TOWARDS NEW DIMENSIONS OF ETHICS
Fostering “sunshine” in public administration is one of the finest methods of ensuring higher standards of administrative ethics. Openness is the enemy of corruption. Almost all countries of the world have Freedom of Information or Right to Information Acts.
In the U.S., at the federal level, freedom of information and open hearing provisions are an integral part of the Administrative Procedure Act. In India, the Freedom of Information Act of 2002 was redesigned as Right to Information Act, which was enacted in 2005. Besides, a number of state governments including Goa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra have enacted legislations that help in securing accountability of public employees through this device.
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Legislation alone is not enough. Its enforcement would require a will on the part of the State, willingness on the part of administrators and an initiative coupled with courage on the part of citizens themselves. The State machinery should be ready to punish those civil servants who obstruct the implementation of Right to Information Act.
The age-old orientation to treat every information, as `secret’ must give way to greater openness and transparency. This would require a substantial transformation of the mind-sets of administrators in order to reorient the thinking of administration at all levels, more particularly at the cutting- edge level.
The movement for the Right to Information cannot succeed unless people themselves become motivated to ask for the fructification of this Right. Even though, it has culminated in the Right to Information Act, there are miles to go before we can ensure its effective implementation. People’s groups, such as the one led by Aruna Roy, will have to continue to take initiative on a massive scale. Even the educational system and the media will need to play a purposive role in this realm.
In the American system, ‘whistle blowing’ by public employees is considered as legitimate and statutorily protected. Public employees are expected to use their voice to protest administrative activities that are illegal or immoral. They can even resort to resignations from their positions to give vent to their protests. And these acts are considered moral and appropriate.
In the American federal government, there functions a hotline, called `Fraud Net’, for preventing fraud, waste and abuse. Through this hotline, employees and others can anonymously report instances of misconduct for investigation to the General Accounting Office. Besides, the American public employees enjoy Constitutional protection on speaking out on matters of public concern like dangers to public health or safety.
In Britain, a new appeals procedure for civil servants has come into effect. Under this procedure, a civil servant could raise concerns, confidentially, with an individual outside his normal hierarchy. When he believes that the response is not satisfactory or reasonable, he may report the matter to the Civil Service Commissioner. The Costitutional Review Commission in India considered the possibility of whistle blowing a statutory activity, but it was not accepted as a viable choice. The need is to develop a fresh perspective on this issue.
OBSTACLES TO ETHICAL ACCOUNTABILITY IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
Accountability and ethics are closely related. Effective accountability helps the achievement of ethical standards in the governance system. Legislative or parliamentary control through questions, debates and committees provide ample opportunity to the people’s representatives to raise, among other things, issues of ethics and morality in the governance system.
More particularly, the Public Accounts Committee in India, which gives its comments on the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India in its reports, raises matters that directly or indirectly relate to ethics and good governance.
Self-accountability and external accountability are interrelated for it is the latter that imposes expectations on the former. However, there are certain time-tested norms of moral conduct that determine the nature of self-accountability. These precepts of moral philosophy may be considered as internal checks.
Essentially, however, it is the synthesis of external as well internal checks that determine the parameters of administrative ethics. The higher the level of ethics, the lower the need for strong instruments of external accountability and control. Conversely, lower the level of ethics, higher the need for potent external means for ensuring accountability.
Max Weber had maintained that the outside (extra-agency) checks on public administration were inadequate. Hence, the value of self-accountability is immense. The desire to be ethical in one’s profession should spring from within. Seventy years ago,in John Gaus his book, The Frontiers of Public Administration (1936) had remarked that public employees were expected to exercise an “inner check” rooted in professional standards of administration and ideals. This type of emphasis needs to be seriously reasserted.
