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What comes to a person’s mind when we talk about empowerment? I think empowerment is based on the idea of how much a person is in control of their life, the choices and decisions in their life and choosing what path they want to lead. Unfortunately, the more people think they are empowered, the less they are if we really look into it.

Our lives are mostly in the hands of other people, even our important decisions of life are taken by other people. So often, we are so much relying on other people at an unconscious level that even we, do not know what we are missing on and what aspects of our lives are being led by others.

This state of powerlessness and giving our threads in hands of other people to play with leads us to a life where most of our decisions are not our own and thus we are not in control of our own lives.

When talking about rural community and urban community, many people in the urban setting are empowered enough but at the same time, the rural people are suffering from lack of basic education, basic rights, jobs and decision making especially the women in these rural areas.

Some women in far-off villages have no say in how many children they want to carry. The male head of the family makes all the decisions and the women are not given enough say in any of the household matters.

One thing, I noticed in Pakistan, is that we organize seminars and workshops around certain problems but instead of trying to get to the solutions of that particular problem, we just focus on what the problem is. Which, in the result, leave us clueless about the solutions. If we talk about women empowerment in rural areas, we can literally go about for hours on what are the problems that are being faced by the women there but we do not try to come up with solutions and even if we do, we do not put the solutions in actions.

I, came across an organization in Pakistan, whose agenda is women empowerment in Pakistan especially in the rural areas and creating a gender just society where women are given equal say in all of the matters. The way that they are tackling the problem is by giving these women vocational training for different skill sets including stitching, fashion designing, livestock and digital literacy. The organization’s belief is that if a woman is economically stable, she ultimately gets a say in household matters which makes her economically and socially empowered to lead her life in a better way and to make profound decisions for herself and for her family.

While visiting the vocational centers, I was amazed to see the spirit of these resilient women, who travel their way to the centers, sometimes even breaking the social norms of their regional society and despite of all the family pressures, are determined to make good use of their lives and not just let other people lead their life instead of they themselves.

Also, along with the training and skill sets they acquire, there are intangible learnings like the knowledge of tackling difficult situations in life, the courage, the confidence to face people boldly and above all, empowerment!

In order to achieve success and better future, this is an important step. The more we let our women unleash their potential, the more stability it would bring to our nation. And without any doubt, this is the utmost need of today.