Public policy often treats people as passive beneficiaries, ignoring their personal choices and social ties.
- Women are particularly affected, often seen as mere recipients rather than active agents.
Welfare Schemes Designed To Address Gender Gaps
It focuses on improving the socio-economic conditions of women and girls, ensuring they have equal opportunities and access to resources.
Here are some notable schemes and initiatives aimed at bridging gender gaps:
- Educational Initiatives
- Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (Save the Daughter, Educate the Daughter):
- Objectives of the scheme are, to prevent gender biased sex selective elimination, to ensure survival and protection of the girl child and to ensure education and participation of the girl child.
- Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV): Provides residential schooling facilities for girls from disadvantaged groups, particularly in underserved areas.
- Social Security and Protection
- One Stop Centre and Universalization of Women Helplines:
- One Stop Centres (OSCs), known as Sakhi Centres: It provide integrated services to women affected by violence, including police facilitation, medical aid, legal aid, psycho-social counseling, and temporary shelter.
- Women Helpline (WHL) Scheme: It provides 24-hour emergency and non-emergency response to women affected by violence through a dedicated helpline number (181), offering support such as rescue vans, counseling, and information on women welfare schemes.
- Swadhar Greh Scheme: Provides institutional support for women in difficult circumstances to help them lead their lives with dignity.
- Ujjawala Scheme: Aims to prevent trafficking and provide rescue, rehabilitation, reintegration, and repatriation of victims of trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation.
- Working Women Hostel: Provides safe and conveniently located accommodation for working women, with day care facilities for their children in urban, semi-urban, or rural areas.
- Economic Empowerment
- Deen Dayal Antyodaya Yojana – National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM):
- It is the flagship program of the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) for promoting poverty reduction through building strong institutions for the poor, particularly women, and enabling these institutions to access a range of financial services and livelihoods.
- Provides financial support, skill development, and market linkages to enhance women’s livelihoods.
- Support to Training and Employment Program for Women (STEP): To provide skills that give employability to women and to provide competencies and skills that enable women to become self-employed/entrepreneurs.
- Mahila E-Haat: An online marketing platform to support women entrepreneurs, self-help groups, and NGOs.
- Health and Nutrition
- Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY): A maternity benefit program providing cash incentives to pregnant and lactating women for their first live birth to improve health and nutrition outcomes.
- Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS): Focuses on providing food, preschool education, and primary healthcare to children under 6 years and their mothers.
- Political and Social Participation
- Reservation of Seats in Panchayats and Urban Local Bodies: Provides for a 33% reservation of seats for women in local governance institutions to enhance their political participation and leadership.
- Mahila Shakti Kendra (MSK): Empowers rural women through community participation and facilitates inter-sectoral convergence of schemes and programs meant for women.
- Women’s Reservation Act, 2023: It reserves one-third of all seats for women in Lok Sabha, State legislative assemblies, and the Legislative Assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi, including those reserved for SCs and STs.
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Public Policy Impacts Personal Choice And Social Ties
- Economic Policies:
- Tax policies, minimum wage laws, and social welfare programs impact personal financial decisions and economic stability.
- Personal Autonomy Linked to Economic Autonomy: Economic independence boosts personal autonomy for women.
- Cash transfers enhance intra-household bargaining power and can help women leave unhappy or abusive marriages.
- Policies should aim to reduce women’s dependence on arranged marriages and kinship ties for economic security.
- Social Norms and Values:
- Policies that promote or restrict certain behaviors can influence social norms and values.
- For example: Policies supporting LGBTQ+ rights or gender equality can shift societal attitudes and foster inclusivity and acceptance.
- Social Ties and Community: Urban planning and housing policies can influence social ties by shaping the physical and social environment.
- Family Policies: Policies related to parental leave, childcare, and family support can impact family dynamics and personal choices regarding career and family life. These policies can help balance work-life responsibilities and support family cohesion.
- Regulation and Behavior:
- Public policies often regulate behaviours that influence personal choices, such as smoking bans in public places, mandatory seatbelt laws, and vaccination requirements.
