Thomas Lovejoy in 1980 coined the term ‘Biological Diversity’ which was later modified by E. O. Wilson in 1986 who coined the term ‘Biodiversity’ in his report for the first American Forum on Biological Diversity. As a term intimately related to environmental and wildlife conservation, although the popularity of the term has increased dramatically since then in the West, especially in the scientific community in the West as well as globally, biodiversity as conservation is still not an everyday term in India, like words like pollution and evolution are.
Understanding Biodiversity
“All kinds of living organisms and their environments and together with their interactions constitute biodiversity. In other words, all kinds of plants, animals and microbes found in the biosphere and their environment, together with their interactions are collectively referred to as biodiversity”.
There are four categories of biodiversity.
- The first category of biodiversity is what is known as genetic biodiversity. It refers to the differences among the living organisms in terms of genes, genetic material or DNA or genomes.
- The second kind of biodiversity is what is known as species biodiversity. It refers to the kinds of species found in the biosphere.
- The third category is what is known as ecosystem biodiversity. It refers to the different kinds of ecosystems that are found in the biosphere.
- The fourth category of biodiversity is what is known as human cultural biodiversity. This refers to diversity in languages, religions, food habits and other lifestyles among human populations.
Theories on biodiversity can broadly come under the theories formulated under the science of ecology. One major point of departure is the difference between the niche-based as against the neutral models of interaction in community ecology. The Ecological Niche had long dominated community ecology in explaining species interaction in ecosystems in terms of species occupying ecological niches and performing certain ecological roles on the basis on functionalist co-operation as well as competition.
This was challenged by Stephen Hubbell (2001) who introduced a Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity. While ecological niches were useful in explaining species co-existence on the basis of specialized and differentiated niches, Hubbell argued that competitive exclusion occurred over such long periods of time in the total evolutionary process that other processes such as random ecological drift, speciation, etc come to dominate in concurrence (G.M. Mikkelson, 2005).
He argued that the differences between species placed at similar trophic levels in an ecological community are neutral, or not necessary for their success (Science Daily, 2017).
By rejecting role-based competitive exclusion as a rare event in ecosystems, Hubbell partially contradicts the Darwinian hypothesis of the Survival of the Fittest in community ecology as well as the theoretical formulations of Ecological Niches. Ecological systems according to this theory thus exist in long-term existential balance unless some sort of intervention leads to otherwise. To understand this more closely, we must look at the theory of ecological succession, most notably known for the contributions of Eugene Odum.
Ecological succession looks into ecosystem development as in how energy and materials follow cyclical paths within ecosystems. This aspect is what Odum (1969) explored in his paper ‘The Strategy of Ecosystem Development’. A key part of Odum’s analysis is that the strategies of man and nature are diametrically opposed. While the focus for man has primarily been high production out of nature, for example in terms of harvesting certain agricultural crops, reducing the total productive biomass, nature in its succession process goes for the reverse efficiency, thus favouring biomass production rather than production that largely wastes biomass, as in man’s approach. Nature thus manages to maintain a balance in its production process in sustainably producing biomass for procedural use while man’s production processes are not as sustainable. A major environmental aspect of our time is indeed in moving towards an environmentally sustainable future.
Tropical rainforests in total provide habitats for about 90 per cent of the world’s species (A. Young, 2003) while marine biodiversity similarly increases in warmer seas. Biodiversity however tends to cluster globally in dense hotspots that occurs in the form of clusters. About 90 per cent of the world’s species are threatened by human-induced changes to the environment and biodiversity according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Biodiversity as conservation becomes even more important when you consider that India is one of the 12 mega biodiversity countries in the world and about 7 to 8 per cent of species in the world are found in India, in which about 70 per cent of the world’s flowering plants are found in India (C.R. Babu, 2017). A lack of understanding of biodiversity in India thus should alarm us over how well are actually addressing biodiversity as conservation in public life.
Although biodiversity historically in India had been a public good in the sense of an existential balance, the current age is one when more widespread awareness of the devastating effects of the human-influenced Anthropocene epoch is being known. Although protecting the environment has now become a core issue, the lack of an awareness of biodiversity as conservation speaks of the lack of a deeper understanding of environmental sustainability among the Indian public.
