Note:- Emotional Intelligence can not be understood without understanding emotion. And emotion is a psychological state. Thus, although we are discussing an ethics topic here, we will take help of psychology subject to understand it better. In Part-I, we will be dealing with What is emotion ?, which is an important pre-cursor to understand emotional intelligence.
CONCEPT OF EMOTION
One of the most important and fundamental aspects of the human experience is our capacity to experience emotions. Without this, our existence would be unidimensional and nowhere as rich and vibrant as it is. We experience joy and pleasure when we achieve something, become sad when we lose, or get angry or frustrated when things don’t turn out the way we want it. But what exactly is this emotion, what does it consist of, how does it affect our thinking and other aspects of our life?
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Defining emotions and agreeing upon a framework to understand them is a challenging task. Complex concepts such as these lie somewhere at the intersection of philosophy, psychology and neuroscience. Thus, there are numerous theories and frameworks within which emotions can be understood. In this Unit, we will focus on principles that are accepted across disciplines and are based on current evidence from the scientific community.
NATURE AND CHARACTERISTICS OF EMOTIONS
What is an emotion? It appears too simplistic to the common people to define it. Common emotions experienced are joy, happiness, anger, sadness, jealousy, love and so on. We eat good food and feel contented. We see a good movie and feel happy. We spend time with loved ones and feel loved. We lose a game and feel sad.
Emotion is a complex chain of loosely connected events that begins with a stimulus and includes feelings, psychological changes, impulses to action and specific goal directed behaviour.
Woodworth defines emotion as a stirred-up state of an organism that appears as feelings to the individual himself and as a disturbed muscular and glandular activity to an external observer.
Morris, states that emotion is a complex affective experience that involves diffuse physiological changes and can be expressed overtly in characteristic behavior patterns. Thus, emotions are experienced in response to a particular internal or external event.
A response of this kind involves physical arousal in the body- heart rate, blood pressure, perspiration, release of hormones etc. Secondly, a motivation to take action is activated- seeking things and activities that provide pleasure and avoiding those that give rise to pain or unpleasantness.
Thirdly, emotions arise out of our sensations, perceptions and thoughts related to objects, persons and situations. It depends on how do we perceive something, think about it and interpret it.
Fourthly, emotions vary in their intensity, for example, happiness can be experienced as pleasant and contented at the lower end of the continuum whereas excited and thrilled at the higher end of the continuum. Similarly being irritated and upset are the milder forms of anger whereas furious and enraged are high intensity anger feelings.
Emotions can be desirable or undesirable to an individual, depending on whether the said event is perceived as ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ or performs an adaptive function for an individual. They are responsible for driving a range of human behaviours such as attacking, fleeing, self- defence, forming relationships, reproducing etc.
However, some of these functions may translate into negative consequences such as ‘freezing’on stage, intense expressions of anger, unwarranted aggression etc. Regardless of whether the consequences are positive or negative, emotions create significant impact when they arise and adapting to our environment demands that we understand and express emotions appropriately.
Emotion vs Feelings
Emotions are not the same as feelings, even though we may use both the terms similarly. The term feeling is used to refer to a person’s private emotional experience or self- perception of a specific emotion. When an event occurs, one first responds automatically at a physical level even without awareness (emotion) and then registers or evaluates this (feeling).
For example, when one sees a snake nearby, their heartbeat, breathing, perspiration (physiological arousal) might increase immediately, causing the action of running away. Only later might one realise that the feeling they experienced was fear. Feelings are created by emotions. Thus, although we may use the terms emotion and feeling interchangeably in our daily lives, they differ considerably from each other.
Emotion vs Mood
Another related concept is mood. While emotions last for short periods of time and arise in response to a particular event, moods are of lower intensity, generally last for longer periods of time, even days and may not necessarily be associated with a certain, immediate event or cause.
While emotions are directed at something or someone (e.g. you are angry at your brother or you are frustrated about waiting in line), moods can arise for no apparent reason, such as waking up irritable one morning without anything unpleasant having occurred the previous day. Nevertheless, moods are important because they too influence our actions. For example, wanting to socialise more with friends when in a good mood and avoiding social situations when feeling low over the weekend.
