Woman working in her own shop
A developing nation like India is still facing some major obstacles in the sector of women empowerment and gender equality. Gender equality is one of the Global Goals of the 2030 Agenda of Sustainable development in India (UNDP,2015). One of the few still existing matrilineal Societies in the world includes Meghalaya, a north eastern state of India.
Meghalaya located in the northeast region of India is dominated by the khasi ethnic group which promotes women empowerment and gender equality through some of their rules, rituals and customs. This state is another example of a place where women literacy ratio is higher than other states of northeast. Meghalaya is also one of the few states in the country where sex ratio is balanced and female voters have exceeded male voters in recent elections.
This state itself stands for women empowerment by introducing some facilities for women. Meghalaya stands for some other records including an impressive 3.1 percentage point gap in male and female literacy which is lowest among all the states in India, 34 percent land holding with women, measure women land ownership which is the highest among all the Indian states. Ethnic groups in Meghalaya carry their mother’s surname instead of father’s surname.
All this takes us to the question, is land ownership enough for making women empowered where they are still not in the power position in the society and get dominated in various other sectors of the society. One may wonder if owning a land makes a woman empowered or not. The fact is that most of the women in Meghalaya still consider their husband as a head of their household and think that there may be a physiological component in it. Women from Meghalaya still can not exercise their decision making power and self agency. There are no women cabinet ministers and only three women candidates out of 60 in the State Legislative Assembly. All these facts make the state of women empowerment in Meghalaya more questionable. Local government of took an initiative to involve women in local governance and thereby enhance their political empowerment, passed the Reservation Policy for Women in Village Employment Council in 2020.
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