Given the total and web-like effects of certain deficiencies in the environment, largely institutional efforts at biodiversity as conservation will not yield the total benefits that an understanding of nature’s balance at the public level could provide. Any good attained by institutional intervention thus could be offset by another instance of human-induced environmental degradation, whether organized or not, at the other end. At a time when humanity is grappling with natural laws that it does not fully understand, a better understanding of the nature of how one should interact and co-exist in one’s life-world would push civilization towards an era of greater maturity.
Threats to Biodiversity
The threats to biodiversity can indeed be immense, given the complexity of biodiversity and the millions of chance possibilities that can introduce changes to ecosystems. The challenges are immense when you consider that biodiversity is being constantly and rapidly destroyed throughout the world, and greater still when the need arises for co-ordinating all activities in line with international policies and events. Approaches in biodiversity as conservation may also vary across countries, regions and in local settings.
A uniform scientific approach is difficult when one would need to tackle myriad policies and intricacies. Although legal documents on biodiversity as conservation are available, which we shall discuss later, a sense of order is required at all levels if we are to think seriously about biodiversity as conservation. In this light, although uncountable causes could impact biodiversity, certain categorizations listed by Mandal & Nandi (2009) can be made over the threats to biodiversity. These are –
- Habitat Destruction / Habitat Fragmentation
Habitat destruction or habitat fragmentation is a broad category that can pose the most significant threat to biodiversity as conservation. Habitat fragmentation, which is the lessening of habitats into scattered patches also brings about immense changes to the composition of biodiversity, as apart from habitat destruction, which can have more total effects.
The age of the Anthropocene has seen massive habitat loss all over the world. The world has for example witnessed a massive loss of about 129 million ha of area under forest cover between 1990 and 2015. This represents an annual net loss rate of 0.13 per cent. The largest loss of forest cover has occurred in the tropics and subtropics, in particular in South America and Africa (FAO, 2015). It is also known for example that about half of the total wetlands globally have been destroyed. California alone has lost about 91 per cent of its wetlands in the last 200 years (Mandal & Nandi, 2009).
Even if a conscious effort is made in limiting habitat destruction due to anthropogenic interventions, habitat fragmentation can still occur due to developmental activity such as building roads, canals, etc and their succeeding effects. Development projects by humans have led to immeasurable habitat losses, severely destabilizing ecosystems world over such that the present geological epoch is being called by many as the Anthropocene, as one whose geography has been influenced primarily by human beings.
- Alien-Invasive Species
Another threat to biodiversity is the introduction of a non-native alien-invasive species into an ecosystem. Humans have introduced more than 330 non-native species into ecosystems worldwide. One only needs to remember how kiwi birds are endangered in New Zealand due to the introduction of animals such as cats for example by settlers. Alien-invasive species need not only be predators to destroy native ecosystems. They can also degrade ecosystems by competing for resources like water, and inviting other predators into the food web for example with mice, etc. Like with habitat destruction, the introduction of alien-invasive species has also exponentially increased with the progress of anthropogenic development.
- Over-harvesting / Over-Exploitation
We are living in an era of high mass consumption, and as such there is incredible strain on the harvesting and exploitation of biological resources. Billions of people depend on biological resources for not only food but also for other economic and daily needs. As such billions of biological units are harvested for human use. One particular area where over-harvesting and over-exploitation have become a flag-point issue is commercial fishing. According to the Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations (UN), about 18 per cent of global fishing stocks are reported to be over-exploited and about 10 per cent of global fishing stocks have become significantly depleted. Figures such as these have serious implications for species extinction.
- Pollution
Pollution can severely impact ecosystems by causing diseases and other health problems among organisms in an ecosystem. Sometimes, pollution can affect a particular species, such as how an oil spill can severely impact aquatic life forming habitats near the ocean’s surface. The dangers can be particularly stark if an endangered species is exposed to persistent organic pollutants (POPs), leading to severe health issues such as dysfunction in the endocrine systems and other effects and can severely impact their populations, including changes if any in their reproductive abilities.