Functions of Emotions
Emotions matter. They provide information to us and serve certain purpose. They became part of the human experience and have continued to remain so because of the functions they perform. Each function is associated with a certain utility or role.
Intrapersonal functions: This domain refers to the functions that emotions serve within individuals. They help one guide behaviour and make decisions, so that we can survive as well as function as human beings. For instance, they inform us when to fight and when to leave a dangerous situation. Feeling respect for oneself encourages one to care and look after oneself. Happiness promotes creative thinking and expands our focus to allow new ideas and small details to be noticed. Even mild sadness contributes to more realistic thinking and improves judgment by encouraging us to scan information more carefully and thoroughly.
Interpersonal functions: These functions are performed by emotions between individuals. The act of expressing emotions serves as an indication or signal to others about how one might feel about them or the relationship, what one’s intentions might be and what one’s needs might be.
Displaying a positive facial expression such as a smile usually encourages other people to approach us. Showing sadness may stimulate others to show empathy or sympathy. Emotional expression is thus an important communication and relationship management tool.
In fact, as early as 1872, Darwin identified that emotional communication aids the survival of the human species by enabling the reading of signs of impending aggression in others or warning others of a threat by displaying fear.
Social and cultural functions: This dimension has to do with how emotions contribute to the construction and maintenance of societies and cultures. Emotions such as trust often act as a social glue that keeps groups together. Cohesive groups in turn form societies and evolve their own distinct cultures.
On their part, cultural codes inform individuals and groups about specific display rules that exist for emotional expression. For example, men are often conditioned to only display certain emotions such as anger and aggression, while showing “softer” emotions such as sadness is discouraged in eastern cultures. Certain work places are driven by unspoken rules about whether certain emotions such as affection are appropriate for display in work related contexts.
COMPONENTS OF EMOTIONS
Emotions can be viewed as having five components.
1. Affective: also referred to as a conscious, subjective feeling. Individuals monitor their internal, felt states and recognise what they are feeling.
2. Cognitive: involves describing or assigning meaning to the emotion. Thus, thinking about a feeling is very different from the actual feeling. Individuals try to understand the reason behind why something is happening and try to judge how an event might impact them.
3. Physiologic: bodily reactions such as palms sweating upon feeling anxious.
4. Motivational: Going toward or away from an action or person. This component is also referred to as action tendencies, which refers to specific actions that the individual takes that may be voluntary or involuntary. For example, moving one’s hand away from a hot pan is an involuntary action, while going on an early morning run despite feeling tired is a voluntary action. Each emotion may be associated with a particular action tendency
5. Expressive: Displaying emotions through facial expressions such as smiling, crying, frowning or body movements such as throwing a vase when angry to communicate emotions to others.
TYPES OF EMOTIONS
Emotions are also commonly classified as primary and secondary. Primary emotions are those that are basic and universal in the sense that they are “hard- wired”, automatic and experienced in all cultures and social contexts. They are thought to have evolved so as to aid our survival as a species.
Robert Plutchik, identified eight of these- fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger, anticipation, joy and trust and represented them in the form of a colour wheel. Each of these emotions vary in intensity and show up as layers. For example, the primary emotion of fear may be called apprehension when it is at a very low intensity and terror when it is at its highest intensity. The core emotion remains the same i.e. fear. Combinations and layers of primary emotions may give rise to more complex emotions. These are called secondary emotions and may be culture specific.
Plutchik’s Emotion Wheel
The colour families in the figure indicate similar emotions. Darker shades indicate greater intensity. The spaces between emotions indicate combined emotions that emergence from the merging of primary emotions. In the above representation, contempt can be a combination of anger and disgust. Optimism can be seen as the combination of serenity and interest. In addition, some emotions can exist as opposites of each other: sadness is the opposite of joy, trust and disgust lie at opposing ends, as do fear and anger. The wheel above indicates that different emotion words can be used to express different intensities of the same family of emotions. The emotions in the central circle of the wheel are at the highest level of intensity; rage, vigilance, ecstasy, admiration, terror, amazement, grief, and loathing. As one moves outwards in the wheel, the emotional intensity decreases anger is less intense than rage and annoyance is even milder.
