Published Paper Details:

The term gender is usually used to indicate the differences between sexes. Often it is merely a synonym for women. Of late the social scientists use the term gender in a broader perspective in order to pinpoint the social, political and economic obstacles which people undergo on the basis of sex discrimination. These obstacles form the basis of discrimination based on gender. Gender issues are nowadays an integral part of the development process. In our Indian society, we find how a parental preference for son usually leads to discrimination against women. Women and men do not have the same access to health care and nutritious food. Women when ill are less likely to be taken to the hospital than men. Women are less likely to be given adequate supplies of food; it being because of oppression, male-based traditional attitude, or because of inherited social custom and tradition that women should take care of all the members of the family excepting used to meet household needs, whereas men tend to retain a considerable portion of their income for personal spending. The consequences of these types of unequal treatments are bound to happen in a rather bitter way. If women were treated in the same way as men were treated, there would be so many millions of women alive today in our society. In fact, the women receive a meagre amount of recognition; female children receive less attention. In the above backdrop, the present paper highlights the poverty-gender and employment-gender nexus in India after presenting at the outset the positions and status of women in both developed and developing countries in Section II and III respectively. Section IV describes the present position and status of women and the approach of the Government of India to abolish gender inequality in this context is discussed in Section V. Section VI is the concluding observations.