Gender sensitive policies and participation of women: a case of mgnregs in Kerala

Gender equality and empowerment of women are widely recognized as catalysts for the rapid progress of the economy as women constitute half of the population in India. In a male centric society the overall human development is possible only with empowerment of women who currently lag far behind their male counter parts in terms of education, health, earnings and decision making both at household and parliamentary levels. Expanding opportunities for women plays a central role in the process of achieving developmental goal. To ensure gender equality and women empowerment, the specific policy intervention of government is required. One such gender sensitive policy by Government of India is MGNREGS. The present paper analyses the gender sensitive provisions of the MGNREGS and participation of women in employment. It also analyses the reason for high participation of women in MGNREGS in Kerala. © This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.