The power of parity: Advancing women’s equality in India:-
Achieving gender equality in India would have a larger economic impact there than in any other region in the world—$700 billion of added GDP in 2025—but comprehensive change is needed.
Gender Parity Score (GPS) measures the distance each country has traveled toward gender parity, which is set at 1.00. The regional GPS is lowest in South Asia (excluding India) at 0.44 and highest in North America and Oceania at 0.74.
Advancing gender equality can deliver sizeable additional economic growth and broad-based prosperity to the world—nowhere more so than in India. Delivering that impact, however, will require tackling significant gender gaps in society and driving a national agenda for change in eight areas that involve all stakeholders.
The economic potential of India’s women is not achievable without gender gaps in society being addressed. To bring 68 million more women into the non-farm labour force over the next decade, India’s policy makers, business leaders, and social-sector leaders need to focus concerted action in eight areas:
(1)Closing gender gaps in secondary and tertiary education in India’s large states;
(2) Lowering barriers to job creation;
(3) Expanding skills training for women in key sectors;
(4) Expanding the reach of financial and digital services to enable women entrepreneurs;
(5) Stepping up gender diversity policies and practices in private-sector organizations;
(6) Further strengthening legal provisions for women and the enforcement of laws;
(7) Improving infrastructure and services to address the high burden of routine domestic work, childcare and elder care; and
(8) Reshaping deep-rooted attitudes about the role of women in work and in society.
India to accede to the Ashgabat Agreement:-
The Ashgabat Agreement has Oman, Iran, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan as founding members. Kazakhstan has also joined this arrangement subsequently. Accession to the Agreement would enable India to utilise this existing transport and transit corridor to facilitate trade and commercial interaction with the Eurasian region. Further, this would synchronise with our efforts to implement the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC) for enhanced connectivity.
India’s intention to accede to the Ashgabat Agreement would now be conveyed to the Depository State (Turkmenistan). India would become party to the Agreement upon consent of the founding members.
Udaan-Special Industry Initiative for J&K
Udaan provides exposure to the youth of J&K to the best of corporate India and corporate India to the rich talent pool available in the State. So far, 67 leading corporates have partnered with National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) under UDAAN with a commitment to train youth from the State covering Organized Retail, Banking, Financial Services, IT, ITES, Infrastructure, Hospitality etc.
The era of plastic-degrading bacteria has begun
It is hardly a hundred years since chemists learnt to make long molecules called polymers and plastics in the lab. Polymers have since been hailed on one hand as the greatest boon to mankind for their manifold uses, and the greatest bane – thanks to the way that they have cluttered the environment.
The most common synthetic polymer or plastic used in everyday life is polyethylene terephthalate or PET (also known as Terylene or Dacron). An estimated 311 million tonnes of plastics are produced every year (and 50 million tons of PET alone). Unfortunately many of them, such as PET, are not degraded, digested or broken down like naturally occurring polymers (such as proteins, carbohydrates and fats).
We use plastic in everyday life, use and discard them, hardly recycling them (to the extent we actually can), and as a result plastics have cluttered the earth and its oceans. J.R. Jambeck and others have estimated that as much as 5 trillion pieces of plastic have reached and are found in ocean beds across the globe (Science, 13 February 2015). That is anywhere between 5 to 13 million tonnes of them, lying and affecting the health of ocean life (and an area of about 1.4 million square kilometers, or the area of Northern India). There is no clear estimate of how much plastic is fouling the land mass of the earth, surely it has to be an equal amount.
If only we can find ways to degrade such huge amounts of accumulated plastics! And the best agents to do so would be biological life forms such as bacteria which multiply by the millions in days and are themselves completely biodegradable! (Indeed, way back in 1980, Dr Anand Chakraborty of GE R&D Center at Schenectady, NY, isolated one such microbe that would eat off oil spills). It is towards this challenge that research has been going on, and the latest effort which shows some success has been published in the March 11, 2016 issue of Science by a Japanese group, led by Dr Kanji Miyamoto of Keio University, Kanagawa. The group concentrated on looking for and identifying bacteria from the PET bottle recycling sites, and found one such microbe that they have named Ideonella sakaiensis (the first name identifies the family and the second honours the geographic location where they found the bacterium).