- Knock-on Effects
With the addition or withdrawal of species into or out of food webs, there can be certain cascading knock-on effects. One example is that of insect pollinators that are specialized, whose extinction would affect the reproductive abilities of plants dependent on the insect pollinators, thus having cascading effects on the food web in the ecosystem. The great problem with knock-on effects is that often these kind of effects can be greatly unpredictable, making their mitigation even more difficult, if not required to be avoided altogether.
- Climate Change
The possible effects of Climate Change on biodiversity as conservation have been greatly discussed, with the major problem being that its ongoing effects such as the melting of sea ice habitats in the Polar Regions have not been as greatly perceptible in the larger public life.
There can be no doubt however that the heating of the planet and the incredible amount of cascading changes in the Earth’s climate and topography will bring about incredibly massive changes to biodiversity. The scale of the changes, depending on how severely Climate Change progresses in the future, could rival the loss in biodiversity brought about due to habitat destruction. The difference being that habitat destruction had been occurring over a period of time along the development of human civilization while Climate Change can have drastic and quick effects on biodiversity. Another difference is that Climate Change can be mitigated by human intervention in a realistic manner, although presently that is not the case.
- Other Threats
While these are the chief anthropogenic threats to biodiversity as conservation in terms of scale, there are innumerable other threats that can impact biodiversity at different levels of scale depending upon circumstance. Some such threats include the challenges posed by the economic system, wherein organisms are increasingly being over-exploited not just for food, but as products. The spread of diseases, parasites, pathogens and predators can also severely impact biodiversity as conservation.
Another factor impacting biodiversity as conservation can be translocation, wherein certain species are reintroduced into another habitat for a certain constructive purpose such as to save a species from extinction. While this might help in saving a certain species, these same species could act as an alien-invasive species in some way in another ecosystem.
Another threat is the event of an extremely small population of a certain species remaining in their habitats. This condition does not portend very well for the future of that species. Finally, the demographic changes brought about by an ever-increasing human population has and will have in the future an increasingly detrimental effect on biodiversity as conservation given that the chief threats to biodiversity as conservation are largely anthropogenic.
Efforts towards Biodiversity as Conservation
Official concern for biodiversity loss is a relatively recent phenomenon, with the term itself being relatively new. Many species have been endangered and some species had gone extinct before the term came into parlance. Thus in the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was initiated and was then enforced in 1993 as in international legal document with biodiversity as conservation in view. A 196 countries are signatory to the convention, with the United States being a notable exception. In India the primary legal document for biodiversity as conservation is the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 (BDA) (B. Meenakumari, 2016). Although legal policies exist, biodiversity as conservation is a vast challenge both for policy-makers and conservationists, especially with many steep sustainable development targets yet to be realized worldwide.
Legal documents for biodiversity as conservation usually act as umbrella policies for many micro-level activities to take place. The most prominent of these activities can include demarcating certain areas as protected areas, which can be a method to conserve habitats, although not all habitats. Also other methods like mapping of sites, identifying gap species being certain species not covered by habitats within protected areas, listing of certain species by the IUCN in the Red List such that renewed efforts are made for the conservation of these species, alternately making Red List Indices that look at the projected extinction risk of certain sets of species in terms of temporal variability, etc (Mandal & Nandi, 2009) can facilitate biodiversity as conservation apart from demarcating certain areas as protected areas. Alternately resource allocation policies can also assist in biodiversity as conservation along with policies for the restoration of natural habitats.
Many other legislations also exist to interlope with the CBD for protecting biodiversity. For example the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has the objective of protecting marine organisms from over-fishing and over-harvesting. Similarly many other regulations exist for combating pollution. The great challenge however, will be rapidly advancing Climate Change and its unpredictable knock-on effects on biodiversity as conservation. Given how Climate Change can be partially mitigated through human intervention with global concern for the same, although the Paris Climate Agreement brings hope in this regard, it shall take a huge amount of struggle for any decisive good to occur.
Endnote
Institutional safeguards alone however, should not wage a lone fight in a cause that requires the co-operation of most of humanity. In what the future may portend, the case of one effort being offset by another necessitates that a total fight for biodiversity as conservation requires some understanding of the existential balance of biodiversity, which can begin with the protection of habitats and ecosystems. This should begin with an understanding of biodiversity as a term known to all, like Climate Change is quickly becoming one. This would represent among the first baby-steps for humanity in moving towards an environmentally sustainable future.
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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.