1 cr women hold PSU bank a/cs

New Delhi: In the long haul for women's empowerment, another milestone has been achieved. For the first time, the total number of women bank account holders who have been brought under the credit umbrella of the public sector banks has crossed the one crore mark. The number of accounts with access to credit grew from 92 lakh in the year ended March 31, 2008 to 1.05 crore on March 31, 2009.      The number refers to just individual beneficiaries. If self-help groups and those who dealing with banks in the private sector are added, the number of women beneficiaries will be many times more.      Also, the trend is gathering momentum. For, even in the year of downturn in 2008 when all financial institutions were engaged in consolidation, public sector banks (PSBs) added at least 10 lakh new women account holders under their credit facility.      The growth augurs well for the UPA government's objective to bring at least 50% of all rural women in the country under the credit facility extended by PSBs by linking them through self-help groups (SHGs).      The country's largest bank, State Bank of India, with over 22.40 lakh account holders in 2009, remains on top of the chart of PSBs that extended maximum credit to women. It was followed by Canara Bank with more than 10 lakh account holders, PNB with 8.44 lakh and Indian Bank with 5.50 lakh. 4 PSU banks fail to meet RBI target  New Delhi:  The public sector banks have added over 1 crore women account holders in 2009 and SBI tops the chart with 22.40 lakh. While Syndicate Bank and Bank of Baroda were the other banks having more than 5 lakh women account holders under their credit facility.      Though most of the PSBs achieved the government's target, according to the finance ministry data, as of March 2008 four PSBs—Allahabad Bank, Dena Bank, State Bank of Patiala and IDBI Bank—failed to meet the target set by RBI in earmarking 5% of their net credit to women entrepreneurs. In 2009, State Bank of Patiala and IDBI could not achieve their target.      Besides easy credit flow through PSBs, the UPA government had facilitated micro finance to those women who have not been able to avail of institutionalised banking support through the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh. The government has already announced increasing the Mahila Kosh's corpus from Rs 100 crore to Rs 500 crore over the next few years for this purpose.

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Women scaling neww heights

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Listen to the assertive new Indian woman

M J AKBAR  Sir Harcourt Butler was a great civil servant of the British empire, an icon who understood India, befriended Indians like the Raja of Mahmudabad and advocated causes like the Aligarh Muslim University. As a former governor of United Provinces (today's Uttar Pradesh), he offered a word of advice for the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge, in a letter sent from Rangoon on January 16, 1916. The most powerful influences in India, said Sir Harcourt, were priests and women. As long as any political organization was unable to mobilize both, the government had little to fear.      Mahatma Gandhi, who had no shortage of priests alongside, jolted the British during the non-cooperation movement in 1920 and 1921 precisely because he brought women out of their ancient closet, promising Hindu women the end of Ravanraj (British rule) in six months if they wore homespun and spurned luxury just as Sita had rejected Ravana's temptations. There was a similar contemporary upsurge among Muslims. Maulana Muhammad Ali's redoubtable mother Bi Amman was the first Muslim woman to address the Muslim League without a veil, and the wives of Hakim Ajmal Khan and M A Ansari set up the Women's Khilafat Committee in 1921.      Nine decades later, priests and women remain the most powerful engines of political mobility, with one huge twist in a long tale. The influence of women now far outweighs that of priests. Social development is not even. There are sharp differences both between communities and within communities. But the dominant voice of the next decade will be an assertive new woman with a modern spine.      The Muslim vote remains powered by the exhortations of the ulema, but the queues of women in ballot order, even if in hijab or burqa, are evidence of a new dynamic. They have understood the power of the secret vote and exult in exercising it. The Congress, a principal beneficiary in the last general elections, may want to check why it lost a safe, minority-dominant seat in a Delhi by-election. Did veiled women register a protest against rising costs in the kitchen, or rediscover questions about the Batla House deaths last year?      One reason why the BJP's Ram temple campaign succeeded in the late 1980s and the early 1990s was because it energized women, and made them stakeholders in the proposed temple by asking them to contribute a brick each. But that model has dated, or is in the process of becoming passe. A girl born in 1989 would have voted in 2009.      The BJP's stagnation, or slide, can be partly explained by its disconnect with the changing profile of Hindu women. This is not limited to metropolitan India. The very presence of imitation brands in small towns is proof of the spread of aspiration. This is not a passing fad or fashion; it is rooted in a new mindset. The most powerful weapon in the armoury of the modern woman is choice. Choice is liberating at both the individual and collective level. Imposition, disguised as obedience, stability and security, is yesterday's story. Today's woman wants the final say, whether in dress, marriage, lifestyle or the vote; she does not want to be told that she cannot wear jeans or enjoy Valentine's Day, or go to a pub of an evening if she so chooses. Indian women can see the suffocation of fundamentalism in the neighbourhood. That is the last thing they want in India.      Much is being made, in Delhi, of the fact that the Kashmir valley celebrated one of the most peaceful, happiest Eids in memory. Don't overdo the celebrations. This may have less to do with India than with Pakistan. Even a cursory look at Pakistan tells the Kashmiri young — and particularly young women — that whatever its faults, India just might be the better option. How many young men would want to live within gunshot distance of the Taliban? How many young women would seek a future in a land where the clergy insists on twisted gender laws? As they might put it, India is ''less worse''.      Pakistan's favourite Kashmiri leader, Jamaat-e-Islami's Syed Ali Shah Geelani, pleaded with every Kashmiri Muslim to sulk along with him on Eid; he was ignored. Geelani was a teenager in 1947. The teenager of 2009 does not recognize the teenager of 1947. There are no jobs in conflict, unless of course you want early retirement from the burdens of existence. The young want life; old warmongers offer death.      The happiness of life, the joy of individual liberty, will define the politics of India in the foreseeable future. Those politicians who do not recognize this are condemned to irrelevance. Who understands life better than a woman? Women give life. Men take it.      Women have listened to priests in every age of recorded history. It is time for priests to listen to women. VITAL, IF VEILED

