Saving girl child high priority: Maneka

Saving the girl child is high priority for the Indian government, Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi said Monday.

At a meeting with Executive Director of UN Women Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Gandhi said that UN Women can supplement towards the advocacy efforts for the "Beti Bachao, Beti Padao" scheme through creation of content for public outreach and capacity building of women through skill development programmes.

She said that economic empowerment has to be the basic instrument of bringing about gender equality as it is only economically empowered women who can strive to seek an equal position with men.

Mlambo-Ngcuka said that India is a critical country from the perspective of UN for moving towards achievement of UN gender goals.

She stated that the gender issues need to be embedded into the process of achievement of Millenium Development Goals (MDG) because without the achievement of gender goals achievement of MDGs would either be not possible or would be meaningless.

Mlambo-Ngcuka agreed that it is very important to empower women at the grassroots level and to give a second chance to those women who have dropped out of school at an early age by training and educating them.

She also emphasized the importance of involvement of men to create a channel of communication on the issues.

The senior UN official added that India is a technology savvy country which makes it easier for the UN to collaborate with India for purpose of strategizing and positioning of women's issues.

Both sides agreed to continue working towards greater cooperation in the field of creating a gender equal world.