Discriminatory attitude towards women has existed for generations inthe country. While the Constitution grants equal rights to both the sexes, genderdisparities are glaring.
According to the Human Development Report 2019¡¯s gender social normsindex, the situation still does not feel favourable to women.
More than half the world¡¯s people have a high intensity bias againstgender equality and women¡¯s empowerment with India actually witnessing abacklash.
The report shows that India is only marginally better than the southAsian average on Gender Development Index (0.829 versus 0.828), and ranks at alow 122 of 162 countries on the 2018 Gender Inequality Index.
The data on various dimensions studied for arriving at India¡¯s GDI for2018 shows that life expectancy at birth for males was 68.2 and for females itwas 70.7. Expected years of schooling in case of females was 12.9 and males itwas 11.9. Mean years of schooling for males was 8.2 and for females it was 4.7.GNI per capita for females was Rs 2,625 and for males it was 10,712.
The report also puts out a Gender Inequality Index that reflects genderbased inequalities in three dimensions - reproductive health, empowerment andeconomic activity.?
Social beliefs and gender inequality are linked in various ways.
Worldwide, inequality is quite acute in the power men and womenexercise at home, in workplace or in politics. At home, women do more than threetimes as much unpaid care work as men.
According to a report by The Times of India, ¡°The higher thepower, the larger the gap from parity, rising to 90 per cent in the case ofheads of state and government. The multidimensional gender social norms indexthat takes into account four dimensions - political, educational, economic andphysical integrity, shows that only 14 per cent of women and 10 per cent menworldwide have no gender social norm bias.¡±
The report says that there tends to be more intense in areas where morepower is involved. Over the years, there is a growing backlash as the proportionof people biased against gender equality has grown.
According to GII, in India, 11.7 per cent of parliamentary seats areheld by women and 39 per cent of adult women have reached at least a secondarylevel of education compared to 63.5 per cent of their male counterparts. Forevery 100,000 live births, 174 women die from pregnancy related causes. Theadolescent birth rate is 13.2 births per 1,000 women of aged 15-19 years.Female participation in the labour market is 23.6 per cent compared to 78.65 percent for men.