Authors: Dr. Kumud Prabhakar
Abstract: The Constitution of India provides a comprehensive framework for ensuring Equality, Dignity, Liberty and protection of women. Constitutional safeguards such as Equality before law, prohibition of discrimination on the ground of sex, special provisions for women, Equality of opportunity in public employment, equal pay, maternity relief and the fundamental duty to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women constitute an important foundation for women's empowerment. However, the existence of constitutional safeguards does not automatically ensure their effective realization. Awareness of these provisions is an essential prerequisite for women to recognize their rights, seek appropriate remedies and participate effectively in social, economic and political life. The present study proposes to examine the level of awareness of constitutional safeguards among women belonging to different occupational groups in India. The study adopts a survey method and focuses particularly on comparison of awareness groups. A structured awareness questionnaire administered to women representing diverse occupational categories such as teachers, government employees, private-sector employees, homemakers, and agricultural workers. Descriptive and inferential statistical techniques, including mean, standard deviation, t-test and one-way ANOVA employed to determine differences among occupational groups. The study revealed that Overall, the Tukey HSD results indicate that 7 out of the 10 pairwise comparisons were statistically significant, whereas 3 comparisons were non-significant. The pattern suggests that the occupational groups of teachers, government employees, and private employees were relatively similar to one another, while agriculture workers and homemakers differed significantly from most of the employment-based groups. The largest mean difference was observed between teachers and agriculture workers (14.00), followed by the difference between teachers and homemakers (12.42).
DOI: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22106541