Emotions do not remain static and can transition or evolve into others over time. For example, one may be angry about a fight with a close family member at first. Over a day, this can turn into sadness, even if nothing seemingly changes in the situation.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMOTIONS, THINKING AND BEHAVIOUR
Recall a recent time when you were feeling happy and content. What was your view of the world during the time you were in this mood? Now try and remember a time when you were feeling upset and angry at something. How did you view the world during this time? It is likely that your perception of the world (including the people in it) was different during both these phases and influenced by whichever emotions were dominant at the time. Chances are that you also behaved differently towards other people as a consequence.
Emotions, thinking and behaviour are inextricably linked. The relationship between them can best be explained through contemporary models of emotion.
Imagine that your friend suddenly shouts at you. This is an emotional stimulus and encountering it may make you interpret or judge the outburst as “my friend is angry with me” or “my friend is rude”. Depending on what you think about the stimulus, you will experience a feeling. Subsequently, some form of adaptive behaviour will follow. If your interpretation of the situation is that is your friend is angry with you, you might feel confused and ask them why they are angry. If you think that your friend is being rude, you might experience anger and shout back at them too and thus your behaviour may look very different.
This process of assigning meaning to an event and our reaction to it is called appraisal. A cognitive appraisal is, therefore an evaluation or interpretation of the personal meaning of certain circumstances that results in an emotion
Specific appraisals usually give rise to particular emotions and influence their intensity and quality as well. For example, an appraisal of “I desire something that someone else has”, goes along with the emotion of envy. “I have been treated well by another” creates the experience of gratitude.
According to Gross and Deutschendorf , changing one’s interpretation of an event can prevent the experience of feeling drained and guard against overwhelming emotions. For instance, in the above example, by changing your appraisal to “she doesn’t mean it”, you could easily brush- off her behaviour and get on with your day.
Appraisals, therefore, have the power to impact our reactions to the daily experiences of emotions, especially those that are unpleasant and stressful. By changing our own appraisals, we may be able to protect ourselves from stress and promote our well- being, even if we cannot control external situations or other people.
In addition, because of differences in how a situation or event may be appraised, the same situation may give rise to different behaviour on the part of individuals. Infact, the same person may also react differently to the same situation at different times.
However, it is important to keep in mind that while emotions have the potential to energise us to act, whether action is actually taken depends on more than just emotions. Situational context, the object at which emotion is directed, anticipation and judgment of possible consequences of actions and past experiences, culture and gender all determine behavior.
For example, people from western cultures feel comfortable expressing anger more openly than those from eastern cultures, where showing anger in the presence of others is regarded in a more negative light because of the importance assigned to maintenance of relationships.
Gender differences notwithstanding, men and women may be similar in their subjective experiences of emotions but express them very differently due to the differences in how they are conditioned to show their emotions.
Women are generally more comfortable showing vulnerability through the expression of sadness while men are raised not to cry easily and instead are more accepting and expressive of anger and aggression.
Conclusion
Emotions are complex states that are difficult to define but also fundamental to our experiences. Without their existence, our individual, interpersonal and cultural existence would be meaningless. Emotional complexity arises out of multiple components that comprise emotional experience- subjective feelings, interpretations, physiological/ bodily changes, action tendencies and expression.
As human beings, we share certain basic or primary emotions, while more complex, secondary emotions may be learnt and expressed as combinations of primary emotions. While emotions may ready us for action, they do not directly cause behaviour. How we think about an emotional event determines which emotion is felt, what action is taken and how the emotion is eventually expressed.
These dynamics add considerable richness to our individual and social lives and allow us to adapt to situational demands. Understanding and changing our appraisal of an experience can empower us to change our reactions and gain better control of our emotions.
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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.
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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.