I. sakaiensis sticks to the surface of the PET bottle, secretes one molecule named which they named PET-ase (the suffix “– ase” denotes an enzyme molecule), which breaks down PET into a smaller building block abbreviated as MHET. MHET is now taken up and broken down by another enzyme in the microbe’s cell (called MHET hydrolase) and hydrolysed to produce ethylene glycol and terephthalic acid – the two small molecules (called monomers) using which the polymer PET is made in the first place! We should admire I sakaiensis for its efficiency as a safe biodegradable agent. Biologists will now wonder about how this microbe, which all these centuries and millennia had never known PET (until 70 years ago) has suddenly found (or generated) enzymes to degrade this new man-made polymer. Myriad and wonderful are the ways of mutations and natural selection!
Two interesting points emerge from the Japanese work. One is: can we now isolate the ethylene glycol and terephthalic acid, the two monomers, and reuse them to make PET? This offers a nice self-contained set up where the PET bottles and plastics discarded after use are biodegraded back to the starting materials in a bio-reactor, and then taken to the polymer synthesising unit which remakes the PET.
The other point is more challenging and surely there are molecular biologists already working on it. That is: why not clone the genes that express the enzyme PET-ase and MHET hydrolase into some other properly chosen microbe (other than I.sakaiensis), using genetic engineering methods and thus attempt to biodegrade the vast mountains of PET fouling the earth? If one can do this for PET, surely it can be done for other polymers and plastics. To write these sentences is easy, but to work on it and succeed takes effort and single minded devotion, but worthy of a Nobel.
Even more changeling is the issue of how to clear the millions of tons of plastics fouling the oceans beds. Even if bugs are founds that can biodegrade them, will they be safe for the oceans and their life forms? But this needs to be done and as they say “nothing ventured nothing gained”. It can perhaps first be done in silico using the methods of computational and system biology, to look for optimal ways to do so and then try on a lab scale. Clearly the Kanagawa group has kindled an exciting chapter in environment sciences with their work.
Chandesvarar Sculpture:-
A sculpture of Chandesvarar, believed to belong to 10th century AD, has been found at Sundaikkai village near Umaiyalpuram in Tamil Nadu. The sculpture was an early Chola icon.
- Chandesvarar is one of the 63 Nayanmars of the Saivite sect and was the first among them to find a place in temples. He is housed in a separate shrine on the northern side of all the Saivite temples, facing the presiding deity.
- The most distinguished shrine of Chandesvara was built by Rajaraja I at the Rajarajesvaram at Thanjavur.
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Seated in ‘suhasana’ with one leg folded and kept on the seat, his other leg rests on a pedestal.
Implementation of the rural housing scheme of Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana — Gramin to achieve Housing for All by 2022.
The details of the Scheme :-
a) Implementing the rural housing scheme of Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana -Gramin
b) Providing assistance for construction of 1.00 crore houses in rural areas over the period of 3 years from 2016-17 to 2018-19.
c) Enhancing the unit assistance to Rs. 1,20,000 in plain areas and to Rs. 1,30,000 in hilly states/difficult areas /IAP districts.
d) Meeting the additional financial requirement of Rs 21,975 crore by borrowing through National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) to be amortised through budgetary allocations after 2022.
e) Using SECC-2011 data for identification of beneficiaries.
f) Setting up of National Technical Support Agency at national level to provide technical support in achieving the target set under the project.
