mugu - social problems

7/28/2019 Mugu - Social Problems

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Gender Equality

Womens Work and Economic Empowerment

In nearly every country, women work longer hours than men, but are usually paid less

and are more likely to live in poverty. In subsistence economies, women spend much ofthe day performing tasks to maintain the household, such as carrying water and collecting

fuel wood. In many countries women are also responsible for agricultural production and

selling. Often they take on paid work or entrepreneurial enterprises as well.

Unpaid domestic work from food preparation to caregiving directly affects the health

and overall well being and quality of life of children and other household members. The

need for womens unpaid labour often increases with economic shocks, such as those

associated with the AIDS pandemic or economic restructuring. Yet women's voices andlived experiences whether as workers (paid and unpaid), citizens, or consumers are

still largely missing from debates on finance and development. Poor women do more

unpaid work, work longer hours and may accept degrading working conditions duringtimes of crisis, just to ensure that their families survive.

Intergenerational gender gaps

The differences in the work patterns of men and women, and the 'invisibility' of work thatis not included in national accounts, lead to lower entitlements to women than to men.

Womens lower access to resources and the lack of attention to gender in macroeconomic

policy adds to the inequity, which, in turn, perpetuates gender gaps. For example, whengirls reach adolescence they are typically expected to spend more time in household

activities, while boys spend more time on farming or wage work. By the time girls and

boys become adults, females generally work longer hours than males, have lessexperience in the labour force, earn less income and have less leisure, recreation or rest

time.

This has implications for investments in the next generation. If parents view daughters as

less likely to take paid work or earn market wages, they may be less inclined to invest intheir education, women's fastest route out of poverty.

UNFPA in action

UNFPA is committed to actions to attack poverty and powerlessness, especially among

women. About half of the UNFPA programme countries have developed strategies to

provide women with economic opportunities. The Fund has supported economic

empowerment and micro-credit initiatives in Bangladesh, Chad, Kenya, Morocco,Palestinian womens centres, Tajikistan and elsewhere. As part of its Campaign to End

Fistula, UNFPA also supports skills training for who have been marginalized by this

debilitating injury of childbirth. UNFPA strongly supports addressing the feminization of
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poverty through the integration of gender concerns in macro economic policy and in

poverty reduction strategies.

In Chad, a two-pronged programme unites microcredit and reproductive health education:while young women receive support that can lead to economic independence, they also

learn to protect themselves against HIV and other reproductive health problems.

In the Lao People's Democratic Republic, a seed fund is helping women gain respect

as economic partners, as well as mothers and wives. Women are learning aboutreproductive health issues through the programme as well.

In Bangladesh, a UNFPA-supported microcredit project provides skills training and

small business loans to women, and also supports reproductive health and family

planning services.

In Viet Nam, UNFPA and partners support national efforts that link economic

empowerment, environmental management and reproductive health services.Participation involves 500 Womens Savings Groups in nine provinces with a

membership of over 12,000 women.

Empowering Women through Education

"Education is one of the most important means of empowering women with the

knowledge, skills and self-confidence necessary to participate fully in the development

process."

ICPD Programme of Action, paragraph 4.2

Education is important for everyone, but it is especially significant for girls and women.

This is true not only because education is an entry point to other opportunities, but also

because the educational achievements of women can have ripple effects within the familyand across generations. Investing in girls' education is one of the most effective ways to

reduce poverty. Investments in secondary school education for girls yields especially high

dividends.

Girls who have been educated are likely to marry later and to have smaller and healthierfamilies. Educated women can recognize the importance of health care and know how to

seek it for themselves and their children. Education helps girls and women to know their

rights and to gain confidence to claim them. However, womens literacy rates aresignificantly lower than mens in most developing countries.

Education has far-reaching effects

The education of parents is linked to their children's educational attainment, and the

mother's education is usually more influential than the father's. An educated mother's
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greater influence in household negotiations may allow her to secure more resources for

her children.

Educated mothers are more likely to be in the labour force, allowing them to pay some ofthe costs of schooling, and may be more aware of returns to schooling. And educated

mothers, averaging fewer children, can concentrate more attention on each child.

Besides having fewer children, mothers with schooling are less likely to have mistimed or

unintended births. This has implications for schooling, because poor parents often mustchoose which of their children to educate.

Closing the gender gap in education is a development priority. The 1994 Cairo Consensus

recognized education, especially for women, as a force for social and economic

development. Universal completion of primary education was set as a 20-year goal, aswas wider access to secondary and higher education among girls and women. Closing the

gender gap in education by 2015 is also one of the benchmarks for the Millennium

Development Goals.

What UNFPA is doing

UNFPA advocates widely for universal education and has been instrumental in advancinglegislation in many countries to reduce gender disparities in schooling. The 2003 UNFPA

global survey on ICPD+10 showed that most programme countries formally recognize

the important of reducing the gender gap in education between boys and girls.

