Women’s Empowerment and Mobility

Abstract

Although women’s empowerment was widely discussed for long, it gained increasing recognition and widespread usage in world over only after 1990s by the United Nations. It became an essential part of the declarations for action in the 1990 World Conference on Education for All, the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, the 1993 Human Rights Conference, the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, the 1995 World Summit for Social Development, and the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women. Women’s empowerment also called gender empowerment became a significant topic of discussion in the 1990s in the UN bodies and various conferences. The role of women’s empowerment was recognised as an essential element for the development process. The programmes of action from these conferences stressed the empowerment and autonomy of women and also stressed on the improvement of political, social, economic and health status of women. Recognising the necessity of women empowerment, the International Conference on Population and Development calls upon the organs of the United Nations for effective supports to the implementation of the programmes of action in each country and stressed on the following five components of women empowerment (UNPOPIN):