Women's empowerment is widely regarded as a prerequisite for equitable and sustainable national development, yet its operationalization within India's development-planning architecture has evolved considerably since independence. This paper traces the trajectory of women-centered policy within India's Five-Year Plans (1951–2017), examining how the guiding philosophy progressed from a “welfare” orientation (First to Fourth Plans) to a “development” orientation (Fifth to Seventh Plans) and, subsequently, to an “empowerment” orientation (Eighth Plan onward). Adopting a descriptive-analytical research design grounded in documentary and content analyses of the twelve Plan documents issued by the erstwhile Planning Commission of India, and supplemented by Census and labor force data, the study maps the major institutional and programmatic milestones of each Plan period. It evaluates the extent to which stated policy intent translates into measurable gains in literacy, workforce participation, and gender parity. The findings indicate a consistent rhetorical progression toward empowerment-oriented planning, but also a persistent implementation gap: quantitative indicators such as female labor-force participation have not improved in step with policy ambition and, in some periods, have declined even as the policy language grew more empowerment-centric. The paper concludes that translating planning-document commitments into ground-level empowerment requires stronger use of funds, gender-responsive budgeting, and closer convergence between welfare schemes and structures of economic opportunity