THE ROLE OF ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE FOR A WOMAN IN PRESENT SCENARIO (Pages 126-130) by Ms. Parul Agrawal in THE INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH SPECIALIST / ISSN: 2350-1499 (Online); 2350-0751 (Print)

Economic independence means to earn the livelihood through labour or education and to own one’s expenses and to have the knowledge of bank account & maintain the balance. In this present scenario a woman must be economically independent for better prospect, to make her own identity in family as well in society. Financially independent woman can fulfill her dreams, has self respect and gets regard from others. Economic independence provides an opportunity to a woman to take decision freely. Mary Wollstonecraft, an eighteenth-century British feminist promoted women’s education and their economic independence in her treatise ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects’ (1792). If a woman is not independent economically she may face many a problem in the situation of divorce, estrangement and widowhood. She becomes the witness of domestic violence and exploitation. In society the problems which are being faced by a woman- as dowry, exploitation, domestic violence – punching, slapping, burning, murdering and rape etc. all are deep rooted in women’s economic dependency on men. John Stuart Mill, a nineteenth century feminist, theorist, and economist advocated women’s equality and employment in Victorian society in his essay ‘The Subjection of Women’(1869). Keywords: Economic Independence, Identity, Domestic Violence, Education, Equality.