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Abstract
The women constitute half of the society. The feudal attitudes of looking down upon the abilities of women and not promoting them, is still continuing in different degrees at various levels of our society. While women have made many advances, their inferior status to men continues to be a global phenomenon. At a time of unprecedented economic growth, India is experiencing a dramatic intensification of violence against women and the majority of girls are still not getting equal educational opportunity. In one of the most important steps for the empowerment of women, the Indian government gave constitutional status to village-level councils or Panchayati Raj institutions and reserved 33% of the seats in Panchayats for women. Punjab government, like many other states of India, has given 50% reservations in Panchayati Raj Institutions in 2018. As a result, during the elections held in December 2018, 50% women elected in local bodies in Punjab. The present study addresses the question that weather women are actually empowered through this reservation in Panchayati Raj Institutions? For this purpose Gram Panchayat Women Elected Representatives especially Sarpanchs (Head of Panchayat) of Sangrur district (Malwa region) in Punjab have been chosen. The district Sangrur is chosen because it is one of the largest districts of Punjab. There is total 600 Gram Panchayats in the district, divided into 10 blocks, out of which Sarpanchs of 300 Panchayats are women. For the completion of this study a convenient sample of 100 Women Elected Representatives (Sarpanchs), 10 from each block, have chosen. Data has collected through primary as well as secondary sources. The views of all the Sarpanchs have taken with the help of structured interviewed Schedule. This paper concludes with some suggestions for actual empowerment of women in PRIs.