Implementation strategy and targets:-
i. Identification of beneficiaries eligible for assistance and their prioritisation to be done using information from Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) ensuring total transparency and objectivity.
ii. The list will be presented to Gram Sabha to identify beneficiaries who have been assisted before or who have become ineligible due to other reasons. The finalised list will be published.
iii. The cost of unit assistance to be shared between Central and State Governments in the ratio 60:40 in plain areas and 90:10 for North Eastern and hilly states.
iv. Annual list of beneficiaries will be identified from the total list through participatory process by the Gram Sabha. Gram Sabha will need to justify in writing with reasons for any alteration of priority in the original list.
v. Funds will be transferred electronically directly to the account of the beneficiary.
vi. Inspection and uploading of geo referenced photographs will be done though a mobile app. Beneficiary will also be able to track the progress of his payments through the app.
vii. The beneficiary is entitled to 90 days of unskilled labour from MGNREGA. This will be ensured through a server linkage between PMAY and MGNREGA.
viii. Locally appropriate house designs, incorporating features to address the natural calamities common to the region will be made available to beneficiaries.
ix. To address the potential shortage of masons training for masons will be undertaken as an ongoing process.
x. To meet the additional requirement of building materials, manufacture of bricks using cement stabilised earth or fly ash will be taken up under MGNREGA.
xi. The beneficiary would be facilitated to avail loan of up to Rs.70,000/- for construction of the house which is optional.
xii. The unit size is to be enhanced from the existing 20 sq.m to up to 25 sq.m including a dedicated area for hygienic cooking.
xiii. Intensive capacity building exercise for all the stake holders.
xiv. Support will be provided at district and block levels for technical facilitation and addressing quality issues in house construction.
xv. A National Technical Support Agency will be set up to provide technical support to the Centre and States to facilitate construction of the houses targeted and to ensure their quality.
Constitutional Provisions, Laws and Tribes:-
Tribes in India have come to be conceptualized primarily in relation to their geographical and social isolation from the larger Indian society and not in relation to the stage of their social formation. This is why a wide range of groups and communities at different levels of the social formation have all come to be categorized as tribes. By virtue of the fact that tribes lived in isolation from the larger Indian society, they enjoyed autonomy of governance over the territory they inhabited. They held control over the land, forest and other resources and governed themselves in terms of their own laws, traditions and customs. It was the advent of colonial rule that brought tribes and non-tribes into one single political and administrative structure by means of war, conquest and annexation. This was followed by introduction of new and uniform civil and criminal laws as well as setting up of administrative structures that were alien to tribal tradition and ethos.
All these developments led to large scale alienation of land from tribes to non-tribes through such processes and means as fraud, deceit, mortgage, etc. This being the case, the nationalist leadership showed special concern for tribes in the post-independent India.This is reflected in the provisions enshrined for them in the constitution. Tribes as citizens of free India were extended civil, political and social rights in equal measure as others. Civil and political rights have been enshrined within the purview of the Fundamental Rights of the Indian Constitution while social rights have been envisaged in the Directive Principles of the Indian Constitution.
Besides the ones stated above, tribes were also extended certain special rights as being members of a distinct community. Such rights, among other things, include provisions for statutory recognition (article 342); proportionate representation in Parliament and state legislatures (articles 330 and 332); restriction on the right of the ordinary citizen to move freely or settle in particular areas or acquire property in them (article19(5)); conservation of one’s language, dialects and culture, etc (article 29). The Constitution also has a clause that enables the State to make provision for reservation in general (article 14(4)) and in particular, in jobs and appointments in favour of tribal communities (article 16(4)). There is also the Directive Principle of the Constitution that requires that the educational and economic interest of the weaker sections of society, including tribes, is especially promoted (article 46). Besides these, there are provisions in the 5th or 6th schedule of the Constitution (Articles 244 and 244(a) that empower the state to bring the area inhabited by the tribes under special treatment of administration. The provisions in the Constitution range from creation of the scheduled and tribal areas, to providing representation in Parliament and State legislatures including special privileges in the form of reservation of a certain per centage of posts in government services and seats in educational institutions. In short, the Constitution aimed at safeguarding, protecting and promoting the interest of tribal people.
