India must go for gender equality

 Dr. Devendra Kothari

Population and Development Analyst

Forum for Population Action

Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenges of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance.

Kofi Annam

Former UN Secretary General

  

It is impossible to think about the welfare and sustainable development of India unless the condition of women is improved. “It is impossible for a bird to fly on only one wing”, noted Swami Vivekananda  some hundred years ago. Addressing about 6,000 women Sarpanchs (a Sarpanch is an elected head of a village-level statutory institution called the panchayat) from across the country on International Women’s Day 2017, Prime Minister Modi said, "If women, who are 50 per cent of the country's population, participate and are included in the nation - building process, our country can achieve great heights."

So, how is women's status in India? No doubt, in many ways, today is the best time in modern history of India to be a girl. Opportunities for a girl's successes are as unlimited as her dreams. Girls are defying all odds and showing Killer Instincts. PV Sindhu, Sakshi Malik and Dipa Karmakar became the unlikely heroines and saved the country's pride from returning empty-handed from the Rio Olympics (2016) for the first time since Barcelona 1992. In other words, today's India offers a lot of opportunities to women, with women having a voice in everyday life, the business world as well as in political life.

Yet an alarm is sounding, revealing a disturbing portrait of millions of girls missing and others struggling.[1]  Though India is moving away from the male dominated culture, discrimination is still highly visible in rural as well as in urban areas, throughout all strata of society. While women are guaranteed equality under the constitution, legal protection has a limited effect, where patriarchal traditions prevail.[2]

With the whole world celebrating International Women’s Day with great pomp and show, it would be only apt to refer three or four  incidences which took place in the first three months of this year to describe the position and space Indian women especially the young ones occupy today.

We live in the age where tweets, WhatsApp posts and Face Book status updates have taken over as news. Often, it is mindless celebrity gossip and random tripe, but occasionally it leads to something more troubling. Trolling of Dangal actor Zaira Wasim, martyr’s daughter Gurmehar Kaur and teenager singer sensation Nahid Afrin exposes our biased mind about women’s achievements.

The controversy surrounding Zaira Wasim – who was trolled on social media for her success in the film and meeting Jammu & Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, who described her as a Kashmiri role model – has only exposed the bigotry and hypocrisy of the pro-separatist lobby in Kashmir and elsewhere. The cheap trolling suggests that believing Muslims are not willing to accept a boy-cut hair girl without burqa as their role model. She was subjected to sexist abuse. The pressure heaped on the 16-year-old forced her to tender an apology for her success. She went on to say, 'I am being projected as a role model for Kashmiri youth. I want to make it very clear that I do not want anyone to follow in my footsteps or even consider me as a role model...'

Similar kind of trolling happened to Gurmehar Kaur, the English literature student of Delhi University and daughter of an Army martyr, who had found herself at the centre of a social media storm over her stand supporting freedom of speech by saying that war had killed her father, not Pakistan, and for challenging ABVP (all India student organization affiliated to the RSS), withdrew from the campaign and opted out from the mega march against violence.[3] Kaur sought privacy, tweeting, ‘I've been through a lot and this is all my 20year self could take’. Sources said after having faced rape threats and vitriol on Twitter, Kaur left for her hometown, Jalandhar.

Lastly, just days after a Muslim girl from Karnataka was trolled and slammed for singing Hindu devotional songs, a pamphlet was issued against the 16-year-old singer Nahid Afrin from Assam, the winner of a TV talent show, by 46 clerics to stop her from performing in public.

Against the backdrop of such wholesale bigotry and misogyny, these young girls are indeed a role model for youth especially females across the country – and should be encouraged to express their views.

The targeting young girls (or women) reflect the height of emerging intolerance in the country. How can opinions be suppressed like this? Our Constitution gives all citizens freedom of speech and difference of opinion does not mean that attempts should be made to muzzle voices with uncivilized threats.

Recently, an Indian movie (Lipstick under my burkha), made by an Indian woman (Alankrita), about Indian women was blocked from Indian theaters by an Indian man (Pahlaj Nihalani, Chairman of the national censor board) even as it collected awards at international film festivals. In the movie four feisty women in a small-town of India try to chase their little dreams, desires and fantasies through secret acts of rebellion.  It appears that even the government statutory bodies like the Central Board of Film Certification are very interested in perpetuating the male gaze, and anything that is an alternative point of view makes them uncomfortable. I think everyone dreams what they do not get or want to have in reality, if makers of films trying to show facts about life of women/men why some people in the name of society and to prove their ego ban such efforts. 