- Regulations aim to promote public health and safety but can also shape individual behaviours and lifestyle choices.
Public Policy and its Impact on the Autonomy of Marginalised Women
Public policy, while intended to support and empower marginalized sections of society, can sometimes inadvertently impose duties that may hinder personal autonomy and rights:
- Social Expectations and Norms
- Reinforcement of Gender Roles: Policies that implicitly or explicitly reinforce traditional gender roles (e.g., women as primary caregivers) can perpetuate societal norms that restrict women’s autonomy and limit their opportunities for personal and professional development.
- Questioning Traditional Views on Welfare: Women are often targeted for welfare benefits based on their perceived “good behavior”.
- Data shows women spend welfare cash on family welfare, but women are diverse and not just passive recipients.
- Empowered women should not need to prove their trustworthiness to policy elites.
- Community Responsibilities: Assigning community-based responsibilities (e.g., managing local health programs or educational initiatives) to women without providing adequate resources or training can lead to overburdening and burnout.
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- Economic Independence:
- Property Ownership: According to the National Family Health Survey which interviewed women between the ages 15 to 49 years, only 13 per cent own a house on their own, while 29 per cent report joint ownership
- Government programs have pushed for women to be primary beneficiaries to address gender gaps in asset ownership and the labor force.
- Personal Autonomy: Independent economic security can liberate marriages from traditional pressures, fostering love-based marriages.
- Unpaid Care Work: Policies that assume or reinforce traditional gender roles by expecting women to undertake unpaid care work (e.g., caring for the elderly or disabled) without adequate support can limit their economic independence and personal growth.
- Burden of Compliance
- Conditional Welfare Schemes: Welfare schemes that are conditional on certain behaviours (e.g., school attendance for children, participation in community activities) can limit women’s freedom to make choices that best suit their personal and family circumstances.
Balanced Approach: Way Forward
To ensure that public policies support rather than hinder the autonomy of marginalised women, policymakers should consider the following approaches:
- Incorporating Human-Centric Values in Policy Debates
- Holistic Policy Frameworks: Develop policy frameworks that explicitly include goals related to dignity, autonomy, and human development.
- Standard welfare program evaluations focus on economic metrics like consumption smoothing and leakages.
- Evaluations should also measure how programs impact dignity and personal autonomy.
- Policy discussions should consider the humanity of beneficiaries, focusing on love, pleasure, and purpose.
- Redefining Safety Nets and Power Structures:
- Effective safety nets can challenge dominant masculine power structures.
- Welfare programs should be studied for their impact on interpersonal relationships and social bonds.
- More investment in studying the qualitative impacts of welfare schemes is needed.
- Flexibility and Choice
- Flexible Conditions: Design welfare programs with flexible conditions that allow women to meet requirements in ways that best suit their circumstances.
- Multiple Options: Provide multiple options for fulfilling policy requirements, allowing women to choose the most appropriate and least burdensome path.
- Participatory Policy Design
- Stakeholder Engagement: Involve a diverse range of stakeholders, including marginalised communities, in policy formulation and evaluation. This ensures that policies are responsive to the real needs and aspirations of the people they aim to serve.
- Feedback, Monitoring and Evaluation
- Feedback Mechanisms: Establish mechanisms for continuous feedback and adjustment to policies based on the experiences and inputs of the beneficiaries.
- Impact Assessment: Regularly monitor and evaluate the impact of policies on women’s autonomy and rights, using both quantitative and qualitative methods.
- Adjustments and Improvements: Make necessary adjustments to policies based on evaluation findings to enhance their effectiveness and minimise negative impacts on autonomy.
- Ethical Considerations: Ensure that policies are grounded in ethical principles that respect human dignity and promote social justice.
- Avoid paternalistic approaches and empower individuals to make their own choices.
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Conclusion
- The credible impact of schemes ought to be measured not only by standard measures of consumption smoothing and leakages but also by how these policy instruments impact the dignity and personal autonomy of the marginalised.
- After all, each one of us lives for love, pleasure, and purpose; not productivity and profit.
- Real people and their humanity can’t go missing in our debates on welfare policy.
July 18, 2024