berth only. In terms of percentage their representation came down to 2.439 per cent from 2.941 in the year 2004.

• If the number of Working Committee Members is added with that of National Office Bearers, the strength of the top decision making body becomes 54 in the year 2007 which was 51 in the year 2004. The number of berth allotted to the women folk in this decision making body was 2 in the year 2004. It remains same in the year 2007. Here also a decline in women’s representation is noticed. In 2004 the percentage of berth allotted to the women folk was 3.921which came down to 3.703 in 2007.

• If total strength of National Executive Body of INTUC is taken into account including permanent invitees and special invitees, it is 357 now which were 236 in the year 2004. The consecutive strength of women folk in the year 2004 was 19 which increased to 26 in the current term. But in terms of percentage here also the representation given to women labor leaders remained declined. In the year 2004 the percentage of women labor leaders in the National Executive body of INTUC was 8.050 which declined to 7.282 in the year 2007.


BHARATIYA MAZDOOR SANGH
BMS

BMS came into existence in the year 1955 on 23rd July. It claims itself to be a supreme body of nearly 4400 trade unions throughout the country affiliated to it with a nationwide membership of around 8.4 millions. According to the statistics published by the Labor Ministry, Government of India after membership verification drive, it has been declared as the largest labor organization of the country. Let us analyze the trends of women representation given by this organization.
The time frame selected for this study begins with year 2000 till date. During past six years BMS underwent twice through the process of electing its National Executive Body. The table below shows the respective data for these two terms,

Year No of NOB No of WCM No of I Total Strength
T M F T M F T M F T M F
2004 21 19 2 61 53 8 9 9 0 91 81 10
2007 27 24 3 14 9 5 52 52 0 93 85 8
Source: Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh Diary-2005, 2007
Following points can be deduced from the figures given in the table:

• The number of National Office Bearers in the National Executive Body of BMS is 27 which were 21 in its previous term. There were two women National Office Bearers in the year 2004. In the present term the numbers of women labor leaders increased to three. The percentage representation given to the women labor leaders in the National Office Bearers team was 9.523 in the year 2004 which increased to 11.111 percent in the year 2007. So, a little increase of 1.588 per cent is noticed here.

• If the number of national office bearers and working committee are taken together, the numbers of women leadership become 8 out of 41 in 2007. Earlier (2004) it was 10 out of 82. In terms of percentage the representation given to women leadership in 2004 was 12.195 which increased to 19.512 in 2007. An increase of 7.317 point is noticed here.

• If the total strength of the National Executive Council of BMS is considered, it has 10 women leaders in its NEC with a total strength of 91 in 2004 which became 8 out of 93 in its present term. So, percentage wise we record a decline of 2.387 in the representation given to women leadership in its NEC which was 10.989 in 2004 and 8.602 in 2007.

Conclusion

• Women are less empowered even in trade union organizations.
• The representation given to the women leadership in both the above organizations in their National Executive Body was always less than 12 percent.

• In both the organizations, since their inception no women leader has held the position of its President of General Secretary.

• Year 2000 onwards when Women Reservation Bill was discussed and debated on every level the NEC of INTUC recorded a decline of .502 percent while BMS recorded an increase of nearly 1.588 per cent in the women representation.

Recommendations
Apart from demanding immediate implementation of the Women Reservation Bill in the Parliament, all our socio-political, non governmental organizations, trade union organizations, student organizations also need to ensure a healthy representation to women folk. Otherwise, women’s empowerment through reservation will merely help the men behind the scenes (as it happened in the case of the quasi-chief-ministership of Rabri Devi in Bihar).

Its very astonishing that the trade union organizations in the country at no level been made the part of promotion of literacy, specifically adult and continuing education. Endeavour should be made to ensure their participation in enhancing the rate literacy in the working class as well as in the field of adult and continuing education. Announcing the implementation of 33 percent reservation in its organizational setup by one of our national political parties definitely can be treated as a welcoming step in this regard.

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