Eleventh Five Year Plan

Towards Women’s Agency and Child Rights 201right from their inception and formulation stages.The MoWCD is the nodal Ministry for Gender Budgetingand the coordination mechanism for genderbudgeting will ensure that all policies including fiscaland monetary policies, agricultural policies, non-farmsector, information and technology policies, publicpolicy on migration, health insurance schemes, disastermanagement policies, media policy, and the legalregime among others are relevant from a gender perspectiveand are thoroughly examined. It will ensurethat all legislations before they are presented to Parliamentfor enactment are cleared by the ParliamentaryCommittee on Women’s Empowerment.6.78 The Eleventh Plan is committed to ensuring theparticipation of women in governance through thesmooth passage of the much-delayed Women’s ReservationBill. There will be simultaneous training andinputs for women in the PRIs to enable them to influencegender sensitive local planning and implementation.Gender disaggregated data on the participationof women, especially SC/ST and minority women, inParliament, State legislative assemblies, Council ofMinisters, premier services, and in the overall governmentsector will be collected and made available inthe public domain. The Plan will also make proactiveefforts to provide competitive exam training and prioritizerecruitment of women to All India Servicesespecially IAS, IFS, and IPS.6.79 The MoWCD will take the lead in creating andmaintaining a comprehensive gender-disaggregateddata base, for quantitative and qualitative data. Thepurpose would be: (i) to base new initiatives on factsand figures, (ii) assess the gender impact of programmes,and (iii) assess the level of women’s participationin planning and implementing programmes.ELEVENTH PLAN SCHEMES6.80 Swayamsiddha, an integrated scheme for women’sempowerment through SHGs will be the major schemeto be implemented by the Ministry of WCD in theEleventh Plan. Swayamsidha Phase-II will be launchedas a countrywide programme with larger coverage inStates lagging behind in women development indices.The lessons learnt from Swayamsiddha Part 1 andSwashakti, especially regarding capacity building ofpoor women through SHGs, promoting thrift andcredit activities amongst the women themselves, emphasizingon participatory approach towards povertyalleviation, and addressing common problems andissues through the SHGs, will be incorporated in theuniversalized Swayamsidha.6.81 Support to Training and Employment Programme(STEP), a scheme for skill training of women,will be revamped during the Eleventh Plan based onevaluation results (under way) and will be integratedwith Swayamsidha to ensure adequate outlay forcountrywide implementation as a CSS. The RashtriyaMahila Kosh will also be integrated with STEP andSwayamsidha for credit linkages, but will be reviewedin the Eleventh Plan period before considering anyfurther expansion.6.82 A separate Women Empowerment and LivelihoodProject assisted by United Nations’ InternationalFund for Agricultural Development will be implementedduring the Eleventh Plan in four districts ofUP and two districts of Bihar.6.83 Various social empowerment schemes for womenwill be implemented during the Eleventh Plan. Condensedcourses of education will be run to facilitateskill-development and vocational training of adult girlsand women who could not join mainstream educationsystem or were forced to dropout from formalschools. This will improve their social and economicstatus by making them employable. The Ministry willuse mass media to run an Awareness GenerationProject on issues relating to the status, rights, and problemsof women. Through this project it will also try toensure a balanced portrayal of women in newspapers,media channels, serials, films, etc.6.84 The most important programme for women tobe run by the Ministry of WCD during the EleventhPlan will be the provision of Maternity Benefits. TheICDS scheme will have a component of conditionalmaternity benefits under which pregnant and lactatingmothers will be entitled to cash incentives for threemonths before birth and three months after the birthof the child. This will encourage and enable mothersto avoid physically stressful activities, meet medical and