A Study on Women Empowerment in South-Asian Countries: A Contemporary Analysis

Abstract

Women are marginalized in the human society from the day of its origin in all parts of the world. Like any
other region of the world, south Asia is not a region, with this major problem. This paper is an attempt to
make a comparative analysis on Women empowerment in seven South Asian countries. Since international
comparison provides us a better comparison of status, ranking is compared mainly. This comparison can be
done effectively by comparing few indices like Gender Related Development index, Gender empowerment
measure, Gender inequality in Education, Gender Inequality in Economic activity, Political Empowerment
Measure etc. This paper is a small piece of a major research done over this area. This paper has compared
only the comparative women empowerment indicators like Gender Related Development index and Gender
empowerment measure for a point of time and found that women are not in equal status throught this
South Asian Region. Again Gender Development index ranking and Human Development Ranking alone
are compared over a period of time ie. from 1994 to 2011. The overall analysis has brought a conclusion
that South Asia is a region that need special attention from the world and international agencies for its
gender empowerment and human development as they are ranked beyond 134th Rank in Human
Development Index and are placed beyond 98th rank in case of Gender Development Index except in case
of Sri lanka and Maldives where there are continuous crisis.