Empowerment is a popular approach concerning women and development.
Empowerment considers gender needs from practical and strategic perspectives.
The Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)
emphasizes that for eliminating all forms of violence and discrimination against
women requires that women be appropriately empowered to make decisions
relating to their interests. Pakistan ratified CEDAW in 1996. CEDAW’s article 14
caters to the empowerment of rural women by ending discriminatory practices and
tendencies and strengthening their societal roles and meeting their needs.
Concerning the Pakistan earthquake recovery effort, it was claimed that women
were provided with social and economic opportunities so as to empower them in
the long-run in terms of inclusion in decision-making processes. This paper explores
and discusses adherence to CEDAW’s article on women empowerment as part of
the recovery effort in general in the Earth Quake Affected Areas (EQAAs). This study
adopted a desktop based thematic review of the issues affecting the role of women
during the recovery effort by relying on policy documents as well as CEDAW shadow
reports and case studies undertaken in the EQAAs. A careful analysis reveals that
concerning strengthening the role of women and their empowerment, the recovery
effort produced successes and failures. The achievements in terms of socioeconomic opportunities concerning women empowerment outweigh the
weaknesses. The paper concludes that rural women belonging to the earthquake
affected areas will achieve socio-economic outcomes in terms of social
emancipation, which will bring them closer to women residing in urban areas.
Kashif Saeed Khan, Syed Munir Ahmad. (2019) Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and Women Empowerment in the Post-Earthquake Recovery Effort in Northern Pakistan , , Volume-13, Issue-1.