Of all the provisions, protective discrimination has been seen as one of the most important rights given to tribal people. The government evolved specific measures with a view to executing rights conferred on tribal people in the Constitution. It earmarked 7.5 per cent of the jobs in government, semi-government and also educational institutions for people hailing from the scheduled tribe category. Protective discrimination in favour of the group is also evident in relaxation granted to candidates from the scheduled tribe category.
Despite these provisions, the result is far from satisfactory, more so in the case of scheduled tribes than scheduled castes. Nevertheless, the inability of the State to fill up the quota is not considered as a violation of the rights enshrined in the Constitution. This is so, because in the first place, necessary measures have been taken in pursuit of the rights enshrined in the Constitution. Secondly, the extensions of reservation to candidates from the category are not automatic. Rather, it is contingent upon certain conditions stipulated in the Constitution itself. Article 335, for example, stipulates that the claims of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes can be taken into consideration, consistent with maintenance of efficiency of administration in making appointments to services and posts. Thirdly, though such rights have been given to tribes, they can avail of them only as members of the tribal community.
It is an individual’s right to secure access to these provisions on equal terms with others. The right is also individual in the sense that the individual is required to take some action to ensure that he gets it. In view of issues such as these, there is an inbuilt difficulty in challenging the negligence or indifference of the state in the court of law. Only specific cases of discrimination or denials can be taken to court, but these could be defended by taking recourse to article 335 of the Constitution. In short, the provision of protective discrimination is not sufficient in itself. To become effective, the provision must be supplemented by what may be called substantive equality i.e. ability, resources and actual opportunity must be created to make the formal equality or in the case of tribes, even protective discrimination, effective.
This means there was a need for making provisions for economic and social rights for the tribes not only through legislation or constitutional provision but also through effective legal, administrative, infrastructure and financial support. In respect of provisions for which, certain support systems were made available, for example, the provision of protective discrimination. such arrangements did lead to some results, no matter how inadequate they might have been. However, where such measures were non-existent or largely ineffective, the provisions made in the Constitution have hardly led to any desirable results in favour of tribes.
It is not only that effective social and economic rights were not evolved and extended to tribes, but even rights that they enjoyed, such as rights over land and forest were taken away from them by the colonial state to begin with and later by the post- independent Indian state. It is a well-established fact that tribes live mainly off land and forest. Yet, the process of land alienation that began during British rule has gone on unabated in the post-independence period. This has already been referred to earlier. In order to deal with the problem of land alienation to non-tribals, laws have been enacted in almost all states where there are tribal populations. In some parts, such acts have been in existence since the British period like, Chotanagpur Tenancy Act 1908 and The Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act 1940. The British initiated such measures not so much out of concern for the tribes but for reasons of administrative and political expediency. These were more in the direction of protection from land alienation of the tribes and restriction of the movement of the non-tribal population into tribal areas.
In the post-independence period, all states with tribal population enacted legislation, not only for prevention of alienation of lands from tribes to non tribes, but also for its restoration. In some states, acts have even been amended with a view to protecting the interest of non-tribes. The Andhra Pradesh (Selected Areas) Land Transfer Regulation, 1959, was amended in 1970, in an attempt to accommodate the interest of non-tribes. The Kerala Scheduled Tribes (Regulation of Transfer of Land and Restoration of Alienated Land) Act, 1975 has even been repealed to give effect to concessions made to non tribes (Verma 1990; Rao 1996; Bijoy 1999). As a recent of such acts, tribal land continued to pass from tribes to non-tribes.
To reinforce the constitutional provisions for protection of the tribals, two important laws have been enacted in more recent years. One was the Provisions of the Panchayat (Extension to the Scheduled Areas), Act, 1996. The act empowers the scheduled tribes to safeguard and preserve the traditions and customs of the people, their cultural identity, community resources and customary mode of dispute resolution through the gram sabha. Interestingly, the provisions of the Panchayat Act hardly find its due place in letter and spirit, for example, in provisions on the pattern of the sixth schedule, in the acts enacted by the different states. Further, though no enactment has been made to extend part IX A (The Municipalities) to the scheduled areas, the same is steadily being pushed in all states having scheduled areas.
