Gender equality

Right from the beginning of human evolution and civilization, women had to face the sharp end of the stick when it came to liberal progress. Some of it made sense back then, some of it was harakiri, but the sheer ignorance that we have had towards 50% of the women population for so many years to date, is absurd, to say the least.

"Gender equality, also known as sexual equality or equality of the sexes, is the state of equal ease of access to resources and opportunities regardless of gender, including economic participation and decision-making; and the state of valuing different behaviors, aspirations and needs equally, regardless of gender," is the official definition by UNICEF. If this is followed holistically, we empower and elevate half of the population. Why is this still a foggy dream? The answer lies inhabit. The habit of the status quo, which is patriarchal, misogynistic, and non-liberal, is ingrained in the minds of people.

Education and the right leaders can bring about change, is believed. But what if we say that the numbers say differently, especially for India. The Child Sex Ratio (CSR) in India was 945 in 1991, 927 in 2001, and reached a new low of 918 in 2011. It is disturbing but interesting to see CSR decreasing as India was developing, and the literacy rate was booming. What does this mean? Have we as a society gotten less empathetic, less human, as we got better? With over 100 cases of infanticides reported by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) in 2010, many cases go unreported. It was imperative to resurrect this abysmal sex ratio, especially in some parts of the country.

The govt of India has launched several welfare schemes and measures for the same. On 22nd January 2015, the NDA government launched the Beti Bacho, Beti Padhao scheme at Haryana's Sonipat district. The initiative is jointly run by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Ministry of Education, or the Ministry of Human Resource Development and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. It was initially targeted at select 100 districts out of the 640 districts, where the CSR was found to be relatively low. With a budget of INR 100 crores, the indirect benefit transfer scheme was underway. At this juncture, the scheme has expanded to all the 640 districts, and a budget of around INR 35,500 crore for nutritional programs, and INR 28,600 crores for women development sector in the 2020 budget by FM Nirmala Sitaraman was allotted. With the scope of the BBBP scheme increased geographically as well as financially, has it really impacted a substantial change? Sex-ratio improved in just 104 out of 640 districts, in which some districts also showed increase in the ratio. Only 150 odd districts showed increase in female enrolment in secondary schools, while the others were stagnant or decreased.

What went wrong?

47% of the budget allocated was spent in awareness activities, and not on ground awareness that could reach the target groups, but most of it was, awareness activities on a central level. A mere 5% of the total was spent on education.

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) in its report highlighted three major lacunae:

1. Disproportionate allocation of resources on a state and panchayat level with respect to the central level. A lack of money on ground, only 20% to the states was a major barrier to carry out operations.

2. Lack of monitoring at the district level by the task forces formed. Infrequent task force meetings, which has to be called by the district collectors, was found.

3. Huge allocation of funds to advertisements and social media campaigns, where education and health, the two most important aspects, experienced lack of resources. Monthly progress reports and minutes were not available in many districts.

This scheme is a righteous example of the state of gender discrepancy and more importantly, the on-ground lackadaisical attitude to change in this aspect, in spite of the right intentions. The habit of status quo, remember?

It might look like a social issue, it is. But it is an economic and business issue, equally. What happens when a girl from a town is not allowed to move to a new city or a completely new geography for education and profession, where a man from the exact same household is?

Simply put-

1. If a girl and a boy have 100 units of energy per day, a boy is allowed to spend 90 units on his betterment, career or social. Whereas, it is not the case with the girl, she is always expected to spend most of her energy on household chores, not allowed to socialize as much, and has multifold constraints.

2. The average age of marriage of a girl child in India is 22.1 years, and this is only the reported number. Backward areas still have unreported child marriages and what not. If this does not count as atrocity, I don't know what should be!

3. All this inequality impacts the mind of a girl child multifolds. And slowly, the repercussions on the mentality and self-worth follow. Without even knowing, the girl starts to believe the system to be fair, as it gets ingrained so deep at the tender age. When this very girl goes on to pursue her dreams, the social pressure plays on her mind.