UNFPA supports a variety of educational programmes, from literacy projects to curriculadevelopment with a focus on reproductive and sexual health. Because of the sensitivity of

these issues, the focus and names of the educational programmes have gone through anumber of changes over the past decades.

Gender issues now receive more attention than they did in past programmes, andinstruction methods have changed, from a didactic approach to one emphasizing student

participation and communications skills.

In Jamaica, through an alliance with the Womens Centre of Jamaica Foundation and

funding from the European Union, UNFPA supported a programme that enabledthousands of girls to return to school following pregnancies and to acquire technical

skills.

In a UNFPA-supported project in Bolivia, women are learning to read in their indigenous

language while learning about reproductive health, safe motherhood and health insurance.

In Mali, a literacy project reaches adolescents both in and out of school, with a focus on

migrant girls, domestic workers, victims of violence and abuse, and those living on the

margins of society.
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In Mauritania, UNFPA is collaborating on an educational initiative in four of the poorest

regions of the country. The initiative aims to reduce the dropout rate by half and equip at

least 5,000 girls with a range skills, from home economics and information technology toenvironmental preservation.

Political Empowerment

Throughout much of the world, womens equality is undermined by historical imbalances

in decision-making power and access to resources, rights, and entitlements for women.Either by law or by custom, women in many countries still lack rights to:

Own land and to inherit property

Obtain access to credit

Attend and stay in school

Earn income and move up in their work, free from job discrimination

Moreover, women are still widely under-represented in decision-making at all levels, inthe household and in the public sphere.

Addressing these inequities through laws and public policy is a way of formalizing the

goal of gender equality. Legal changes, which most countries have now implemented, areoften a necessary step to institute gender equality, but not necessarily sufficient to create

lasting changes. Addressing the gaps between what the law proscribes and what actually

occurs often requires broad, integrated campaigns.

UNFPA at work

Effective advocacy requires partnership and coalition building. UNFPA alone is arelatively small agency, but when it works together with other international agencies and

non-governmental organizations to address gender biases in laws and policies at the

national level, it can be very effective. Formal international agreements, such as the ICPD

Programme of Action and the Millennium Development Goals, provide key areas forpolicy changes.

With its development partners, UNFPA advocates widely for legislation to advance

gender equality, to eliminate all forms of discrimination based on sex, and to preventgender-based violence and increase penalties for those who inflict it.

The Fund has established partnerships with parliamentarians in developing countries forpolitical and legislative support for population and development challenges, of which the

empowerment of women is central. Affecting changes in laws can require considerablepatience and a deep understanding of the cultural context.

In most countries, serious gaps still exist in available data on womens economic and

political activity and decision-making ability. The Fund works to fill gaps in collecting
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sex-disaggregated data that is needed to put benchmarks on or monitor policy or

programme effectiveness.

In many countries, UNFPA supports capacity-building for womens NGOs and forgovernment to use the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination

Against Women, because it provides a legally-binding basis for the realization ofwomens rights political, economic, social and cultural in the 179 countries which have

ratified it (as of October, 2004)

Reference:

http://www.unfpa.org/gender/empowerment1.htm

Rural Education Program in India

Education is one of the main and basic need of the life of everyone. Without education

man is like an animal. In our country Lord Macauly in 1853 started the education of

English. Lord Macauly wanted to establish a new segment or class of Babu for workingin the Government offices of British Govt. After independence Government started a big

programme of spreading education all over the country. in this programme primary,

secondary, higher secondary schools and Graduate and Post Graduate colleges wereopen.

The basic thought behind the establishment of these schools is that there must be a

primary school in every villages and must be a Inter College between three or four
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villages. There are almost 5,51,137 villages in India and almost 6,50,000 primary schools

about 1,50,000 primary schools are going on in the cities and urban areas and almost

5,00,000 schools are in villages. About 2,00,000 Inter colleges are running in the countryin which about 1,20,000 are going on in Urban areas. Government of India and the

Provincial Government is regularly working for the progress of education in the country

and their main emphasis on the development of rural education.

There are a lot of problems in rural education. Those teachers are appointed in the

schools and colleges of the rural areas they dont try to gave the students good educationtheir main aim is to kill their time here and they do efforts of their transfer and they have

no interest in performing their duty well. The villagers are not very serious about the

education of their children. They feel very hesitation in sending their children to school.

They thought that if their children getting the education then they dont do theiragricultural works and this thought also prove right. The women education in the rural

areas is also in a very bad condition. The villagers dont send their daughters to school.

They said that the daughters dont need education their main work is working in the

house, if their daughters go to school then her thought should be changed and it will notgood. The society of village still cant leave the conservative thought they think that it is

not right that the boys and girls sitting together in the class, so they dont ready to senttheir daughters in school.

