- The government of Tamil Nadu will introduce a digital platform named WIB for empowering women
- WIB will concentrate on the employment, entrepreneurship, safety, and well-being of women
- WIB is under the Rs 1,185-crore World Bank-financed TNWeSafe Project
In a key step towards empowering women, the Tamil Nadu government is set to introduce a single-stop digital portal named the Women Information Bank (WIB). The portal will enable women to be assisted in employment, entrepreneurship, safety, and wellbeing.
The project is under the Rs 1,185-crore World Bank-funded Tamil Nadu Women Employment and Safety (TNWeSafety) Project and will act as an integrated facility for all women-centric schemes and services being offered by different government departments.
The WIB will act as a multi-sectoral online gateway, with access to skill training information, career progression, entrepreneurship, and welfare assistance.
The website will help women to access childcare and old-age care services, hostels, and career or psychological counseling.
The website will also offer networking, connecting the users with mentors, colleagues, and institutions to enable professional and personal growth.
WIB shall also provide far-reaching materials on healthcare, legal rights, mental health, social legislation, and individual security, and include crisis support materials such as domestic violence helplines, police contact numbers, and local one-stop support centre maps.
A secure online platform will allow women to file workplace harassment or discrimination complaints, strengthening the grievance redressal system.
The Social Welfare and Women Empowerment Department has floated tenders for developing the platform, which will be up and running in six months' time. The idea is to have a dynamic, data-based system that tracks beneficiaries and improves service delivery.
The WIB will aggregate data from multiple departments like Social Welfare, MSME, Skill Development, Health, Education, and Transport to achieve interoperability and transparency.
It will further help in policy assessment, real-time monitoring, and evidence-based decision-making for women-oriented schemes.
The TNWeSafe project, which runs for five years, has three pillars: Employ (female workforce participation), Enable (access to opportunities and services), and Empower (institutional system strengthening).
Tenders for preparing state-level and district-level Women Quality Employment Plans (WQEPs and D-WQEPs) to determine challenges and enhance workforce participation among women were also floated earlier this year.
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