Impact of Women Leadership Scheme for Women Belonging to Minorities in India

The issue of engendering development and women empowerment has been in the central stage with the shifting of paradigm of development and governance at the global level and particularly in India. Women empowerment and gender mainstreaming have been main agenda of development planning and governance in India. Women belonging to minority communities' viz., Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist, Jain and Parsi are lagging behind as against women from General religions, caste and communities. In view of the empowering women from minorities, a centrally sponsored scheme was introduced by Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India and subsequently shifted to Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. Ministry of Minority Affairs, Government of India has adopted the scheme with the change in focus and content. The scheme has been rechristened as Leadership Development Scheme for Minority Women and it was launched massively during 2012. Against this backdrop, present paper purports to examine the profile of the women belonging to minority communities under the leadership development scheme. The study also attempts to assess the impact of leadership training.