From more than hundred years our farmer robbed and cheated by the money landers andMahajans. They gave loan to the farmers against their property (Agricultural land, animal

or house etc.) and this farmer spent his whole life under this debt. In spite of doing

payment the money lender captured its land or house and sometimes the loan of father

was paid by his son.

By this the Mahajans and moneylenders became richer and richer and the farmers had to

live his whole life into dept. The main reason of this poorest condition of farmers was theilliteracy. Now a days we also find illiteracy in thousands of villages. The reason of the

illiteracy was the somewhere the lack of education facilities and some where the

passiveness of the people about education.

It is right that Government is working to extension of schools. Colleges in villages but we

have to change the mentality of the teaching staff as well as our villagers. If the teachers

dont pay any attention towards their duty then these schools and colleges become empty.The teachers encourage the village people to send their children into schools and colleges

aware them about the benefits of education and told them that with education your child

can live a good life and he can move towards his progress. These children come toschools and colleges they must educate them in this way that they understand the

meaning of education and feel better than the time of illiteracy. A educate child motivate

many other children to come to school this is the main thing which become a milestone ofour vast scale educational establishment.

Now many social workers are working with Government for the rural education. The

Government very fastly spreading the education facilities in villages and also spreading


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the awareness about the education in the villages. Mahatma Gandhi once said that India

cant progress without the progress of the villages, so if we develop our villages then

India must be develop but without education any type of development is impossible, sowe must educate the people of rural India. The educated people of rural India must play

very important role in the development of country.

Reference:

http://currentessays.blogspot.in/search/label/Educational%20Essays

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Child Labour in India

Child Labour is a phenomena prevalent mostly in developing countries of Asia and

Africa. This is not to be seen in the advanced countries of the West. The reason for this is

very obvious, those who feel the need for financial support of the children only allowthem to work and earn. In the Western countries, where education is compulsory, the

question of children found working does not arise.

Let us analyse in some detail why, this child labour is commonly found in India, or forthat matter in any if the developing countries. It is these only which have teaming

millions of poor people. These poor people have to make every member work for his/her

own food. With the earnings of all the members of the family, they are able to make theirtwo ends meet. This same situation prevails in all the developing countries. I do wonder

if any parents prefer to see their little children work for their food, instead of enjoying at

school. When the school can only be a dream for the poor, we find the little boys at teastalls, small restaurants, in mechanic shops, cleaning cars and working as shoeshines.

We also see small girls engaged in industries like match making, candle making etc., I amsure that, given a choice, all these parents would love to see these little slogging children

enjoy their childhood at home or at school, but how is the moot point. The children whoare working are adding their little mite to the family income, and it may be so that, if they

do not work, they may not be blessed with even one square meal a day.

Besides this, if the child does not go to school, what does he do throughout the day. Timewill be wasted, and he will only learn wrong things of life, as, an idle brain is a devils

workshop. So, in this situation, I personally feel that, though the condition is deplorable

it is the lesser evil, and in the bargain the child gets food to eat. From the side of the childalso, it is a certainty that, if he/she is asked for a preference, it will be for going to school.

So when both, the parents and the children would prefer going to school then why this

labour. It is obvious that they are thus working due to compulsions and not out of choice.The compulsion is of course, the meager income of the family, who cannot afford to evenfeed the children if they do not work, and besides this a lot more comes into play for

creating this unhappy situation. Our Governmental agencies, private agencies and NGOs,

often shout from rooftops regarding this menace of child labour. This is a menace isaccepted by all and sundry but, by shouting about it and passing legislations for it, we do

not reach anywhere near the solution of the problem. No one has, as yet suggested some

solution of the problem. When it is amply clear that, the children work to get their basic
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needs fulfilled, no one can say that, it is wrong.

The practical approach to the problem would be that we attempt to find some means for

providing for them, and then, the children can be forced to attend Government schools. Inthe absence of a practical alternative arrangement it is no use just shouting about the

problem. I personally feel that the Government should first provide for such families by

means of subsidies, free ration and free education. Only after such provisions are made,and the Government gets the confirmation of the solution working smoothly and

honestly, can we expect children to get out of the rut of working to earn a living from an

early age when they should be enjoying and playing and of course, studying and learning.Another point closely linked with the problem of child labour comes to the fore, when

these young labourers grow up into suffering adults. They are absolutely hardened and

most of them tend to become anti-social. Their feeling is, and rightly so that, why should

they bother about any social norms, as, what has society given to them. With this attitude,when they enter the adult world they tend to take up professions that are tained with

crime. They become, smugglers, hardened criminals robbers and murderers. With such

children having lost their childhood at the altar of poverty being to believe and rightly so,

that in this world what really counts is riches. With this forethought, they enter the worldof crime, to become rich and enjoy. Thus we may say that these criminals, are usually the

creation of unhappy childhoods. So let us understand that, child labour is not an isolatedproblem that has to be dealt with as a single problem but, it brings in its trail a host of

more complicated problems which are the offshoot of this one. The biggest problem that

follows the problem of child labour is the creation of a force of criminals, and thus anincreased crime rate.

