Women’s affairs unit
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About women’s Affairs
Women’s empowerment the concept of women’s empowerment (women’s Empowerment) is defined as the process that gives women the ability to make strategic decisions that gain them the power to control their lives, and women’s empowerment can also be defined as the process that refers to women’s possession of resources and their ability to take advantage of them and manage them in order to achieve a set of achievements, based on this definition shows the importance of having three interrelated elements so that women can exercise their individual choices; namely: Resources refer to material, social, and human expectations and allocations, while management refers to a woman’s ability, or at least her sense of ability, to determine her strategic goals that she wants to reach in her life and act on those goals and make decisions based on the results of those goals, and achievements refer to a variety of results starting from achieving and improving a decent standard of living to achieving the principle of women’s political representation. Expert definitions of women’s empowerment the definition of the concept of women’s empowerment comes from the point of view of some experts Naila Kabeer’s definition of women’s empowerment “Naila Kabeer”that women’s empowerment is through a change in the relationships that bind men and women together so that men become less control over women’s lives and women become more able to control their lives, Naila Kabeer also stressed that the concept of women’s empowerment is a concept that includes theoretical and practical possibilities that must be applied in practice and not limited to just meaningless theoretical slogans. John Friedman’s definition of women’s empowerment: John Friedman explained “John Friedman” that the concept of empowerment arises as a result of the interaction of local, political, and social community cultures together, he believes in the existence of three types of authorities; namely political power, social power, and psychological power, political power has a wide impact through teamwork and the Union of voices, while social power arises from the processing of information and community skills, in addition to the role of psychological power in the concept of empowerment as an individual sense of power that appears in behavior as an increase in self-esteem and self-confidence, Friedman sees empowerment as a social force that can be translated as a political force, and also points to the importance of strengthening the process of psychological counseling، And political, and Social through social networks. Kate Yang’s definition of women’s empowerment: it is a process of comprehensive change of the processes responsible for raising the status of women in society with the help and support of the state and society, focusing on the importance of politics and teamwork, to enable her to set her own agenda and goals, and increase her ability to control her life.
Women’s empowerment elements
There are a number of important elements to reach the empowerment of women, including the following:
A-the right of women to determine their own choices.
B-the right of a woman to be able to control her life, whether inside or outside the home.
C-a woman’s sense of her own worth and self-worth. Women’s right to access resources and opportunities to benefit from them.
D-the right of women to influence the directions of the social and economic system at the national and international levels.
Principles of women’s empowerment
Many of the principles of women’s empowerment can be briefly explained as follows:
Attention to the training and professional development of women. Implement and develop projects, supply chains and marketing policies that empower women.
Create high-level institutional leadership aimed at gender equality.
Achieving equality, justice and non-discrimination in treatment between men and women, respecting all of them and supporting their rights.
Ensuring the health and safety of all employees, whether men or women, and achieving their well-being. Attention to community initiatives with the aim of promoting gender equality. To learn more about women’s rights in education, you can read the article Women’s right to education.
Areas of women’s empowerment
The empowerment of women is within several areas, including the following:
Economic empowerment
Economic Empowerment provides women with the ability to control family resources and their source of income, in addition to many economic matters, such as access to markets, providing them with job opportunities equal to men in accessing important economic positions, participating in economic decision-making, and enhancing their ability to financial independence through earning money and participating in the workforce.
Political empowerment
Political empowerment allows women the right to vote, their involvement in the political system after possessing political knowledge, and also enables them to represent governments locally and internationally.
Socio-cultural empowerment
Socio-cultural empowerment allows women to participate socially outside the family. on a larger scale, it provides opportunities for women to access a wide range of educational options, which contributes to women’s literacy.this in turn improves their image, roles and achievements in society. socio-cultural empowerment cares about females in terms of education and reducing discrimination against them by reducing traditional standards that focus on male preference. this type of empowerment also allows women freedom of movement through all modern means of Transportation.
