Context: Invoking Goddess Durga, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday reaffirmed the central government’s irrevocable commitment to women’s empowerment. “From opening Jan Dhan accounts for 22 crore women, giving soft loans to them under the Mudra Yojana, to launching Beti Bachao-Beti Padhao initiative, granting permanent commission to women in the armed forces and extending maternity leave from 12 to 26 weeks, the Prime Minister listed out reforms that his government has carried for the betterment of women. He also said anti-rape laws were made more stringent to include the death penalty. Noting that Goddess Durga was worshipped as a symbol of ‘Shakti’, PM Modi said his government was consistently working for the empowerment of women.
Key Initiatves

• Swachh Bharat Abhiyan has helped a lot of women living in the hinterland (rural areas). 
• Enrollment of girls aged 12 and above has gone up immensely - education is a great leveler and an empowerer to women. 
• Women's issues are national issues - issues that were considered taboo earlier are now being discussed in the open, for example, Narendra Modi talking about sanitary towels in the Independence Day speech. 
• All schemes (Swachh Bharat, Jal, Jan Dhan, Ujjwala) will give women access to more resources and financial independence - leads to a rise in self-confidence and status of women in society. 
• Campaigns like 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' help to change the mindset of the people regarding some stereotypes related to women and female feticide as well.
• Women are and can become economic contributors. Their skills (eg. cooking) can be monetized.  
• Women's natural talents are suppressed and they are led in a particular direction due to parental or family pressure. 

Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana

• For pregnant women and lactating mothers. The scheme crossed the mark of 1 crore beneficiaries.
• Is a direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme under which cash benefits are provided to pregnant women in their bank account directly to meet enhanced nutritional needs and partially compensate for wage loss.
• A cash benefit of Rs. 5,000 in three instalments on fulfilling the respective conditionality- early registration of pregnancy, ante-natal check-up and registration of the birth of the child and completion of first cycle of vaccination for the first living child of the family.
• Eligible beneficiaries also receive cash incentive under Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY).

One Stop Centre Scheme

• It is a centrally sponsored scheme which provides for a range of services including police facilitation, medical aid, psycho-social counselling, legal counselling and temporary shelter to women affected by violence in an integrated manner under one roof.
• It is a subscheme of an umbrella scheme for National Mission for Empowerment of Women.

Nirbhaya Fund

A dedicated non-lapsable corpus fund for implementation of initiatives aimed at enhancing the safety and security of women in the country.
Under the Nirbhaya Fund, the proposed projects should have features like:

• direct impact on the safety and security concerns of women,
• optimum use of existing infrastructure, innovative use of technology,
• no duplication of existing government schemes/ programmes,
• provision for real-time intervention as far as possible,
• strict privacy and confidentiality of women’s identity and information,
• defined monitoring mechanism.

Sexual Harassment electronic–Box (SHe-Box)

• An online complaint management system for registering complaints related to sexual harassment at the workplace by women, including government and private employees. Once a complaint is submitted to the SHe-Box portal, it directly reaches the concerned authority having jurisdiction to take action in the matter.

Important Legislation
Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Bill, 2019

• The Bill amends the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012.
• The Act seeks to protect children from offences such as sexual assault, sexual harassment, and pornography.

Salient Features of the POCSO Amendment Bill, 2019

• It is for the first time in the history of anti-sexual crimes against children law that the death penalty has been introduced.
• The Bill provides for not less than 20 years of rigorous imprisonment extending up to the rest of the natural life of the convict or death and fine in the cases of aggravated sex assault.
• Aggravated sex assault: Sexual crimes by people who are in positions of trust and authority. It could be the manager of a child shelter home, school principal, doctor or the hospital staff and even a family member.
• The original version of the POCSO Act only made this category of crime liable with not less than 10 years of rigorous imprisonment.
• The Bill provides that if there has been a penetrative sexual assault with any child less than 16 years of age, that will be punishable with not less than 20 years of rigorous imprisonment extendable to the remainder of natural life.
• The other significant feature is the introduction of the definition of child pornography for the first time (Section 14 and 15). The reason behind this is that perpetrators use the loopholes in the Information Technology (IT) Act and other acts to getaway. The IT Act does not cover sexually explicit photographs of children, it only covers the digital content.
• Definition of Child Pornography: Any visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct involving a child which includes a photograph, video, digital or computer-generated image indistinguishable from an actual child.
• Storage of Pornographic Material: The Act penalised storage of pornographic material for commercial purposes with a punishment of up to three years, or a fine, or both.

However, the Bill increases it to 3-5 years. In addition, the Bill adds two other offences for storage of pornographic material involving children:

• Failing to destroy, or delete, or report pornographic material involving a child, and
• Transmitting, displaying, distributing such material except for the purpose of reporting it.

As per UN Report on Gender Gap in Labour Market

• The gender gap in the labour market has remained as it was since 1995: The gap of 27 percentage points has barely changed since then, the report showed.
• Only 47 per cent women of working age participated in the labour market, compared to around 74 per cent men, according to the report.
• The largest gender gap in labour force participation was observed in the prime working age (25-54).
• This gap has remained unaddressed since 1995 and was at 32 percentage points as of 2020, according to the report. It was 31 percentage points in 1995.
• In India, the ratio of female-to-male labour force participation rate was 29.80 in 2019 as against the desired ratio of 50 per cent.

Family responsibilities

• Family responsibilities and unequal distribution of unpaid domestic and care workers were among the primary reasons for women not joining the labour force.
• Their participation depended on their liabilities and responsibilities in their household, noted UN. It found that women living alone were more likely to be in the labour market.
• On an average, 82 per cent women of prime working-age living alone were in the labour market, compared to 64 per cent women living with a partner and 48 per cent living with a partner and children.
• Their participation rates in the economy were found to improve in the latter part of their lives after their responsibilities reduced — when their children grew older.

Challenges

• The participation of women in the labour force and competitive exams (Group B leadership role jobs) is falling due to many socio-economic causes like workplace safety. Solution - work from home opportunities in various technology startups. 
• The perceptions of and expectations from a girl child from a family and from society as a whole need to change. They are expected to deal with all the domestic chores after coming back from work. We need to let the pressure off of them. 
• Ugly forms of patriarchy exist in many countries including India - change needs to start from each and every household - teach boys to respect girls from childhood itself. 

Suggestion

• Nurture values in our children from early stages about equality and respect for girls. 
• Change the mindset of families about the girls by social campaign. 
• Government should take positive measures to support the women. 
• Give the reservation women in government jobs until they come par with men without compromising efficiency
• Take the help of religious institutions to spread awareness about the rights and higher place that every religion gives to women. Like Sakti in Hinduism, Mary in Christianity etc.

Road Ahead

• Women issues are national issues, we should give them due importance and address them when they come up and also with warm footing. Respect women have a list to boys too about what they should and shouldn't do because the restrictions should not be limited to women or girl. We need an attitudinal change. Family need to change the way  girls are treated at home. Treat boys and girl equally then only we seen that kind of difference that we like to see. Families need to empower the girl child because that is where "everthing stems from and start".