Policy Brief- Sustainable Development goal-05-Enforce Gender Equality

Indian Democracy and the broken promise of gender equality.

India is a deeply stratified society, divided by caste, class, religion, language, and gender.
This stratification in the past and indeed continues to be the biggest hurdle in the progress
of our country. The decision to implement universal adult suffrage was epoch making. In
one stroke the centuries old lines of division were constitutionally negated but that did not
change the ground reality which has moved sine then with glacial pace. When it comes to
gender inequality, India presents a shocking tale of discrimination, endemic violence,
ignorance and policy failure. Almost every indicator whether concerning health, education,
labour force participation rate (LFPR), financial inclusion, digital divide etc paints a very grim
picture of the state of half the population in this country. India’s sex ratio at birth is
abysmal. As per census 2011; it is 843 females per 1000 males. A strong preference for son
coupled with higher mortality rate for female foetus have contributed to this phenomenon.
So, the discrimination against women begins in the womb itself. Indian women have fallen
behind in gaining critical skills with high dropout rate acting as a major impediment in
pursuing career. In rural areas social conditioning propels adolescent girls to take up
housework. All these lacunae reflect in LFPR which is as low as 22.3 % and after fallen
further to 16% since pandemic began. It is the lowest rate among major world economy. For
comparison Bangladesh is at 41% and China at 45.55%. LFPR is defined by world bank as 15
or older women working or actively looking for a job.
To confirm these contexts let’s explore some international indexes published by reputed
institutions every year. On world economic forum Gender Gap index India rank 140 among
146 countries. It measures countries on the parameters such as economic participation and
opportunity, health and survival subindex, educational attainment and political
empowerment etc. On United Nations development programme’s Gender development
index, introduced in 2014 as part of HDI, India’s score is 0.820 which is lower than world’s
0.943. UNDP Gender Inequality Index, which informs us about gender-based inequalities in
three dimensions- reproductive health, empowerment and economic activity. Reproductive
health is measured using maternal mortality and adolescent birth rates, empowerment is
measured by the share of parliamentary seats held by women and attainment in secondary
and higher education by each gender; and economic activity is measured by the LFPR.
Cumulatively India’s ranking comes as no surprise, at 126 out of 162 countries.
Two important indicators nicely sum up the gender disparity in India. Mean years of
schooling is 5.4 for women and 8.7 for male. Gross national income is 2331 USD for women
while for men it is 10702 USD.