SDG 5 : Gender Equality
Co-authors:
Arpit B19009
Vishal Medida B19027
Ritika Deshwal B19038
Utsav Shah B19045
Tosha Trivedi B19056
The sustainable development goal SDG 5 addresses gender inequality. This goal aims to eliminate discrimination against women in both public and private spheres. It also aims to provide equal rights to women in terms of economic resources and undertake reforms for the same.
We chose to discuss this goal because achieving this goal is crucial for the world to become not just socially responsible but also economically responsible as well. About half of the population consists of women, and the percentage of women in the workforce is whimsically low. Ignoring these facts will be the biggest mistake we’ll make. Hence we tried to see this area in terms of the impact it has on gender inequality with some personal examples, proceeds which some countries/companies have achieved and their impact, and the steps which can be taken to improve the situation. We were also personally attached to this issue because of a few incidences that we experienced in the past and a few that we saw. Hence, we felt it was of utmost necessary to think of changes in these domains.
We all have some inherent bias against women subconsciously. It has its roots in history. Before independence, the structure of the society was such that women had to stay in the house and was responsible for household stuff while men were responsible for earnings. But as times changed, more women started entering the business field, and that is when the society began creating biases in the kind of work that a particular gender can do. Women need to break those shackles to establish their place in the industry. They face a number of problems in day to day life like safety, men dominance, stereotypes, etc.
Some of our teammates had faced similar issues in the past. Two years before, when one of us had to decide on whether to move to Gurgaon for work, she faced many dilemmas. Some of those were there before male colleagues as well, but they didn't have to think of their own safety, neither they had the task of making their parents believe that doing a job is necessary for them and that one job will actually make a difference in their life. This is just one dilemma that women face, but many women face a lot more. There are instances where it becomes a question of life and death, and then one realizes how much harassment a woman faces and how much society still needs to change.
One more incident that one of us witnessed and which motivated us to think about this issue is of the time when she used to work in Gurgaon. She hired a maid for her household chores. The female was in around 23 years of age and was married by her parents to some unknown guy, and they shifted to Gurgaon. After working at her house for about two months when she gave her maid her second-month salary, she denied to take the full amount and asked to take the rest of the salary when she needs. It amazed her as why would someone reject the salary and only take some amount. On further interrogation, she found that her maid’s husband was a drunkard, and he used to take her salary and used that for drinking. It was not all, gender inequality lies in very fabrics of her maid’s life, her stories of how forcefully her parents married her, and despite having a shop, her parents gave shop ownership only to her brother.
There are umpteenth such examples, and it cannot eradicate in a day or so. When she decided to stand up for her maid, the situation became tragic, as it rose society's anger against her. These social norms cannot be changed in a day, a systematic change needs to take place. This situation ended with her leaving that place. This shows how much inequality exists in society in terms of gender and how at almost all phases of life women must face specific challenges and fight for their rights in society. Gender equality is an essential human right and vital foundation for a sustainable world. Equal right to education, decent work and wages, and representation in political decision-making of women benefit humanity in the long run.
The situation of gender inequality varies across countries. There are certain countries in the World where reforms for eliminating gender inequality have been undertaken, and that has led to the tremendous development of those countries. Iceland sets an example for the world by standing first in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index for the ninth year in a row. 88% of women of working age are employed, 65% of students of the University are females, and parliament has 41% women representation. These changes didn’t come in a day and a lesson can be learned from Iceland. The progress started firstly by women's rights defenders who challenged and protested the monopoly of power which men have. The exemplary thing about this was that the women's rights defenders were not only women but also men. The majority of power holders in the world are men, and hence significant changes that need to be undertaken for global gender equality can only be achieved if both men and women understand the issues and work together to tackle them and bring reforms.
In 1975, women of Iceland were paid 60% of their male counterparts. On one day, October 24th, they worked out of office, left any formal or informal work at 2.05 pm, the time at which they could have earned their day's salary had they been paid identical as men. The scale of the strike turned huge, with 25,000 women participating in a country with a population of 220,000. This strike affected the whole country. As the majority of school teachers and daycare workers were women and the schools and daycares remained closed. Also, telephone services, newspaper printing, and typewriting services where the majority of the workforce was women were disrupted. This way women attained their intended goals by showing that their portion in the development and working of the country is equally important.