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Investing In Women Seen Key To Global Recovery

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--From finance and infrastructure to human capital and innovation, world business and political leaders say investing in women and girls is integral to a global economic recovery.

The role of women took center stage at this week's annual Clinton Global Initiative in New York with supporters such as Goldman Sachs Inc. (GS), Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), General Mills (GIS), Nike Inc. (NKE), and Jennifer and Peter Buffetts NoVo Foundation launching multi-million-dollar commitments toward business training, technology and ending abuse and trafficking of millions of women and girls.

During her closing remarks at the conference, .

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Women set to outnumber men at work in America

One person's adversity is often another's opportunity. That's certainly proving to be the case in recession-hit North America. A spurt in firing of men and hiring of women has resulted in women now outnumbering men in the Canadian workforce, accounting for 50.9% of the country's 14 million salaried workers. 

    In the US, too, women now hold 49.8% of the country's 132 million jobs and are projected to cross the 50% mark by the first quarter of 2010 when the US will have—according to President Barack Obama—come out of recession. 
    The USA Today has described this as a historic reversal caused by long-term changes in women's roles and job losses for men during recession. "Women are gaining the majority of jobs in the few sectors of the economy that are growing,'' the newspaper said. As a matter of fact, at the current pace, women could even outnumber male workers in the US by November this year. 
    Across the border in Canada, there are 160,000 more women in jobs than men, according to The Toronto Star. "Women's paid employment hit an all-time high in March at 50.9%, when 233,000 more women were employed,'' the newspaper quoted analyst Ted Wannell as saying. Women continue to earn less than men 
    More women than men may be holding jobs in Canada today, but it's not the first time that it has happened. Nobody in Canada really noticed that in 2007 women first tip-toed across this employment threshold for three months from February to April. But women's dominance in paid employment this year clearly marks a turning point. 
    In the US, gender transformation is particularly visible in local governments' 14.6 million work force. Cities, schools, water authorities and other local jurisdictions have cut out 86,000 men from their payrolls during the recession while adding 167,000 women, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics. 
    The postal service is cutting tens of thousands of unionised, blue collar jobs dominated by men while recruitments are expanding in teaching and other fields dominated by college-educated women. 
    However, analysts added a caveat—they say the figures could be red herrings and that historic milestones hold little promise for women in their longstanding battle for economic equality. 
    The Toronto Star reported that women still made up about 70% of part-time workers and 60% of minimum wage earners in Canada. "Nearly 40% are employed in precarious jobs that are generally poorly paid with little or no benefits such as pensions,'' the newspaper said. And the average full-time, full-year female worker still earns just 71.4 cents for every dollar earned by a man working similar hours, according to the latest Statistics Canada data from 2007. 
    In the US, the boost has come due to massive job cuts in male-dominated professions such as construction and manufacturing. The only parts of the economy still growing are health care and education where governments have traditionally hired women. 
    Labour economist Heidi Hartmann says the change reflects the growing importance of women as wage earners, but it doesn't show full equality. "On average, women work fewer hours than men, hold more part-time jobs and earn 77% of what men make.'' TNN

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