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This article provides information about the state’s role towards women empowerment:
The Constitution thus gives equal status to women as citizens, while also taking into consideration some special disabilities which the State may come forward to rectify through affirmative action. Para IV of the Constitution of India, dealing with the “Directive Principles of State Policy” has references to the principles to be taken into account by the State wherein concern for women is exhibited. Articles 39, 42 and 44 refer to certain principles which may not be enforceable in the courts of law, but provide guidance to the state treating women as equal citizens.
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However, certain other sections of the Constitution like the Right to Freedom of Religion, as embodied in Articles 25 to 28, as interpreted by the State legislated in the form of personal laws, fundamentally deny equality to women in almost all basic facets of her life. They deny equality in personal, economic, sexual, social, educational, cultural and even with regard to her right to body as well as with regard to hold certain beliefs, values and norms and codes of personal conduct.
Further, the economic assumption, embodied in the Constitution, as formulated in the Articles 23 and 24 in the Fundamental Rights, dealing with Right against Exploitation, does not consider the day-to-day immense and incessant appropriation of surplus labour of women, witnessed in every family, as exploitation, not to mention how women invariably are paid less for their work than men. Right to freedom of religion and right against exploitation are fundamentally discriminatory against women and while not agreeing to designate women’s labour at home as exploitation, it has been supportive of gender bias of the state.
The state permission to personal religious laws permits the world on religious prescriptions of varied discriminately norms and practices towards women. Personal laws orient towards the domestic ‘private’ space. The Constitution mostly addresses itself to the ‘public sphere’ personal laws, having implications on the private life, essentially family life has holistic implications for shaping women’s status, position, rights and obligations in society. The relegation of women in the private sphere through personal laws, has transformed the entire issue of gender justice and development into individualised and limited pathologies to be dealt with by specialised bodies.
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The manner in which social policies discriminate against women and prescribe certain tasks and behaviour of development reveal the essence and values that are the guiding factors of the state. The understanding of what women’s consciousness should be is conjured with the state’s definition of femininity and this definition of femininity is not marginal but absolutely central to the purposes of welfarism.