The other act in the direction has been the ‘The Scheduled Tribe and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers Act, 2006. The act is aimed at undoing the age old injustice done to tribals by restoring and recognizing their pre-existing rights. The recognition and restoration has been, however passing through rough weather in respect of its implementation.
Under the Constitutional provisions of Directive Principles, the State’s major concern for tribes has been their welfare and development. This was to be pursued under a kind of constitutional provision, the letter and spirit of which was the most evident in the five principles (panch shila), Nehru is credited to have enunciated in a foreword to a book entitled, ‘A Philosophy of NEFA’ by Verier Elwin. Since then, those principles have been taken as the ethos of tribal development in post independence India. The principles entailed development along the lines of their own genius, respect of tribals’ right in land and forest, training and building up a team of their own people to do the work of administration and development, not over- administering the areas with a multiplicity of schemes, working through, and not in rivalry, to their social and cultural institutions.
Yet the approach adopted towards tribes was quite to the contrary. This was mainly due to the imperatives of national development. The issue of tribal development could not be pursued outside of the issues of national development. In fact, measures undertaken for bringing about rapid national development were seen as a kind of important mechanism whereby integration of tribal society could be achieved. In fact, the national objective to build up a productive structure for future growth and resource mobilization was far more important than issues concerning the welfare and interest of the tribes. So, tribal interest and welfare were invariably sacrificed in the name of national development.
Tribes have been unable to safeguard and promote their language, culture and religion; even though Article 19(5) of the Constitution states that a cultural or linguistic minority has the right to conserve its language and culture. This means that tribes as individuals and groups have right to use their own language, to practise their own religion, to study their own history, culture, tradition, heritage, etc. The state cannot, by law, enforce upon them any other culture or language. While the state may not have enforced any language or culture on them, neither has it taken any positive steps worth the name towards meeting this provision of the Constitution. Rather, the steps taken are far from being in consonance with the provisions laid down in the Constitution. The posture they have adopted has invariably been in the direction of assimilation into the language and culture of the major community, rather than protection and promotion of the distinct language and culture of the tribes. Schooling extended to tribes, for example, has invariably been made in the language of the dominant regional community of the respective States. The result is that tribes are increasingly losing knowledge of their own language and culture. Indeed the promotion of language and culture has been left to tribals themselves. Yet, because of lack of control over human, organizational and financial resources, the tribes have not been able to take effective measures in this direction. Only where such support has been made available in some form or the other have tribes been able to protect and safeguard their culture. This explains why in western, northern and southern India, there has been much more erosion of the tribal language and culture.
In eastern India,especially the northeast, the scenario is somewhat better. This has been mainly due to the fact that in north- east India, there was a kind of institutionalized arrangement that facilitated such development. This has received a major boost with the creation of tribal states and autonomous districts. This shows that a collective right such as this can be better realized only where tribes see themselves as a nationality or nation, to govern themselves.
It is ironical that despite a large number of well meaning constitutional provisions and laws aimed at protecting and safeguarding the welfare and interest of the tribal communities, the process of marginalization of the tribals has gone on unabated. Paradoxically, at the root of such marginalization are the laws themselves. Tribes had no tradition of reading and writing and had, hence, no tradition of record keeping and dealing with such laws. The court language and practice had been alien to them. In the absence of such tradition, the non tribes have taken advantage of such laws and have been depriving tribals of their lands through variety of ways and means. The local administration, which is generally manned by the non tribals has been working hand in hand with their ethnic kinsmen to ensure smooth transfer of land from tribes to non-tribes.
Tied up with the above have also been laws that protect tribes and the laws that are meant for general citizenry and human beings. The latter is articulated in terms of citizenship and human rights. Indeed, rights meant for tribes have invariably been pitied against citizenship rights and more importantly human rights. In the process, specific laws meant for a group, even though marginalized, have invariably come to be subjected to general laws. On the same vein are the laws aimed at protecting tribes and those aimed at public interest such as land acquisition act, conservation act, forest act, wildlife sanctuary act, etc. The latter have invariably held sway over the former under the garb of public interest and purpose. Tribal rights have come to be sacrificed to the greater cause of the nation and public interest. In short, those who are in charge of tribal rights are in general insensitive to the constitutional provision and legal entitlements of the tribal communities.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.
