INDIA’S PROMOTION OF GENDER EQUALITY THROUGH UN WOMEN TO ADDRESS WIDOWHOOD PROBLEM IN INDIA (2011-2014)

Abstract

Title: India’s Promotion of Gender Equality through UN Women to Address Widowhood Problem in India (2011-2014) Recognized as a country with the highest number of widows by UN Report, Women 2000, India has exceed the total number of widow in 42 million widow. Yet, the stigma and discrimination toward widow in India has been a concerned issues in India. The discrimination varied in many forms as widow received as widowhood in India is often described as a definitive and tragic moment in a women’s life. One in which her identity is stripped away with the death of her husband. As for finding of this research, the patriarchal concept make most of the widow and female headed women used to be dependent in economic to his husband in which caused a tendency for widow to be in poverty or economic instability. This has caused problem to India, as in their Twelfth Five-Year National Plan mentioned that India is indeed to foster their sustainable economic growth in which pointed out the gender inequality problem that need to be solved. Through the cooperation of UN Women as a body of UN that dealt with gender equality issues, India trying to achieve its interest within UN Women cooperation. Using the Neoliberal Institutionalism and International Organization theory, the writer will analyze the cooperation between India and UN Women to promote gender equality in addressing widowhood problem. This research will employ qualitative method and try to analyze the problem based on the secondary data that are collected from literature and reliable sources from journal, report, books and official documents. The cooperation of India and UN Women will be analyzed through UN Women program called Widow Empowerment Program from 2011-2014. Through the publishing report of UN Women, Widow Empowerment Program is a program that believed as the promotion of gender equality through the empowerment of widow, and provided studies on widow in order to enhance the quality of widow’s life.