NEW DELHI: Women groups on Monday asked the Planning Commission to articulate gender equality and gender justice as the central goal of the Eleventh Five-Year Plan. The ultimate goal in gender equality is to ensure that women and men have equitable access to, and benefit from society's resources, opportunities and rewards. And, as part of this, women need to have equal participation in defining what is valued and how this can be achieved, women's groups told the Planning Commission.

The main aim of the recommendations presented to the Commission is to mainstream gender concerns into the design elements, implementation arrangement and monitoring mechanisms of various initiatives of the Government, Pam Rajput of the National Alliance of Women's Organisation (NAWO) told reporters after the meeting.

The recommendations have been prepared in collaboration with the Ministry of Women and Child Development, UNIFEM and the United Nations Development Programme.

A multi-pronged strategy with an integrated and inter-sector approach to address gender across its multi-faceted dimensions of caste, class, tribal status, poverty and other social exclusions must be adopted. Restricting the focus to a few issues defined as `women's issue' will yield limited results, Ms. Rajput said. An engendered Plan would include a gender dimension in all macro policies — fiscal, trade, agriculture, industry, infrastructure, labour and employment. This can be achieved by incorporating the specific needs of women and men in policy design, implementation, and impact of these policies on them.

Recommending the strengthening of panchayats and local bodies in terms of power, funds and technology support with conditions to address clean water, sanitation and energy needs of women, the presentation also suggested generation of sex desegregation data at all levels and the mandate for gender budgeting be given to all departments at the Centre and State.

On elimination of all forms of violence against women, the presentation said there was inadequate implementation of the existing laws and policies protecting women from violence, female foeticide, trafficking and communal and state violence. Women sought adequate involvement in the process of drafting of new legislations. The definition of work including that in the proposed legislation for providing social security to informal sector workers should be altered to incorporate all working women, and women contributing to family resources into the category of workers, the presentation added.

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