More countries have understood that women's equality is a prerequisite for development.

Kofi Annan

POPE helps the women to build their future.

POPE promotes women’s human and civil rights and provides practical advice and resources concerning health, education

and vocational skills training.

In Tiruvannamalai Taluk there is no equal wages paid for women. There are no alternative employment opportunities for women. So women have to depend on men for their survival. 80% of the Dalit women are illiterate and they have no chance to know their rights and privileges. They are slave to their masters in the working spot and slave to their husbands in their own houses.

The Dalit women are not given importance to participate in the social functions and decision-making processes in the villages. The decision making power is laid with the men only. Women have no property right and the women cannot demand their share from their parent’s property even though the Government of Tamil Nadu Amended the Act to provide equal rights in properties to women. Women have to work 15 hours in a day. They have to get up early in the morning to finish housework and go to their masters home to clean the cow shed, then 8 A.M. to 6 P.M. they work in the paddy field, then they collect fire wood and food grains and return to family to cook the food and serve to her family members then go to bed at mid night.

Wife beating is very common phenomena in the villages, since most of the husbands in the villages are addicted to alcoholism 75% of the parents don’t send their female children for school and they give only importance to the male children. The young female child will be sent for agriculture and other work even at the age of 7 to 15. Most of the parents prefer their daughter’s marriage soon after their puberty. Men never allow their wives to join in women’s movements or to participate in any women’s training programmes and meeting. Through the POPE’s involvement the women are begin to participate in all programmes and become members of the “Dalit Women Movement”.

That is the main reason to raise a political conscious for Dalit women. POPE will organize the political awareness through the cultural activities. A mass based Dalit women’s movement will be promoted in the target area.

POPE could construct the Dalit Women’s Empowerment Centre at Thallakulam.

This center allows gathering the women of the nearby villages so that they can do training courses. POPE’s staffs also visit the villages to guide the women in different programmes.

Any development process that does not include women and students and seek their active participation cannot attain its real objective of social change. The awareness generation attempts are being organized to create conditions for rural women, students and drop outs to be able to participate in the development process.

This is a difficult task. On the one hand, one finds that rural woman have little access to formal or informal education facilities and consequently lack even basic information issues and problems directly and special efforts to make them aware and active.

The objective of the entire scheme is to induct rural women to think of their problems, to analyze them and to initiate actions to tackle them. This process will and must continue after the training is over. The emphasis must therefore, be given on topics of local interest and discussions must begin from the analysis of local problems and must later be related to macro problems. The discussions collective action will empower women to tackle their problem.

WOMEN'S RIGHTS DAY

8th  March 2018

WOMEN'S RIGHTS DAY

8th  March 2017