On March 31, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released its annual Gender Gap Report 2021. The Global Gender Gap report is an annual report released by the WEF. The gender gap is the difference between women and men as reflected in social, political, intellectual, cultural, or economic attainments or attitudes. The gap between men and women across health, education, politics, and economics widened for the first time since records began in 2006.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]No need to remember all the data, only pick out few important ones to use in your answers.
The Global gender gap index aims to measure this gap in four key areas : health, education, economics, and politics. It surveys economies to measure gender disparity by collating and analyzing data that fall under four indices : economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.
The 2021 Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks 156 countries on their progress towards gender parity. The index aims to serve as a compass to track progress on relative gaps between women and men in health, education, economy, and politics.
Although no country has achieved full gender parity, the top two countries (Iceland and Finland) have closed at least 85% of their gap, and the remaining seven countries (Lithuania, Namibia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Rwanda, and Ireland) have closed at least 80% of their gap. Geographically, the global top 10 continues to be dominated by Nordic countries, with —Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden—in the top five.
The top 10 is completed by one country from Asia Pacific (New Zealand 4th), two Sub-Saharan countries (Namibia, 6th and Rwanda, 7th, one country from Eastern Europe (the new entrant to the top 10, Lithuania, 8th), and another two Western European countries (Ireland, 9th, and Switzerland, 10th, another country in the top-10 for the first time).There is a relatively equitable distribution of available income, resources, and opportunities for men and women in these countries. The tremendous gender gaps are identified primarily in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.
Here, we can discuss the overall global gender gap scores across the index’s four main components : Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.
The indicators of the four main components are
(1) Economic Participation and Opportunity:
o Labour force participation rate,
o wage equality for similar work,
o estimated earned income,
o Legislators, senior officials, and managers,
o Professional and technical workers.
(2) Educational Attainment:
o Literacy rate (%)
o Enrollment in primary education (%)
o Enrollment in secondary education (%)
o Enrollment in tertiary education (%).
(3) Health and Survival:
o Sex ratio at birth (%)
o Healthy life expectancy (years).
(4) Political Empowerment:
o Women in Parliament (%)
o Women in Ministerial positions (%)
o Years with a female head of State (last 50 years)
o The share of tenure years.
The objective is to shed light on which factors are driving the overall average decline in the global gender gap score. The analysis results show that this year’s decline is mainly caused by a reversal in performance on the Political Empowerment gap.
Global Trends and Outcomes:
– Globally, this year, i.e., 2021, the average distance completed to gender parity gap is 68% (This means that the remaining gender gap to close stands at 32%) a step back compared to 2020 (-0.6 percentage points). These figures are mainly driven by a decline in the performance of large countries. On its current trajectory, it will now take 135.6 years to close the gender gap worldwide.
– The gender gap in Political Empowerment remains the largest of the four gaps tracked, with only 22% closed to date, having further widened since the 2020 edition of the report by 2.4 percentage points. Across the 156 countries covered by the index, women represent only 26.1% of some 35,500 Parliament seats and 22.6% of over 3,400 Ministers worldwide. In 81 countries, there has never been a woman head of State as of January 15, 2021. At the current rate of progress, the World Economic Forum estimates that it will take 145.5 years to attain gender parity in politics.
– The gender gap in Economic Participation and Opportunity remains the second-largest of the four key gaps tracked by the index. According to this year’s index results, 58% of this gap has been closed so far. The gap has seen marginal improvement since the 2020 edition of the report, and as a result, we estimate that it will take another 267.6 years to close.
– Gender gaps in Educational Attainment and Health and Survival are nearly closed. In Educational Attainment, 95% of this gender gap has been closed globally, with 37 countries already attaining gender parity. However, the ‘last mile’ of progress is proceeding slowly. The index estimates that it will take another 14.2 years to close this gap on its current trajectory completely.