It appears that female's abhivyakti (expression), khvaab (dream), or kalpana (fantasy) frightens us. And we want to regulate it by hook and crook. In recent years, we have seen a spate of honor killings in the country (the honor killing is defined as a death that is awarded to a woman of the family for marrying against the parent’s wishes, having extramarital and premarital relationships, marrying within the same gotra (clan) or outside one’s caste, etc. Honor killing is different from the dowry deaths that are also a very common practice in India), especially in the North India. According to the official data, between 2001 and 2015, love/marriage was the main recorded reason for such murders, suicides, abducting women and culpable homicide cases. On an average, there are seven murder cases, 14 suicides and 47 kidnapping cases (mostly because somebody eloped with kith and kin and others) every day. Terror, on the other hand, killed 3 to 4 people, including civilians and security forces, in the same period.

It appears women are not born, but made. What better than India to exemplify this statement by Simone de Beauvoir. [4]  Therefore the chains that tie women down are not only external but are welded together invisibly by dint of growing up in what is still a patriarchal society. In order for women to free themselves from these shackles they need to be made aware that they are there in the first place, and this is where de Beauvoir’s ideas are unfortunately still of relevance today. Even if society’s mores have moved on from those described by de Beauvoir around 70 years ago, the essential remains the same.

Most of us will agree with de Beauvoir that women should not allow themselves to be limited by other people’s ideas of what they are or how they should behave or what they should look like. But this needs an enabling or conducive environment.We have to recognize that we can control a woman’s body, lock her in the house, cover her face with a veil, but her mind cannot be truly domesticated.

"Today women are more eager to learn new things in their workplace. They have proved to be more sincere". And they know how to mobilize resources to complete an assigned task. Hence, we have to create conducive environment where women can chase big dreams and contribute country’s welfare and development. .

In my paper, Empowering Women in India: Need for a Feminist Agenda, it is argued that there is an urgent need to formulating a feminist agenda to empower women living in highly patriarchal and traditional surroundings with several obstacles. [5] The ‘agenda’ is based on the premises that no doubt efficient policing, stringent punishments and legal measures would reduce the incidences of crime against women but these cannot eliminate growing gender inequality in India unless and until the mindset of the society is changed. The article suggests that women-centred reproductive health care along-with enlarged education and employment opportunities for females may alter patriarchal constructs despite strong structural resistance. And this feminist agenda will contribute significantly towards women’s empowerment and reduce gender gap significantly.

Here the State and society have to swing to their side, like the Assam chief minister, the Union law minister and a chorus of other voices spoke for Nahid Afrin, defending her from the clerics. After getting support Afrin, who was seen in the famous reality TV show Indian Idol, said “she is not afraid of the threat and will continue to pursue her dream of making it big in the music industry.” 

From small villages to big cities, snug families to urban alienation, young women are going the extra mile to earn their living and carve out new careers. They need holistic skilling solutions and last-mile connectivity to chase their dreams. In her new  book, The End of Karma: Hope and Fury Among India’s Young, Somini Sengupta, a former New Delhi bureau chief for The New York Times, explores today’s India through portraits of seven young people who, despite many obstacles, aspire to mobility and opportunity. Hope India’s policy makers as well as public at large are listening.

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[1] See my post: India confronts epidemic of missing girl children at -- http://kotharionindia.blogspot.in/2016/08/india-confronts-epidemic-of-missing.html

[2] Refer article Women Situation in India at: ttp://www.saarthakindia.org/womens_situation_india.html

[3] In the raging debate on the right to freedom of expression, LSR student Gurmehar Kaur, the daughter of Captain Mandeep Singh, who died in a Kashmir terror attack, was seen holding a placard that reads, "Pakistan did not kill my father, war did".

[4] The Second Sex, the classic manifesto of the librated women by Simone de Beauvoir, was first published in 1949. Never before had the case for female liberty or empowerment been so forcefully and successfully argued. De Beauvoir believed   that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”  Also refer article by Maureen Youngere:  “One is not born a woman, but becomes one” at http://standardissuemagazine.com/voices/one-born-woman-becomes-one/

[5] Kothari, Devendra. 2014. “Empowering women in India: Need for a Feminist Agenda”, Journal of Health Management, 16 (2), pp 233-43. Also refer  my post: India confronts epidemic of missing girl children at -- http://kotharionindia.blogspot.in/2016/08/india-confronts-epidemic-of-missing.html

India confronts epidemic of missing girl children

Dr. Devendra Kothari

Population and Development Analyst

Forum for Population Action

But if we want to empower women, we need men to be allies.

