Women Empowerment and livelihood:

Gender equality is the fundamental human right and essential pillar of sustainable development. Gender equitable society must ensure that all women and men have access to equal opportunities and resources available. Gender equality can be achieved with the empowerment of women, which the state should ensure through policies and strategies cutting across the various farm and non-farm sectors. Marginalized communities can develop with proper distribution of opportunities, resources, and power between women and men to shape their own lives. Though much effort is made for women's developments still much emphasis is to be laid to streamline women into modern developmental processes especially rural women. Despite several efforts, women are the most suffered in the villages and are ignorant of their rights. The majority of women are anemic, their food lacks sufficient calorie intake and is inherently forced to do a lot of work at home and on the farm. The health and education levels of the girl child and adolescent girls are under question and needs attention. The gender discrimination begins at the very birth of the child. The underlying reason for gender discrimination the social psyche that the girl child is a liability while a boy is an asset and is heir to the family name and honor.

For the empowerment of women, VANI is promoting Women Self Help Groups in the rural areas of Rajasthan. VANI is building capacities of women to start micro-enterprise through self-help groups in Jaipur and Baran District for a decade. These groups ensure women’s participation in village planning and implementation of the various development activities. They are instrumental in creating awareness about education, health, and their rights and duties, and motivate women to get involved in the income-generating activities. Till now we had formed 224 SHGs in our project villages.