In Health and Survival, 96% of this gender gap has been closed, registering a marginal decline since last year (not due to COVID-19), and the time to close this gap remains undefined. For both education and health, while progress is higher than economy and politics in the global data, there are important future implications of disruptions due to the pandemic and continued variations in quality across income, geography, race, and ethnicity.
India-Specific Findings:
India had slipped 28 spots to rank 140 out of the 156 countries covered. The pandemic causing a disproportionate impact on women jeopardizes rolling back the little progress made in the last decades-forcing more women to drop off the workforce and leaving them vulnerable to domestic violence.
India’s poor performance on the Global Gender Gap report card hints at a serious wake-up call and learning lessons from the Nordic region for the Government and policy makers.
Within the 156 countries covered, women hold only 26 percent of Parliamentary seats and 22 percent of Ministerial positions. India, in some ways, reflects this widening gap, where the number of Ministers declined from 23.1 percent in 2019 to 9.1 percent in 2021. The number of women in Parliament stands low at 14.4 percent. In India, the gender gap has widened to 62.5 %, down from 66.8% the previous year.
It is mainly due to women’s inadequate representation in politics, technical and leadership roles, a decrease in women’s labor force participation rate, poor healthcare, lagging female to male literacy ratio, and income inequality.
The gap is the widest on the political empowerment dimension, with economic participation and opportunity being next in line. However, the gap on educational attainment and health and survival has been practically bridged.
India is the third-worst performer among South Asian countries, with Pakistan and Afghanistan trailing and Bangladesh being at the top. The report states that the country fared the worst in political empowerment, regressing from 23.9% to 9.1%.
Its ranking on the health and survival dimension is among the five worst performers. The economic participation and opportunity gap saw a decline of 3% compared to 2020, while India’s educational attainment front is in the 114th position.
India has deteriorated to 51st place from 18th place in 2020 on political empowerment. Still, it has slipped to 155th position from 150th position in 2020 on health and survival, 151st place in economic participation and opportunity from 149th place, and 114th place for educational attainment from 112th.
In 2020 reports, among the 153 countries studied, India is the only country where the economic gender gap of 64.6% is larger than the political gender gap of 58.9%. In 2021 report, among the 156 countries, the economic gender gap of India is 67.4%, 3.8% gender gap in education, 6.3% gap in health and survival, and 72.4% gender gap in political empowerment. In health and survival, the gender gap of the sex ratio at birth is above 9.1%, and healthy life expectancy is almost the same.
Discrimination against women has also been reflected in Health and Survival subindex statistics. With 93.7% of this gap closed to date, India ranks among the bottom five countries in this subindex. The wide sex ratio at birth gaps is due to the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices. Besides, more than one in four women has faced intimate violence in her lifetime.The gender gap in the literacy rate is above 20.1%.
Yet, gender gaps persist in literacy : one-third of women are illiterate (34.2%) than 17.6% of men. In political empowerment, globally, women in Parliament is at 128th position and gender gap of 83.2%, and 90% gap in a Ministerial position. The gap in wages equality for similar work is above 51.8%. On health and survival, four large countries Pakistan, India, Vietnam, and China, fare poorly, with millions of women there not getting the same access to health as men.
The pandemic has only slowed down in its tracks the progress India was making towards achieving gender parity. The country urgently needs to focus on “health and survival,” which points towards a skewed sex ratio because of the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices and women’s economic participation. Women’s labour force participation rate and the share of women in technical roles declined in 2020, reducing the estimated earned income of women, one-fifth of men.
Learning from the Nordic region, noteworthy participation of women in politics, institutions, and public life is the catalyst for transformational change. Women need to be equal participants in the labour force to pioneer the societal changes the world needs in this integral period of transition.
Every effort must be directed towards achieving gender parallelism by facilitating women in leadership and decision-making positions. Social protection programmes should be gender-responsive and account for the differential needs of women and girls. Research and scientific literature also provide unequivocal evidence that countries led by women are dealing with the pandemic more effectively than many others.
