Dr. Kavita Suri
Only last month, the entire nation celebrated its 70th Republic Day. We too celebrated this day here in Jammu with much fanfare but what caught my eye were few headlines in the print and social media. Few of these headlines read “Women stole the show at the 70th Republic Day parade”; “Women rule this year’s Republic Day parade,” and so on and so forth. Well, there was nothing unusual in these headlines but these still made me ponder if I had ever seen similar headlines in the past which read like “Men stole the show at Republic Day parade” or “Men rule this year’s Republic Day parade” etc etc. I could not think of any such headlines. Then why such an honour showered on us – the women folk!!! We all gleamed, rejoiced and cheered when a lone woman officer showcased her motorbike stunts on the Rajpath as part of the iconic daredevil team or another young female officer led a contingent of an all male contingent of Indian Army Service Corps. But these are a handful of women who have dismantled rock hard gender barriers, and such feats as achieved by them in this Republic Day parade were something unusual, hence such headlines. So, apparently women have become empowered in India but how many of them? Is women empowerment a myth or a reality? It’s time to ponder over these issues.
Women empowerment and gender equality is very important for the overall development of the societies. Gender equality, as we all know, is achieved when women and men enjoy the same rights and opportunities across all sectors of society, including economic participation and decision-making. As we have ushered into the year 2019, it is time to ponder over the progress achieved towards women empowerment, gender equality and also the unfinished tasks in this regard.
Global perspectives
If I would just take a cue from World Economic Forum’s recently released Global Gender Index Report, I would start with a good news first, which is, the global gender gap has improved, slightly. But the sad news is that the differences in economic opportunity, including pay between men and women, are so vast that it will take 202 years to fully bridge them. WEF which evaluates 149 countries on four parameters including economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment, says that it will take 108 years to close the overall gender gap. That means the economic opportunity gap – based on participation, pay and advancement in the workforce – remains the area that is going to take the longest time to close.
Nordic countries including Iceland, Denmark, Finland, Norway are leading in the list with Iceland at number one position. In fact, this small country has retained its number one position since past ten consecutive years. In Asia, Philippines is the best performer and has clinched 8th position in Index.
Historically, women empowerment and gender equality has already been on the global agenda. Beijing Platform for Action was an international road map for gender equality signed by 189 governments including India in 1995. Prior to this, perhaps the most important conceptual advance in the international law of women’s rights is the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), effective 1981, which provides that women be given rights equal to those of men on equal terms.
Post Beijing, in September 2000, various Heads of State gathered at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to adopt another historic Declaration in the new millennium known as Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in which eight targets were laid down and one of them was promotion of gender equality. All 189 United Nations Member States pledged to meet the above goals by the year 2015. In fact, all the goals had a close linkage to one another and for realization of most of them, gender empowerment was the key. However, most of the countries faltered on it. Following this, UN General Assembly adopted another new 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. As the UN defines, these SDGs are now the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. The global target year for achieving all these goals including that of ‘Gender equality’ is 2030.
Despite all such initiatives and UN declarations, women still continue to suffer.
Indian perspectives
A NITI Aayog report on India’s performance on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) released in December 2018 says that one in every three women faces spousal violence and only 898 girls are born against every 1,000 boys on average – the SDG sex ratio target for 2030 is 954. It also adds that only 32 per cent of India’s workforce is female and they earn 30 per cent less than men on average.
India made no improvement in latest World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report in the overall gender gap ranking in 2018, compared to 2017. It stood at a low 108 out of the 149 countries, the same as in 2017. India ranked lower on all four parameters of WEF. We continue to rank third-lowest in the world on health and survival out of 149 nations. India’s inequality crisis hurts girls and women the most.
The Women Reservation Bill to increase the representation of women in all legislatures to 33 per cent is still pending in the Parliament since September 12, 1996 which makes it amply clear that it continues to be a “deeply gendered” institution. Today, 71 years after Independence, women in the world’s most populous democracy constitute just 11.93 per cent of the Lok Sabha, the lower house.
Local Perspectives
Jammu and Kashmir is no different from its counterparts. We have also been witnessing all such issues here too and on the top of it, we are a border state which has been hit by a violence conflict since past almost 30 years now. In these situations, if the priority of the government is to keep the security situation under control, do you think anybody is bothered about women and child issues? Undoubtedly, these issues have taken a back seat in our state in these past years.
In J&K, incidences of domestic violence, dowry, etc are rampant. Census 2011 has shown a sharp decline in the child sex ratio in J&K. Even J&K State Commission for Women has not been able to do much for the women of the state who are desperately in need of help on various fronts.
Women in our state constitute a meagre 19.11% of the overall workforce. Neighboring Hima-chal Pradesh at 44.82 percent has the highest workforce participation rate for females. There are other issues too. We have a 20 % gender gap in literacy; we have just 3 percent of the women in organizations like State Police; political empowerment of women is visibly very low; issues like property for women are also critical.
The way forward
The year 2019 has just begun and it presents a bunch of opportunities that all of us can leverage to improve India’s gender gap. This is the election year. Women’s Reservation Bill needs to be passed by the Lok Sabha before the elections. But this being pretty unlikely, so let the political parties voluntarily increase women’s representation in the parliament and even in J&K where we would soon have assembly elections. Women legislators are needed not only because they are likely to advocate changes that promote women but as they have also proven to improve the economic performance of their constituencies more than male legislatures.
It’s the high time to go from ‘Words to Action’. We need to pledge to reduce the gap in women’s labor force participation over the next decade. Education is necessary for women empowerment and all the women who have played significant roles in public service did so because they had educational empowerment. Education therefore is the prerequisite for a woman’s rise to prominence in public service. Girls’ education simply is probably the single best investment a country can make. Government actions should include creating programmes to eradicate violence against women and girls, encouraging women’s participation in decision-making, investing in national action plans or policies for gender equality, creating public education campaigns to promote gender equality.
(The author is Member, J&K State Commission for Women and Director, Department of Lifelong Learning, University of Jammu)
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