The Governor’s conference on state level empowerment of women in 2008 spelled out its vision as follows
- Holistic empowerment of women
- Eradication of exploitation, discrimination and social evils
- Creation of an enabling environment for achieving full potential
- Ensuring rightful share in allocation of resources and decision making
- Making women equal partners in family, society and the nation building process
Based on the recommendation, the National Mission on Empowerment of Women was officially launched by her on 8th March, 2010 and the National Mission Authority was constituted with the PM at the helm as Chairman. State level Missions were set up in 18 states and a State Resource Centre for Women was established in 6 states
A 3-year plan of action was drawn up with two major focus areas:
- A high level committee was set up by Govt. of India under the Chairmanship of Smt. Rupa Paul, former justice of the Supreme Court of India to study the status of women and suggest policy intervention based on assessment of women’s needs
- The provisions of the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh, established in 1993 as a Credit Fund for Women, was to expand its services by:
- Extending collateral free micro-finance and livelihood support to women
- Enhancement of its corpus from rupees 100 crores to 500 crores
- Restructuring in order to serve the women more effectively