After this strike, Vigdis Finnbogadóttir became the president of Iceland. She was the first democratically elected head of state in the world. Also, she is the longest-serving elected female head of the country to date. She said, “this strike completely paralyzed the country and opened the eyes of many men”. Just the next year after the strike, Iceland set up a Gender Equality Council, which passed the Gender Equality Act.
Many changes were made in laws that helped the country in gaining gender equality and strengthen them. They prohibited gender discrimination in workplaces and schools, gave the right to paternity leave to Icelandic fathers for six months, like maternity leaves. The concept behind this is to give the message that a child’s care is the responsibility of both mother and father.
As per a study conducted by Financial Times, when both men and women graduate, they earn almost equal income if they are equally educated. But during the years of work, the pay gap increases. The primary reason for this is that women take leaves during their pregnancy and years after that for supporting their children and because of which lack behind due to which their male counterparts got promoted faster and were paid more. The study also states that women who are single and non-childbearing have a low pay gap while the pay gap is more in women who are mothers. Also, Iceland has implemented three months of compulsory paternity leave when they realized that six months' optional leave was not being adequately utilized. This also shows how the entire social and cultural mindset of people needs to change and how the government plays a significant role in this. Policy formation should be such that they should aim to bring cultural changes in the mindsets of citizens.
Apart from this, they have also formulated some analytical models where they analyze each job and measure the work done in terms of some co-efficient. These models are used to check hourly pay according to work done. Hence, this ensures that across various industries and various types of work both men and women are paid equally. Recently, they passed a law stating that it is illegal if women and men have different pays, and the companies or institutes which discriminate will be heavily fined. This is one example where a country has brought changes both economically as well as socially, and this has helped the overall development of the country.
In developing countries like India, before ensuring that women are equally paid, there are other significant concerns like their safety, female foeticide, child marriages, education for girls. The government of India has taken out specific policies like Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao, which aims at equal education opportunities for girls in India. In this scheme, the government has taken various initiatives to spread awareness about the importance of girl child and her education in different cities and villages of India. In metro cities like Gurgaon where the crime rate is high, a special female police force was enforced, and a 24*7 female helpline number was started to cater to emergencies. Apart from these, other initiatives like Sukanya Samriddhi Yojna, Jnani Suraksha Yojna have been undertaken to encourage women to study and get decent jobs.
The other challenge why these policies are not showing that impact on the ground is the mindset of people of the country, which is hard to change overnight.
Sheryl Sanders, the COO of Facebook mentioned two things in her Ted Talk, one that men do not rise for feminism because they think that they will lose their power and the policies formed for females are formed by men, hence when men do not understand the key issues how are they going to address it. The second issue which she stated is that women, for ages, have a mindset that they are doing good by sacrificing, and they have doubts about their abilities. In a survey, it showed that when employees were given a task, they do not know by their boss 70% of men were confident in completing it while only 10% of women showed that confidence, hence females have self-doubt which hampers them to come to the position of power. When these two barriers are abolished, then the only other external factors like government policies can work in an efficient manner, and countries can be transformed. When the entire world works to change culturally then only these barriers can be removed.
Gender inequality has several Business Impact. It began with stereotyping work that is more communication-oriented like HR is more female-centric while labor-intensive work is more male-centric. All these unconscious biases in society had huge business impacts. One of the effects is lack of innovation. If a particular workforce is comprised of a similar kind of crowd, it is very likely that all of them will think on similar lines. These also put us into the never-ending cycles of biases. If the next generation does not see someone from their category into a particular type of industry, they will never have the courage to break the stereotype and enter the field. Diversity is one of the solutions to these problems.
Another issue with the current system is that very few organizations have women in top management. This, in turn, is a trickle-down effect of the low rate of education in women. Hence, the working conditions for women employees is not favorable. This is the reason why women do not sustain for a long time in such organizations which again leads to a skewed gender ratio.
India was the country where women were not just respected but worshipped. Gargi, Maitreyi are some of the examples that need no introduction. But the current scenario is far from being better. Having an 85% literacy rate until the class 5th, the women who enter the workforce is just around 23% in India. It has also been seen that as we move up the economic strata the participation drops even further. A lot needs to be done to achieve the dream of a world where equal opportunities are provided to all.
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