This has an effect on the very basis on which revolutions happen. They happen at the top brass leadership and when there are not enough women at that level, they have lesser say and thus lesser empathy and understanding on the table. Grassroots does start at kindergarden, but it is always intiated at CXO.

The World Economic Forum as of late concocted an alarming news that India has slipped to the 112th position in Gender Gap Index. India's positioning is lower than China's (106), Sri Lanka (102), Nepal (101) and Bangladesh (50). One asks why we are so a long ways behind our more modest neighbors. The WEF has determined sex hole among people in four key regions — wellbeing, instruction, economy and legislative issues. In wellbeing and endurance, and monetary chances, India is at the lower part of the heap. The Gender Gap Index has attempted to quantify the weaknesses that ladies have versus men in these regions.

In financial investment, we realize how ineffectively Indian ladies are getting along over the most recent couple of years. There has been a reduction in the workforce cooperation of ladies. The statistics say around 23.3 percent in 2017-18 and 26.9 percent in 2018 and it was beneath the world normal at 48.47 percent in 2018, according to the World Bank. Women are likewise getting less financial open doors than men because of different reasons. In the towns, ladies do the vast majority of the housework and other unpaid work and have no an ideal opportunity to do the external positions yet for metropolitan ladies, in any event, when they land positions, there is worry about the security of transport from the family, low compensation and lewd behavior.

In admittance to wellbeing likewise, women have less admittance to medical services than men because of the act of man centric society which offers inclination to guys and women themselves are prepared not to gripe obviously about their illnesses with the goal that regularly, when the clinical assistance comes, it is past the point of no return. The World Economic Forum additionally noticed that four huge nations — Pakistan, India, Vietnam and China — don't have similar admittance to wellbeing as men.

In training, female understudies are spending less years in school than the male understudies. The mean long periods of tutoring for young girls is 4.7 years, though for guys, it is 8.2 years. Young girls are regularly removed from the school after they arrive at adolescence and their schooling or expertise preparing is cut short. Most of the schools likewise don't have separate washrooms for young boys and young girls, which guardians object to, and are hesitant to send their young girls to class.

Even after the backdrop of economic growth, huge gender disparities exists. Hence, there is clearly a need for policy initiatives to empower women.

Presently there is literature that provides examples of policy changes that have worked so far. India’s unique policy experiment at village-level governance that mandated around one-third representation for women in the positions of local leadership has shown great results. Results of this has been that in villages led by women, the interests of female residents are better represented, leading to women becoming more confident when it comes to reporting crimes. Women representation decreased the stigma associated with bringing women issues to governance.

This trend should be carefully mapped into businesses as well. Companies have started women diversity drives, trying to increase the ratios of women working in their companies. But things will not change much until there is enough representation in the leadership. Even today in corporates, woman is denied an equal pay or equal opportunities. In the era where we talk about paternity leaves along with maternity leaves, the responsibilities of home and child care are still thought to be associated with women. Due to this, an Indian woman by the age of 25 is considered as a liability than an asset. Women have reported to getting lesser and lesser opportunities, bonus, hikes or promotion as they reach the “marriage age” or the “child bearing age”.

Along with corporate, improvements to empower women are also needed in the labour market. An influential study found that when a job recruiter visits to villages to provide information to young women, it leads to positive changes in their labour market participation and in enrolment of professional trainings.

The recent initiatives of recruiting young women after training them from rural areas provide economic independence that these women were unaccustomed to in their parental homes. This leads to higher confidence, and makes it easier for more young girls to dream big.

The path ahead is full of complexities and barriers, but to put it simply-

1. The first and foremost priority should be given to the education of women, which is the grassroots problem.

2. Awareness programs need to be organized for creating awareness among women especially belonging to weaker sections about their rights.

3. Women representation needs to be increased in the leadership positions.

4. There should be enough laws followed by stringent actions taken for culprits in the workplace, so that women working in corporate feel safe and secured, increasing their retention and more women making it into the corporates.

5. There needs to be strict measures taken towards more transparent and equal pay which would make women feel more valued.

"Women are the largest untapped reservoir of talent in the world"

- Hillary Clinton

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Gender equality

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