Legal empowerment
Legal empowerment allows women to know their legal rights and obtain community support that helps them exercise those rights, through conducting awareness campaigns about their rights, recruiting the community to support them, and the effective implementation of legal rights.on a large scale, legal empowerment encourages the enactment of laws that support and defend women’s rights, and correcting any violation of rights through the use of the judicial system.
Psychological empowerment
Psychological empowerment achieves psychological comfort for women, their self-esteem and enhance their self-efficacy, and also increases social awareness against the injustice of women, and on a large scale, psychological empowerment of women feels integration and entitlement, and on the other hand, it promotes societal acceptance of that integration and entitlement.
Levels of women’s empowerment
There are three levels of women’s empowerment:
Individual level: expresses the ability of women to control their lives, their perception and sense of their own worth and abilities, and the ability of women to set their goal and work to achieve it.
Collective level: reflects the ability of women to organize themselves, teamwork and their sense of power in their gathering.
The level of the political and social climate, social norms and public dialogue, about what a woman can or cannot do.
As part of the political empowerment of women, the 1995 Beijing conference called for the allocation of parliamentary seats to women in parliaments (the so-called quota project), and this project called for the need to raise women’s representation to at least 30 per cent by the year 2005, and a number of Arab countries have taken advanced decisions in this regard.
Criteria that are used as a measure of women’s empowerment in global societies:
A-participation of women in public and non-Women’s committees.
B-participation of women in leadership positions.
C-participation of women in decision-making.
D-providing non-traditional training opportunities for women.
C-changing women’s perceptions about the possibility of their active participation in work outside the home.
H-women’s confidence in the possibility of their participation by men in public works.
Changing men’s perceptions about women’s ability to hold public office.
D-women hold positions and positions that are not specific to women’s projects.
Y-The percentage of females in administrative and professional jobs.
The percentage of women in Parliament.
G-the percentage of women in the Ministry, senior positions and decision-making centers.
Q-the percentage of women in business ownership.
U-the percentage of females in the number of graduates from higher educational institutions.
R-the number of women who have a bank account.
Z-women’s sense of economic independence from men.
I-the percentage of women of working age participating in the labor market.
Objectives of the women’s affairs unit
A-the main goal of empowering women is to empower women in their struggle with men, and it does not mean reforming the status of women, which is a call to rebel against the natural roles of both men and women within the natural family.
B-the term revolves around the individual woman, and not the woman who is the nucleus of the family; therefore, the working woman is the considered woman, and the head of the family, is seen as backward, and outside the new international context, because she does not practice paid work, and because she has tied herself to her husband, children and family.
C-the imposition of this term in all societies is possible only with the spread of the concept of gender equality in the whole world, transcending both religion and values and beliefs that control the lives of millions of men and women.
D-the United Nations stated in its reports that the main obstacle to the full implementation of the concept of women’s empowerment is the adherence of peoples to religion, as it considered it an obstacle, and to overcome this obstacle, the recommendation was issued at the Beijing+10 Conference held in March 2005, to reach people through Islamic organizations, and that the speech in the next stage should be an Islamic speech, meaning that Islamic organizations should be the interface through which all the contents enshrined in international charters are presented, but within an Islamic framework; so as not to receive opposition from religious peoples.
We must imagine what the situation of the family and society in Muslim countries would be like if Muslim women used these weapons that the advocates of empowerment are trying to put in their hands to destroy their religion, and hence themselves and their society.
Women Empowerment unit strategy
In order for women to have an empowered, entrepreneurial, initiative role, and to participate in all practical areas of sustainable development, in order to achieve the quality of life for them.
Building on the achievements achieved by women at the University, maintaining the sustainability of those achievements and gains, and continuing to build women’s capacities to ensure the expansion of their development participation.
Maintaining the social fabric and its cohesion through the integration of roles between men and women, to build a strong and cohesive society capable of keeping pace with the emerging changes.