Katie Ledecky, the American competitive swimmer, broke her own world record, securing gold in the 400 meters women’s freestyle swimming in the Summer Olympics. Yet, the newspapers call her “female Michael Phelps” and some even carried the suggestion that “she swims like man.” The manifestation of patriarchal thoughts is not only prominent in Indian society, but is a global phenomena. Society has manipulated the differences between women and men at its own convenience.
The idea of women’s empowerment is an all-encompassing subject and cannot be seen as a stand-alone issue. Political, social, and economic advancement and a say in the decision-making process could pave the way towards the betterment of women in society. The reasons for the unequal distribution of powers between men and women, depriving women their participation in the decision making process, is the manifestation of our patriarchal mindset.
The International Labor Organisation (ILO) came out with a report in 2018 that shows a very dismal picture of the economic condition of women in India. According to the report, India lost around USD 1.4 trillion to USD 2.8 trillion in the GDP in 2018 due to lower female participation in the workforce. India’s female labour force participation rate significantly lags behind other countries, especially those which are culturally and economically similar to India. Even though the corporate sector has evolved a lot with respect to making itself more women-workforce friendly with flexible working hours for women, back-to-work programs for women looking to get back to work after career gaps, legislation in the form of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 among other initiatives, women continue to face difficulties to join afresh or re-enter the workforce due to the lack of the right kind of support at home. Women entrepreneurs find it difficult to succeed and grow in the male dominated sphere, as far as good funding and incubation opportunities are concerned. How many mainstream startups or the so called ‘unicorns’ are led by women? Most women entrepreneurs are into women-specific product or services. Today, when United Nations is celebrating Women’s Day with its theme, “Think Equal, Build Smart, Innovate for Change”, our country is still struggling to bridge that digital divide and the under-representation of women in the field of science and technology. Gender disparity in India is growing at an alarming rate. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index (2018), India is at a dismal 108th position. Our female literacy rate of 64.60% stands small against the 80.90% (Census 2011), that of men, painting a very discouraging picture despite multiple government initiatives as well as those from the private and social sector.
In a report released by the Women In National Politics, India has been ranked at 147th position in the representation of women in political domain. Increasing the political participation of women in India has been an uphill task. The foremost example being the Women’s Reservation Bill which intends to earmark 33% of the seats in Lok Sabha and all state legislatures for women. However, it has not been passed despite being in existence for over a decade. Though there have been certain initiatives like reserving 33% seats in local bodies, which has encouraged women’s participation in rural politics and governance, nothing concrete has been done for the overall improvement in female representation in mainstream politics. Today, when our country is heading towards developmental administration and a bottom-up approach of governance, it’s imperative that the population of women gets adequate representation.
The way society evolves is what dictates how different stakeholders are included in its developmental process. Our women are still struggling hard to break the shackles of patriarchy and voice their opinion in decision-making. The socialisation process too has contributed negatively in building up a masculine world around us. Despite various government and social initiatives, like sensitising children at the school-level about gender equality, equal opportunities, employment initiatives, as well as sensitising women and children on sexual violence and harassment, there has been very slow progress in breaking the stereotypes. We must leverage our educational institutions especially schools to bring about this change. Initiating gender sensitisation with various programmes and workshops on topics like good touch-bad touch, menstrual taboos, gender equality, among other things, can go a long way in bridging the gap.
As Jawaharlal Nehru once said, “You can tell the condition of a nation by looking at the status of its women”. The dismal condition of our women folk as represented on different global indices reflects the state of affairs and institutional failure of our country in doing justice to its female population. Due to the lack of policy awareness and low participation in political discourse, women are not able to leverage the existing benefits, like schemes and initiatives exclusively made for them. However, the lack of awareness is not the only culprit. There is also a lack of political will on the part of the government and political entities to empower women. Various gender equality programs and policies remain buried among files and red tape. On top of that, male domination in society in general makes the matter worse.
It’s time that we, the people of India, stand up for the rights of women, and compel the the government and civil society to stand up and take note of the issue in order to make amends to the damages already done.
The world at large has to come to terms with the fact that men and women are equal participants in a holistic societal development. If we are to “Balance for Better”, we all need to stand up to make this world an inclusive and gender sensitive society.