Women, who Constitute a sizeable proportion of a country's population, are subjected to gender bias and indignities arising out of the age-old patriarchal tradtion. Despite worldwide evidence of the low levels of female participation in social, educational, economic and political spheres, there is still a tendency not to see it as a real problem. This book is an effort to assess the current size of the gender gap by measuring the extent to which women have achieved equality with the men in critical areas: economic participation, economic opportunity, political empowernment and educational attainment. The national policy for empowernment of women 2011, as well as the Tenth Five Year Plan, illustrate the Indian Government's commitment women's empowernment and welfare. Social empowernment aims to provide women easy and equal access to all the basic minimum services to enable them to realize their full potential. Economic empowernment aims to make all women economically independent through trainin, employment and income generation activities.

In this book the writers have tried to take problems and discuss the problems of women in the society, economic and political fields. They have tried to explore the aims and frameworks of the initiatives and the practices developed by government, and commented on the mixed result achieved.