Gender Perspectives and Women Empowerment: A Comparative Analysis of Two Indian States, Kerala and Gujarat

Abstract

This paper evaluating a comparative assessment of gender empowerment in two Indian states, Kerala and Gujarat. The empirical verification based on the data provided by the fifth rounds of National Family Health Surveys (NFHS-5, 2021). The analysis concentrated on five fundamental components of women empowerment namely, education attainment, health and nutritional wellbeing, economic empowerment, decision-making autonomy, and protection from gender-based violence. Kerala exhibited commendable performance in the field of education, healthcare, decision-making autonomy, and legal awareness due to the persistent investments in social development. Meanwhile, Gujarat has poor performance in most of the social metrics, but demonstrates comparatively better achievement in female labour force participation indicates economic-oriented empowerment in the state. The standardized empowerment index derived from the five dimensions emphasized the advantage of Kerala over Gujarat in gender empowerment. At the same time, it opens up fundamental barriers of Kerala such as patriarchal norms and low workforce participation that restricts all-out achievement in gender-empowerment. Findings of the work underscores the need for multi-dimensional techniques to survive the constraints in women empowerment.