Gendered inequality, thereby, is a global concern. India should focus on targeted policies and earmarked public and private investments in care and equalized access. Women are not ready to wait for another century for equality. It’s time India accelerates its efforts and fight for an inclusive, equal, global recovery.
India will not fully develop unless both women and men are equally supported to reach their full potential. There are risks, violations, and vulnerabilities women face just because they are women. Most of these risks are directly linked to women’s economic, political, social, and cultural disadvantages in their daily lives. It becomes acute during crises and disasters.
With the prevalence of gender discrimination, and social norms and practices, women become exposed to the possibility of child marriage, teenage pregnancy, child domestic work, poor education and health, sexual abuse, exploitation, and violence. Many of these manifestations will not change unless women are valued more.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]2021 WEF Global Gender Gap report, which confirmed its 2016 finding of a decline in worldwide progress towards gender parity.
Over 2.8 billion women are legally restricted from having the same choice of jobs as men. As many as 104 countries still have laws preventing women from working in specific jobs, 59 countries have no laws on sexual harassment in the workplace, and it is astonishing that a handful of countries still allow husbands to legally stop their wives from working.
Globally, women’s participation in the labour force is estimated at 63% (as against 94% of men who participate), but India’s is at a dismal 25% or so currently. Most women are in informal and vulnerable employment—domestic help, agriculture, etc—and are always paid less than men.
Recent reports from Assam suggest that women workers in plantations are paid much less than men and never promoted to supervisory roles. The gender wage gap is about 24% globally, and women have lost far more jobs than men during lockdowns.
The problem of gender disparity is compounded by hurdles put up by governments, society and businesses: unequal access to social security schemes, banking services, education, digital services and so on, even as a glass ceiling has kept leadership roles out of women’s reach.
Yes, many governments and businesses had been working on parity before the pandemic struck. But the global gender gap, defined by differences reflected in the social, political, intellectual, cultural and economic attainments or attitudes of men and women, will not narrow in the near future without all major stakeholders working together on a clear agenda—that of economic growth by inclusion.
The WEF report estimates 135 years to close the gap at our current rate of progress based on four pillars: educational attainment, health, economic participation and political empowerment.
India has slipped from rank 112 to 140 in a single year, confirming how hard women were hit by the pandemic. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two Asian countries that fared worse.
Here are a few things we must do:
One, frame policies for equal-opportunity employment. Use technology and artificial intelligence to eliminate biases of gender, caste, etc, and select candidates at all levels on merit. Numerous surveys indicate that women in general have a better chance of landing jobs if their gender is not known to recruiters.
Two, foster a culture of gender sensitivity. Take a review of current policies and move from gender-neutral to gender-sensitive. Encourage and insist on diversity and inclusion at all levels, and promote more women internally to leadership roles. Demolish silos to let women grab potential opportunities in hitherto male-dominant roles. Work-from-home has taught us how efficiently women can manage flex-timings and productivity.
Three, deploy corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds for the education and skilling of women and girls at the bottom of the pyramid. CSR allocations to toilet building, the PM-Cares fund and firms’ own trusts could be re-channelled for this.
Four, get more women into research and development (R&D) roles. A study of over 4,000 companies found that more women in R&D jobs resulted in radical innovation. It appears women score far higher than men in championing change. If you seek growth from affordable products and services for low-income groups, women often have the best ideas.
Five, break barriers to allow progress. Cultural and structural issues must be fixed. Unconscious biases and discrimination are rampant even in highly-esteemed organizations. Establish fair and transparent human resource policies.
Six, get involved in local communities to engage them. As Michael Porter said, it is not possible for businesses to sustain long-term shareholder value without ensuring the welfare of the communities they exist in. It is in the best interest of enterprises to engage with local communities to understand and work towards lowering cultural and other barriers in society. It will also help connect with potential customers, employees and special interest groups driving the gender-equity agenda and achieve better diversity.