EMPOWERING WOMEN THROUGH EDUCATION: A STUDY OF RURAL JAMMU AND KASHMIR

India has made many strides in the field of education in the past few decades but still the fact remains that our country is the home to the largest number of illiterate population in the world. About one-third of India's population is currently functionally illiterate and about 50% of the entire adult female population cannot read or write. The rate of illiteracy is particularly high in rural areas, especially among women. Women's education is crucial to the overall development of any country. In India, though much emphasis is being laid on the gender equality in terms of education, yet discrimination in access to education does exist. There is a rural and urban divide in access to education for women. In Jammu and Kashmir too, female literacy rate is quite low and stands at 58.01 percent. The rural female literacy rate in J&K is 53.36 percent to 70.19 percent for urban females which earlier in the Census of 2001 was 36.7% at rural and 61.9% at the urban level, respectively. Also, there is a large gap in the male and female literacy levels in this border state. The present study examines the issues of education for empowering women in the rural areas of Jammu and Kashmir and seeks to address the challenges towards education of rural women in Jammu and Kashmir.