Abstract
As, gender equality is one of the vital parameters of prosperous society, movement to achieve gender equality is a worldwide phenomena. Women are deprived in community in terms of public sphere and need to be motivated and capacitated to be equal part of the public activities. Parallelly, men need to be encouraged and learn to be part of domestic unpaid care-work, with sharing reproductive gender role in family and community, which is unavoidable contribution in human society. For the cause, social norms and values are essential and need to be changed substantively.
While talking about prosperity, it does not mean only having better economic condition. Social status as dignified citizen with full of self-esteem, having equal access and opportunity as informed citizen based on non-discriminatory principle and practices in every aspect of human lives are fundamental to feel prosperously happy member of the human society.
Empowerment is the best tools being used worldwide moving toward mainstreaming the deprived community, which engage both men and women capacitating differently to make change in their involvement in the way of living with consideration of both of them as change agents. It is multidisciplinary in nature having political, economic and socio-economic factors. Affirmative action plan is essential aspect to create enabling environment, where people can participate, intervene and learn to act properly.
Finally, sustainability is the most decisive way to keep one time achievement continuing, where people’s knowledge and skill can be functional to ease livelihood. It would make people more creative and linking them with market with better choice of satisfying consumer through their product and service. In the process, the strategy needs to be set to break the traditional gendered way of engaging and living. Blurring the gender roles and harmonising the working environment with principle of all work are dignified work and working people are equally respected citizen. It finally brings all the people to break the traditionally segregated working culture through blurring the human engagement in all profession based on their capacity and interest of work. It will create complete ecosystem of work toward equality.
Prosperity
Prosperous Nepal and Happy Nepali is the long-term goal of Nepal. It is common commitment of all Nepali including political forces, business communities, civic movement as well as citizen as an individual. Government has declared this goal as main theme of its policy and program of 2018/19 and parliament adopted it unanimously. In this way, it is the good opportunity for state to move aggressively forward with setting up appropriate policies, laws and action plan to address the issues. At the same time it should be properly communicated to people as beneficiaries.
Economic development is one of the elements of the prosperity. But, at the same time changing socio-cultural values and letting all people feel themselves, as dignified and self-esteemed with high head is equally important. These are the essential elements to make people happy as well. Because, having measurable chunk of the citizens feeling themselves discriminated and ‘others’ in society is one of the bigger challenge to attain human prosperity, which needs to be addressed properly.
Other important elements to create enabling circumstances for prosperity is having Informed citizen about their rights and duties as well as equal Access and Opportunity to exercise them as part of good governance. Setting up the system, people get opportunity based on meritocracy, is the major challenges in the contemporary context.
Having these elements, as part of system will make citizen more confident, who can defend nation and national interest in front of global community. While every citizen proudly defending on behave of nation, is the basis of national prosperity and it will make Nepali a proud citizen in the global context. It will be the part of the happiness as well.
Empowerment as Multi-dimensional Process
Empowerment is one of the best way to bring deprived, marginalised and discriminated people in mainstream to achieve the said and set national goal of prosperity and happiness. It is the process to move forward progressively to establish an egalitarian society, which includes both representation and intervention. As Narang said, empowerment is an active multi- dimensional process to enable left-out community to realise their identity and power in all spheres of life through greater self-reliance and internal strength (Narang, 2012).
UN conference realized that women are the biggest community, which needs to be mainstreamed in the process. In that regard, the government of the world made their commitment to the women empowerment in the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo 1994 and reiterated in Beijing Conference in 1995 (UN, 1996).
Empowerment is the process by which it helps people to gain power and control over their own lives and acquire the ability to make strategic choices. It can be defined in different levels as an individual, group, and societal or community. The individual level empowerment deals with individual’s abilities; the group level deals with the collective action as a sense of agency of experience together; and the societal level deals with the permissiveness of the political and social climate in connection of societal norms and the public discourse, too. The empowerment processes in the different levels are interconnected and mutually reinforcing (Megharaja, 2014).
Talking about women empowerment, the UN has defined empowerment with the inclusion of five components as (1) Sense of self-worth; (2) Right to have and to determine choices; (3) Right to have access to opportunities and resources; (4) Right to have power to control their own lives, both within and outside the home; and (5) Ability to influence the direction of social change to create a more just social and economic order, nationally and internationally (UN, 2012). It implies not only women, but to all deprived community.
Empowerment is multi-dimensional in nature. With regard to empowering marginalised community through the political process, having their appropriate representation in the different mechanism with the capacity of self-determination, standing with self-esteem, ability to make self-opinion and express them independently and confidently. It helps them to make proper intervention, setting agenda in the decision-making process and be involved in the enforcement process.