Melinda Gates

Co-founder of

the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

No doubt, in many ways, today is the best time in modern history of India to be a girl. Opportunities for a girl's successes are as unlimited as her dreams. Girls are defying all odds and showing killer Instincts. PV Sindhu, Sakshi Malik and Dipa Karmakar became the unlikely heroines and saved the country's pride from returning empty-handed from the Rio Olympics for the first time since Barcelona 1992. The trio notched a few firsts for India; Sindhu, at 21, became the youngest to win an Olympic medal, a silver which was never achieved in badminton; and Sakshi's bronze was also a first for women's wrestling. India's first female gymnast Dipa went on to miss a bronze by 0.15 points but her clean finish in the high-risk Produnova Vault won the hearts of the nation. Yet an alarm is sounding, revealing a disturbing portrait of millions of girls missing and others struggling.

It is difficult to determine how many girl children are missing due to female infanticide, selective abortion or contraceptive uses. Table 1, however, clearly indicates that in the last three censuses, India has witnessed an alarming increase in the missing girls. It is estimated that around 3 million girls in age group 0-6 have gone missing in 2011 Census. In other words, during 2001-11, on an average, the number of girls that were missing in India was 300,000 per year or 820 per day. The number of missing girls for consecutive census periods 1981-91 and 1991-2001 were 0.5 million and 2 million, respectively.

As a result India is among the countries with the worst child sex ratios in the world. The 2011 census showed that the child sex ratio, number of girls per 1,000 boys between the ages 0-6, has dipped from 945 girls in 1991 to 919 girls in 2011 (Table 1).

Table 1: Trends in population in 0-6 age group, Child Sex Ratio and estimates of missing girls (0-6 years) in India, 1991-2011.

Census Year	India : Population in age group  0-6 (in ‘000)			Child sex ratio (girls/1000 boys)
	Total	Males	Females
1	2	4	5	6
1991	150,421	77,337	73.084	945
2001	163,837	85,022	78,815	927
2011	164,540	85,750	78,790	919
Source: Kothari, Devendra. 2014. “Empowering women in India: Need for a Feminist Agenda”, Journal of Health Management, 16 (2), pp 233-43.

Latest Census numbers also cast a shadow on the adequacy of measures which are helping in educating people to not prefer sons over daughters. As per my estimates, there are fair chances that CSR will decline further and it may be less than even 900 girls per 1000 boys in the Census 2021.¹ And this poses new set of challenges to the policy makers, programme managers and civil society organizations.

Now question arises: How to arrest the epidemic of missing girl children? Recently, India's Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi suggested registering the sex of every child in the womb to ensure the girl child is not killed. In other words, she suggested that child sex determination during pregnancy be made compulsory, the gender of the child registered right from that moment, and the birth be tracked. ² It appears that she probably did not understand the complex calculus that Indian would-be parents go through - when to have a child, how many, and boy or girl. A glimpse into this intriguing decision-making process undertaken by about 25 million parents every year is provided by the Census 2011 data.

Table 2 reveals that among women who had only one child, the sex ratio was just 782 girls to every 1,000 boys born. This is much lower than the overall sex ratio of the population (943 females for every 1,000 males), and even lower than the sex ratio for children aged up to six years (919). But it is not yet the rock bottom. For women who have two children, the sex ratio plummets to 720 girls for every 1,000 boys. However, with women who have three children, it improves to 814. For women with four children, it improves further to 944 and by five children, it reaches 1,005 girls for 1,000 boys, and the gap has increased between 2001 and 2011.

Table 2: Calculus of choice – lesser the number of children in a family, worse the sex ratio.

Sex ratio 2001	Children in family	Sex ratio 2011
1	2	3
786	1	782
742	2	720
815	3	814
928	4	944
983	5	1005
905	All	890
Source: Census of India 2001 and 2011. Also refer news article by Subodh Varma at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health-news/Sex-selective-abortions-go-on/articleshow/50991656.cms.

