Distance Learning Education for Improving Women's Status and their Rights: A Review

Education is regarded as the key factor in overcoming the barriers that women face and the basic tool for empowering women and bringing them into the main stream of development. Education not only provides knowledge and skills to improve health and livelihoods, but it empowers women to take their right place in the society and development process. Education gives status and confidence in decision making. Educating women is the key to reducing poverty. Distance learning is any type of education that occurs while location, time, or both separate the participants. In distance learning, the teacher, through the use of technology, delivers instructions to a student at a separate location. Distance education, structure learning in which the student and instructor are separated by time and space, is currently the fastest growing form of domestic and international education.Women status in the society and education are interrelated. All over the world movements have been carried on to change the situation of illiteracy as stated by Bhatt,D.B andSharma, R.S (1992) "The movement for improving women's status all over the world has always emphasized education as the most significant instrument for changing women's subjugated position in society." Women education has an important role in the development of nations. The literacy rate of the women has also impact on the economical condition and reduction of the poverty of the country. This backwardness of the women is due to the non-equal chances to education of the women. There may be equal chances to education for male- female the development of the country may be doubled. There may economic revolution in the country, if the gender disparities in the literacy rate minimized to zero. This paper attempts to outline the role of distance education in upgrading the status of women in India. In a large and developing country like India, distance education is not only cost-effective but can also reach out to all sections of society, including the marginalized and the dispossessed.