Chennai: The ‘Tamil Nadu Women’s Policy -2024’ that was prepared by the Department of Social Welfare and Women’s Empowerment to improve women’s position in society and unveiled on Tuesday by Chief Minister M K Stalin at the Secretariat enjoins the encouragement of women in the field of politics.
Since a community’s overall growth could be assessed only on the basis of the development of its women, the new policy strives to pave the way for doing away with gender inequality in society and create a safe environment for women, an official press release said.
Taking the Chief Minister’s long term vision to ensure social justice, equality and women’s empowerment into account, the government had already come up with a slew of schemes for improving the condition of women, enabling Tamil Nadu to emerge as the number one State in the country, the release said.
Among the objectives of the new policy, which would be in force for 10 years but reviewed after five years, was to grant social, economic and political power to women through several systematic measures that would be implemented and monitored by the government’s department of social welfare and women’s empowerment.
Apart from laying stress on women’s education, employment and skill development, the policy aspires to bring out the latent talent of women to enable them to live with dignity in an environment where they feel safe and secure and realize their aspirations.
The policy articulates the need for creating an education system with gender sensitivity with a view to reducing dropout of girl students from schools and colleges and ensuring the nutrition of women that would enable girls to grow as healthy individuals.
It stresses on the need for increasing the employment opportunities for women, ensuring suitable positions for women in the organized and unorganized sectors, besides extending encouragement to women running small businesses and also supporting their businesses.
Efforts to provide digital literacy to women should be made to get high paying jobs in the field and reduce gender inequality and improve their skills through training to bridge the gender gap in job skills. For women approaching banks for loans, the policy envisages easy process and sanction, the policy envisages.