Table 2 indicates that the sex ratio is poor when women have one or two children, but gets better as they have more children. Two factors are at play here, according to population expert, Prof. PM Kulkarni. One is sex-selective abortions and the other is sex-selective "stopping practices", which is stopping having children based on sex of those born. "Those women who stop childbearing if the first one or two births are sons remain in the category of 1-2 children and those who go on for another child because the first two or three births are daughters get into the category of 3 or more children (that is, there is selectivity). As a result, the sex ratio of children of women with one or two children becomes highly masculine and, for the children of women with 3 or more children, less masculine. ³

A survey, conducted by the Forum for Population Action in a community inhabited by the middle and lower classes in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India in 2010, also revealed a similar pattern (Table 3). The main objective of the survey was to understand the fertility preferences and contraceptive uses. Around 200 couples were selected randomly with the help of local telephone directory who married between 1990 and 1995. Though the sample size is small, findings indicate a strong preference for sons as well as of the small family norms. The survey findings clearly indicate that Indian women with son (s) are more likely to stop having children than those with any daughters; also indicate a strong relationship between family size and the proportion of female children in a family.

Table 3: Distribution of couples by number of children, Jaipur, India 2010.

Couples with:	Number of couples	Percent of total couples
1	2	3
No children	3	1.5
One son	16	8
Two sons	21	10.5
One daughter	5	2.5
Two daughters	14	7
One son and one daughter	39	19.5
One daughter and one son	42	21
More than two children	58	29
Did not answer	2	1
All	200	100
Source: Devendra Kothari. 2010. Fertility preferences in an urban locality, Rajasthan: An analysis of survey data. Forum for Population action, Jaipur, India. FPA Occasional Paper 8.

The foregoing analysis, based on the census and survey findings, clearly indicates that once couples in modern India have desired number of son(s), they do not go for another child. And that is an important intermediate factor contributing in lowering the CSR in India. In other words, the daughter aversion is essentially an outcome of desire of small family coupled with son preference. To achieve the objective, couples adopt various measures including infanticide, selective abortion and contraceptive use. An analysis of National Family Health Survey-3 data indicate that sex ratios of all last births and last births of sterilized women show clearly that couples typically stop having children once they have the desired number of sons. The role of ultrasound, which was widely used for sex selection earlier, has gone down significantly in recent times. According to NFHS-3 data it is more evident among the the wealthiest women than for women in the other wealth quintiles.

So declining child sex ratio is not only the the result of “sex-selective abortions” or “infanticide” but also due to “sex-selective "stopping practices" like sterilizaton. And later could be most important reason b why India is confronting with epidemic of missing girls.

How to gorge ahead?:

Now question arises why couples avoid a birth of a girl child? It is widely observed hat growing up as a girl in India is a challenge in itself. Girl/woman is made to feel like it is all her fault. It is just like that when investigating crimes of passion, the French police are said to use the mantra – 'cherchez la femme' (find the woman) in establishing a motive. This preconceived notion that whatever the ills afflicting us, from crime to unemployment, girls/women must be at the root of them is gaining ground in India's male-oriented society, as noted in the TOI editorial. ⁴

Much of the discrimination is to do with cultural beliefs and social norms which have become more pronounced in the  deteriorating governance and low and order. There has been a continuous rise in the incidence of crimes committed against women over the years. Girls are raped, beaten, dumped even in the metros like New Dehli. Raising a girl child in such situation is very difficult. Women who live in such environment where they are made miserable through injustice and inequality may not want to raise daughters who will live lives as unhappy as their own. Women have used this excuse as a rationale for killing their girl children in the womb or avoiding them. Frankly and truthfully speaking, in the changed situation, a sizable number of Indians especially females do not want a female child since female children in India continue to get a raw deal in most cases. One can ask questions: Save girl child for what? Eve-teasing? Dowry? Rapes? Domestic violence? This what we have in store for them. This is why we want to save them?

This prevailing view is being supported by Taslima Nasreen - a writer, a feminist, and a secular humanist in her thought provoking article entitled: ”It’s a girl!” ”Kill her”. ⁵  “The women who support female feticide say: 'It is better that an insufferable life ends before it can begin. It is better to go straight to heaven than stay alive and endure the kicks and blows of the world.' Are they wrong in saying this? This society is not a fit place for girls, so it is better not to allow them to be born”, argues Nasreen. Further, in India irrespective of the caste, creed, religion and social status, the overall status of a woman is lower than men and therefore a male child is preferred over a female child. In such an environment why one should like to have a girl?