The only practical and feasible solution to this problem of child labour which can be

conceivable in the present scenario is provided necessitis to the families and making free

education compulsory for all children. Before providing the essentials, no one can tell thepoor that they should not allow their children to work, for, if they do not work, who will

feed them isnt this a pertinent question.

Child labour is not a problem that can be tackled by just talking and debating about it onvarious platforms. Neither can it be dealt with by making it illegal, as, no law can ban a

person big or small from earning his bread. All this drama will not be able to fill the

hungry stomachs of the poor. We must deal with the problem with a more practicalapproach and provide what the child earns for. I am sure no child does this labour for fun.

It is their necessity which makes them work. No one can deny that, fulfillment of

necessities has to be tackled before doing anything else. When the necessities are

provided for, I am sure that, the problem that is defying a solution will automatically getsolved by itself. Let us all get together and pledge to make the Government and other

agencies take up a more authentic approach to this problem, and, I am sure, a solution

will be at hand.

Reference:

http://currentessays.blogspot.in/search/label/Socio-Cultural%20Essays

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Influence of Cinema in India

Cinema is by far the most common and cheapest means of entertainment in cities in

India. The maximum we Indians can look to cinema is as an exposition of art. In a

country like ours, where most people are illiterate and so poor that they can ill afford any

other recreation, Cinema has taken its toll.Poor, hard pressed and illiterate people find that the cinema is the only means by which

they can break the monotony and drudgery or their routine mundane lives.The village or urban labour class are casual about pictures because they de not have the

time, the means or occassion to dabble with any of the luxuries they see on the cinema

screen. However, it is the urban lower class and small children of all classes who treat

movies as something more than mere entertainers. Thus we see that the urban populationis mostly influenced by the cinema.

The influence of cinema can not be underestimated for, cinema is a visual aid to learning.

So what is seen on the cinema screen is automatically assimilated by those who see thepicture. Now, what is to be measured is the depth and amount of influence on different

individuals. As we all know the most impressionable people are the illiterates and theyoung minds so, when picture are seen by the masses, the greatest and deepest influenceis on the young and illiterate, while all other categories only get their share of

entertainment and forget about it all. The educated may view the cinema as an art,

besides it being entertainment but the influence on the illiterate and children is seen in

their trying to copy or imitate what they see. Besides, these categories also startvisualising the screen to be a picture of real life which leads them to disappointment and

frustration.

The cinema being a very important visual aid can play a vital role in educating themasses. If pictures are based on realities and deal with society evils and the like, the

impressionable minds will understand life and society better, and the cinema will be

playing its role. The cinema can play a positive educative role in the spheres ofphotography, art, dancing and singing and this would be a positive contribution of cinema

to the teaching of all these fine arts.

What we said in the previous paragraphs is just what could be achieved by the cinema asits influence is tremendous. However, at least in India the influence is just the opposite

Cinema is not at all educative in its role instead, it is only influencing impressionable

minds in the negative. That would go to mean that, the quality of our cinema is very low.

The impressionable minds are, as expected, learning what they see in the cinema. Theybehave as they see, they dress as they see and act as they see. So, the influence is

undoubtedly full and complete but absolutely negative. This has to be because, the young

and the illiterate learn and ape all of what they see as, they do not possess the capacity to

clean the hay from the chaff.Another very dampening effect of the cinema to day is in causing depressions,

frustrations and then suicides. People who see that life is all roses as depicted ok thescreen, life is all glamour and money, expect the same from life for themselves. When

this is mot to be, they are sadly disappointed with what life has to offer them in reality.

Cinema can be of great utility and influence if the cinemas made are educative and

provide clean entertainment, clean songs and dances of some standard. However, in ourcountry, like all other things, cinema has also become an industry highly commercialised
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each picture produced must be a commercial hit no matter what it may all be about. The

producers and directors get together to produce picture to earn a fortune and not to

provide quality education or entertainment for people. This is why to day the picture wesee are mostly those which cater to the lower classes if people, and children, as, only they

can be frivolous and appreciate as fun, meaningless gestures and overtures.

Thus, the influence of cinema has got to be tremendous and it is being so. We are gettingthe return of our cinemas in all our crimes and violence and sex. So it is playing its role

of teaching no doubt but what, is just nobodys business. If the cinema has to play the

role it is meant to play, the quality of cinema must improve no matter ever if quantity isnot retained. It is not important to know how much we learn, it is all important to know

what all we learn, as the influence of cinema is great and irrepairable.

Reference:

http://currentessays.blogspot.in/search/label/Socio-Cultural%20Essays

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