Women empowerment through panchayat raj institutions-A case study of District Kupwara of J&K State

Women empowerment refers to the process by which women acquire due recognition at par with men, to participate in the development process of the society through the political institutions as a partner with human dignity. Of late, one of the major instruments of delivering recognition and power of decision making to the population in general and women in particular has been the emergence of Panchayati Raj Institutions. In this paper an attempt has been made to examine the impact of 33 percent reservation in local body elections on empowerment of rural women in Kashmir. The paper is divided into two parts. The first part covers the conceptual and theoretical aspect which reviews a number of existing documents on women and panchayat raj. The second part of the paper discusses the empirical findings like the electoral process, socio-economic back ground of the women leaders, their performance and also highlights people's perception towards them. The study has been conducted in November-December, 2012 in district Kupwara