Economic empowerment is linked with equal access and control over the private and public resources (Kabeer, 2001). Participation in the productive work and equal right to property is one of its parts. Recognition and counting of the care work is another essential aspect, where women are dominant. Shifting the culture to share household work among all members of the family is another aspect to empower women in public lives.
A third aspect of the empowerment is a socio-cultural aspect. Education is one of the decisive aspects of the socio-cultural dimension, which empower people to widen their awareness and deepen the understanding. Linking with women empowerment, education and skill creates the space to be part of a public sphere and intervene in the process of decision-making, which plays a key role to change gender stereotype. At the same time, changing the socio- cultural aspect creates self-image free from any kinds of systemic and structural discrimination. Oppression and subordination based on class, gender, ethnicity and geographical diversity are one of the fundamental aspects, to be changed. For the cause, social stigma as attitude, norms, values, and practices under the name of ‘culture’ need to be dispelled. And, domestic care-work requires being dignified, which is the part of the enforcement of constitutional provision of ‘to evaluate economically the work and contribution such as maintenance of children and care families’ (art. 51-j-4).
Empowerment is a process to step up the engagement is called KAAAP. First, people need to Knowabout the matter related with their lives one ways to another. Because, information is power, which is eye opening toward better future. Second, after knowing the fact, they should have courage to Askor raise the question to oneself and others. It will show the level of awareness and motivate people to be creative as well as to have critical opinion. Third, people will start to Actcollectively as organising, campaigning, lobbying etc., toward progressive change. If, silent steps do not work, then they even start agitation and make noise louder and louder for fairness and justice. Well-informed and critical people make noise in constructive way rather violently. Fourth, after making concern authority realisation, the community may Achievethe matter, for what they assume.
But, it would not be the end of the empowerment process. Fifth and final step in the process is to Performproperly, which is even challenging. It may require even more determination, knowledge, skill and confidence. It may be more challenging. Because, whole society will be keeping big-eye on them and easily make criticism by the community, who loose the power and space because of the empowerment of marginalised from previously mainstream or from those, who was expecting that from within. Being pre-aware about this possible circumstance, it should be tackled carefully with passion.
Affirmative Action
Affirmative action is an equity measure in the process of empowering and mainstreaming deprived community asa remedy to correct discriminatory position and create enabling environment.
It has four major action steps such as, to insure participation in terms of quantitative presence, empower them for qualitative intervention, makes their mentoring to change social attitude to them and modeling to act properly in new area.
Reviewing the international literature on affirmative action, Kisan (2010) has concluded three ways to increase numerical participation as quota or reservation, proportional representation, and special provision. He also mentioned that there are three methods to implement these affirmative actions, i.e. preferential, remedial, and compensatory ways (Kisan, 2010). Referring to Weisskopf (2004), Kisan has further mentioned that the policy of affirmative action may enable the beneficiary group to upgrade their professional and political capacity to mainstream them in the society, making a change towards a more unified and democratic system (Kisan, 2010).
The European Commission mentioned that to achieve the intended result of equitable and dignified society, at least three components of the affirmative action including quota for quantitative promotion, training/leadership development scheme for capacity building for qualitative participation, and mentoring for attitudinal change should be architected wisely and enforced skillfully for the cause of total social transformation.
It is relevant to review once again in our context as well. Because, as part of affirmative action, our focus is being stagnant on numerical participation rather systematically following different steps to capacitate the deprived group and changing social attitude and behavior through mentoring and modeling.
Ecosystem of Work Environment
Ecosystem is another name of sustainability. It applies in the working cycle as well. Principle of prosperity, empowerment, and affirmative action all are the ingredient of the working ecosystem to move forward social prosperity and happiness.
Economic self-reliance is the main pillar of the prosperity. Social dignity, self-esteem and harmony are additional ingredients of happiness. Knowledgeable and skillful human resource is backbone of the economic empowerment. And, creation of jobs either for self or other to use that knowledge and skill is equally important.
Job opportunity linked with access to market is important aspect to maintain working ecosystem. Market will be determined by the consumer’s satisfaction, which should have better choice. Winning over the confident of consumer with the quality service and production in terms of their health and wealth determine the sustainability of work cycle.
That is why, while planning to gear up employment based knowledge and skill linking with long-term goal of prosperity, the cycle of sustainable work environment need to be taken into consideration. This is called the ecosystem of working environment.
Finally, the way of segregating traditional roles and professions should be blurred through dismantled thegender glass walling and glass ceiling for shifting working paradigm with better and multiple choices based on knowledge, skill, interest and way of living. Professional ecosystem needs to be changed non-traditional sector as per social demand of time.
Published in MAN journal 2019– MAN-Journal_ Dr Binda Pandey
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