University Distinctiveness

University Distinctiveness: Women Empowerment

Understanding the importance of women empowerment and improvement of their socio economic and health status is essential for the achievement of sustainability of gender equity in society university has taken necessary measures by establishing rules and regulations through various cells and departments. The university takes all necessary measures to ensure the safety and the dignity of the female staff, faculty and students. The anti-ragging committee takes all possible measures to prevent ragging activities at the admission time of fresher. The women cell gender champion club work intensively for creating women’s sense of self-worth, make them aware of their rights to have access to their own choices, opportunities and resources. They empower and safeguard the rights to promote gender sensitivity on the campus and conduct diverse programmes to educate, sensitize both male and female members and produce a harmonious atmosphere on the campus. It works for the welfare of the students and faculty towards preparing them into competent professionals to take up greater challenges in the academic sphere. With a motive to promote intellectual and social up liftment of the female stakeholders the cell facilitates women’s empowerment through guest lectures, seminars, awareness programmes and other welfare activities as education about specific health issues and measures to be taken, create awareness about social problems of women, gender equity, laws for women, self-defence and prevention of sexual harassment. It also works on active and equal participation of girl students in activities to build self-confidence and create enthusiasm in them. One of the mark able contributions is the research project being funded by Department of Science and Technology (DST, Govt, of INDIA) Entitled, “Development of Women Business Park for Empowerment of Rural Women in selected Villages of Fatehgarh Sahib, Punjab using Eco-Friendly Innovations”. University has demonstrated that illiteracy is not a barrier to poor communities developing themselves. The university provides opportunity to men and women who can barely read and write and trains them to become skilled professionals. It empowers them to meet their community’s needs. It provides quality education to underprivileged girls and youth in urban and rural India. Using feminist-based pedagogy, gender-sensitization techniques and adolescent-empowerment discussions on social issues in the classrooms, it provides teacher trainings, workshops, educational centers and vocational trainings. The goal is to empower girls to have equal participation in society and fight discrimination and remain motivated throughout.

The empowerment of women in terms of socio economic and health status is essential for sustainability of gender equity in society. Women consistently work for entrepreneurial activities, home making and raising future. In view of the same university has been pro-actively working in three fields

1. Awareness activities
2. Skill development
3. Support for livelihood

1. Awareness Activities: Awareness on the rights and duties which support the social upliftment of women are facilitated through women sensitization programmes conducted as a regular practice by university in adopted villages.
2. Skill Development: University has demonstrated that illiteracy is not a barrier and has provided opportunity to women who can barely read and write to get trained to become skilled professionals. One of the remarkable contributions is the research project being funded by Department of Science and Technology (DST, Govt. of INDIA) Entitled, “Development of Women Business Park for Empowerment of Rural Women in selected Villages of Fatehgarh Sahib, Punjab using Eco-Friendly Innovations”. It focuses on the following.
   1. This project focuses on providing sanitary napkins which can be locally manufactured using wood pulp/local cotton/cloth waste using existing infrastructure and is eco-friendly especially for women who belong to rural India. As DBU is located in a rural area, this project helps a lot of rural women in prospect of hygiene as well as in giving opportunity to work.
   2. This project focus on training women in making more creative designs of phulkari in order to add value to their product and thus raise their income by making it more attractive.
   3. This project aims at making eco-friendly party plates that can be made of products such as bamboo, wooden, sugarcane etc. this can be used as an alternative for the plastic party plates that litters land that is unhealthy. Thus the plates made by degradable material can help in solid waste management. Moreover, women can be skilled in making the plates that can help them in making self-help groups and start with their own enterprise.
   4. The execution plan of the project includes a capacity building exercise involving women through group training. Products made during training can be distributed to women in slum areas. Later these women can make their self-help groups and set their own enterprise for the production of these products. Sanitary napkin distribution has been done during COVID 19 lockdown with due permission of ADC, Patiala in local areas to promote hygiene.
3. Support for livelihood: In addition to extension awareness and skill development activities. Transport facilities are provided to the rural areas for easy access to the campus so that girls from rural areas can get can exposure and reach out to education. Scholarships are also given to girls to promote the education. The university management has been supporting the women staff in terms of finance and other basic facility to the make them independent and self-sustainable. Following are some of the case studies of the same.
4. Women Startup: in order to promote women Startups University has amended incubation policy of university and has provided subsidy to women to motivate them for opting for their startup. As a result we have pre incubated 2 women driven startup with the university. We are also vigorously working on providing skill development to women in field of textile, food processing, sanitary napkin making, duna making and IT in order to build up confidence and skills.
5. Shakti Scholarship: University provides Shakti Scholarship to girl candidate in order to motivate and promote education among them. Till date university has provided around 50lac Shakti scholarship to eligible candidates.

Our Insights on Women Empowerment

Women empowerment skill development and awareness activities

Appreciation Letters for Women

Reports of Women Awareness Activities

Scholarship Women

Testimonials

Paramjeet ji is associated with DBU from past 9 years. At the time of joining she was only 12th pass and joined as a peon in Nursing college. When she joined, she was suffering at the hands of in laws facing domestic violence. University supported and motivated her to become self-sustained and stable. University provided her the opportunity to study further almost free of cost and with this support she qualified ANM nursing course from DBU itself. After her evident hard work and dedication, she was promoted to be warden of girl’s hostel in year 2017. She is avails free residence inside and her son is given admission is school at 50% concession. She says that due to the University support that she got from the management she got empowered to withstand the family dispute that she is going through and make her self-sustained.

Paramjeet Kaur

2011-2020

Smt. Premlata ji is serving university since 2002. Her husband met with a car accident while serving DBU in 2002 and lost his life. She had 5 daughters, the youngest being 4 months old at that time. She became homeless as her husband was the only source of income. At this time of crisis, university supported her by giving her place to stay in staff quarters. She was taken care of for basic necessities and in spite of being illiterate she was given job to earn and raise her children with self-respect. Today her daughters have got basic necessary education and are skilled to self-support her. She says that without university support it would have been difficult for her to take care of her kids and support her family.

Premlata

18 years of service

Mrs. Harpreet Kaur stated that her first job was at gas agency where she was not paid off for hard work. She joined DBU in March 2003. She was metric at the time of joining. After joining she completed her 12th and was further motivated by university management to pursue her studies. She got admission in Punjabi University and completed Diploma in Library Science. After that she was promoted at the post of librarian in the university. She had 3 kids who all studied in university at 50% concession that helped her to impart basic education facility to her kids. She says that she got a good environment in university and learnt to live here. University supported her professionally and emotionally because of which she is independent and doing a respectable job and leading a respectful life.

Mrs. Harpreet Kaur

Diksha Sharma student of Agriculture belongs to a middle class family. With the zeal of learning she proactively attended seminar and workshops organized by IEDC and got motivated to have her own startup. She with the help of IEDC team of mentors started her own venture as a small scale industry of textile at her own name. She has become independent at a very young age and is motivated to take her startup to the next level.

Ms. Diksha Sharma

Girl Student Entrepreneur Success Story