What do one does then? Avani Bansal, a crusading women's-rights lawyer, suggests a radical prescription: “You (girl) should get up, where ever you are, to show in your own way that society is concerned about the wrong things. The people around you are focusing on the wrong things. ...Tell them to be concerned not about the length of your skirt, but the quality of education that they are providing you. Tell them to be concerned not with how much you mingle with boys, but the equality of opportunity that they can secure for you.” ⁶

What Avani is suggesting that girls ( or women), you raise your voice against injustice to promote gender equality. Whether this prescription will work in present India where most of the power is primary wielded by men? India ranks 130 out of 155 countries in the Gender Inequality Index (GII) for 2014, way behind Bangladesh and Pakistan that rank 111 and 121 respectively, according to data in the United National Development Programme's latest Human Development Report 2015.

It appears that gender inequality (and discrimination) remains a major barrier to women empowerment. What do we do then? No doubt, expanding education and employment opportunities will help in achieving gender equality but that may take more time. To expedite the process, “we need men to be allies”, as argued by the Co-Chairman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Melinda Gates, in her recent article, Women Transform Societies, based on Indian experiences. ⁷ The Foundation works with partner organizations in India to tackle critical problems in four areas including issues related with women and girls in crisis. Expanding her argument, she writes: “women's empowerment can't be just about women; it also has to be about men - the fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons – with whom they live their lives.” it is because in many cases “..it's men who upholds harmful social norms that stand in women's way”.

So do not exclude men – fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons, they have to be positively engaged to be part of the women empowerment campaign. And such campaign “should drive home the point that girls are to be celebrated.”, noted by Jayashree Dengl, Executive Director of Plan India, a community development NGO focusing on the girl child.

Fortunately, there are many successful examples of public awareness campaigns in India that use male role models to promote gender equality, and such efforts have to be expanded especially in rural areas of north India.

On top of these grassroots strategies, we have to create conducive environment for women empowerment at a larger scale and across economic strata. In my recent paper, Empowering Women in India: Need for a Feminist Agenda, it is argued that there is an urgent need to formulating a feminist agenda to empower women living in highly patriarchal and traditional surroundings with several obstacles.⁸ The ‘agenda’ must based on the premises that no doubt efficient policing, stringent punishments and legal measures would reduce the incidences of crime against women but these cannot eliminate growing gender inequality in India unless and until the mindset of the society is changed. The article suggests that women-centred reproductive health care along-with enlarged education and employment opportunities for females may alter patriarchal constructs despite strong structural resistance. And this feminist agenda will contribute significantly towards women’s empowerment and reduce gender gap significantly .

India is very lucky that present government under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, recognizes that gender equality is part and parcel of the country's future; and campaigns like “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (Save the girl child, educate the girl child) will help to arrest the epidemic of missing girls by removing the gender inequality. This campaign has to deal with issues at the larger scale and across the economic strata by involving men.

1 Kothari, Devendra. 2011. Implications of Emerging Demographic Scenario: Based on the Provisional Results of Census of India 2011, A Brief, a publication of Management Institute of Population and Development. Parivar Seva Sanstha, New Delhi.

2 Refer: http://www.firstpost.com/india/compulsory-sex-determination-manekas-idea-is-ingenious-but-hasnt-been-thought-out-2607812.html.

3Refer: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health-news/Sex-selective-abortions-go-on/articleshow/50991656.cms.

4http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-editorials/jobs-only-for-the-boys-women-are-being-seen-as-the-root-of-all-our-ills-including-unemployment/

5Refer Taslima Nasreen article at: http://freethoughtblogs.com/taslima/2012/04/30/its-a-girl-kill-her/.

6 Refer article by Avani Bansal at: http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/girl-its-not-about-the-length-of-your-skirt-so-tell-them-you-can-decide-for-yourself-like-really.

7Refer article by Melinda Gates at: Blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/women-transform-societies/

8 Kothari, Devendra. 2014. “Empowering women in India: Need for a Feminist Agenda”, Journal of Health Management, 16 (2), pp 233-43. Also refer articles by the author entitles “Explaining India’s missing girls” (Part I, II and III) athttp://kotharionindia.blogspot.com/2012/10/explaining-indias-missing-girls-part-i.html;otharionindia.blogspot.com/2012/11/explaining-indias-missing-girls-part-ii.html and http://kotharionindia.blogspot.com/2012/12/explaining-indias-missing-girls-part-iii.html.56.cms.