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Women and Education in India

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Surajit Kumar Bhagowati

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Women play a vital role in the overall development of the country. It not only helps in the development of half of the human resources, but in improving the quality of life at home and outside. Educated women not only tend to promote education of their girl children, but also can provide better guidance to all their children. In addition to this, educated women can also help in the reduction of infant mortality rate and growth of the population. Education is a reasonably good indication of development and the right of every individual to education is one of the first provisions of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. But education is often neglected in societies struggling to meet the needs of their people. Recently education has received greater priority as Planners and Policy makers finally recognized it as a key factor in determining the pace of development. Only 65.46 per cent of women are literates as per 2011 census. Even though the education system expanded very rapidly, the gender gap in literacy remains conspicuous by its presence. The Constitution of India confers on women, equal rights and opportunities in all fields. The Government of India has endorsed the same through its Plans, Policies and Programmes. In spite of all these, women in India have not been able to take full advantage of their rights and opportunities in practice for various reasons. Therefore in this paper an attempt has been made to highlight the literacy status of Indian women as well as the International and National initiatives to promote women's education in India. 

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Women, Education, Gender Sensitization, Literacy, Low Literacy