David Rosenbloom and Robert S. Kravchuk raise a pertinent question: “Why is it difficult to guard the guardians?” There are certain intrinsic features of the administrative system that make it difficult for the external regulating institutions to control it and also ensure its accountability. A few of these imponderables are discussed below:-
- Special Expertise and Information Public administrators are often experts in their specific area of functioning and it is difficult for any outside agency to surpass them in their areas of specialisation. Moreover, they generate and control crucial information that may be difficult to be accessed or even comprehended by law regulators, much less by the common citizens. Although the Right to Information Act (or similar legislations) is there in most countries, there is cost to be paid for obtaining information and verifying its authenticity. The administrators do not easily part with such information and are too keen to let their citadels remain impregnable.
- Full-Time Status Most public administrators are full-time, while outsiders cannot devote equal amount of time in overseeing their activities – legislators, judiciary, Comptroller and Auditor General of India and even the media have relatively less time to keep a watch over the actions of administrators. They cannot seek all the crucial information from administrators and even if they get it, they do not have sufficient time to process and use it effectively.
- Massive Expansion of Bureaucracy In a country such as India, the role of public administration has been increasing incessantly. Its regulatory, developmental, promotional and entrepreneurial responsibilities have been multiplying and with that also its size. The number of public personnel as well as the agencies they work for have gone up so much that it is difficult for the political executive or the legislature to exercise effective control over them. Likewise, in large-sized organisations like Public Works Department, Income Tax Department, Police Department, etc., it is impossible for higher officials to keep an eye on the conduct of their subordinates. The geographical distribution of government agencies also makes the span of control too wide to be handled effectively. Even computerisation of all personnel records cannot ensure surveillance over the conduct of all personnel.
- Lack of Coordination The number and kinds of agencies to ensure probity in public administration have also been increasing continually. In India, for instance the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Central Vigilance Commission, State Lok Ayuktas, State Vigilance Bodies and Anti-Corruption Departments are co-existing sans effective coordination among them. The judiciary is slow and there are no fast-track courts for dealing with cases of corruption.
- The political pressures imposed from above also colour the vision of administrators. Occasionally, one notices that the Police Department, because of pressure from its political bosses is caught between the compulsion of hierarchy and the obligation of duty. The police officials generally succumb to political pressures in order to save their own interests and that of their families. Occasionally, `inconvenient’ civil servants are punished with transfers to `difficult’ locations or postings that may cause problems to their families
- Orthodox Loyalty In India and in most developing countries, public employees are socialised into developing loyalty towards the organisation that they serve and to the superior authority under which they work. It is customary in the Indian society to show respect to the superior and to refrain from criticism of one’s boss in a public organisation. Any voice against the superiors is considered as an act of insubordination. In such a cultural climate, even the honest and conscientious employees do not speak out against unethical practices of their peers and seniors. And the undue compassion occasionally shown to the subordinates on their errors of omission and commission also tend to strengthen the sinews of a `soft state’. All this represents a misplaced loyalty and magnanimity that eats into the vitals of the ethical order in public administrative system. As the Indian democracy becomes more mature, it is hoped that whistle blowing will be considered a legitimate and rational activity in the future, and will be protected under the laws and rules
The Constitution, laws, policies, manifestoes of political parties and speeches of politicians are replete with direct or indirect references to ethical basis of governance, but in practice, however, there is a gross violation of moral precepts in the functioning of the politico-administrative system. The critical reasons behind administrative corruption are scaricity of what people want from public administrators and the inconveniences involved in the normal channels of administrative decisions. As Michael Johnston (1982) explains –
The demand for government’s rewards frequently exceeds the supply, and routine decision-making processes are lengthy, costly, and uncertain in their outcome. For these reasons, legally sanctioned decision-making processes constitute a ‘bottleneck’ between what people want and what they get. The temptation to get around the bottleneck – to speed things up and make favourable decisions more probable – is built into this relationship between government and society. To get around the bottleneck, one must use political influence – and corruption, which by definition cuts across established and legitimate processes, is a most effective form of influence.
In India, B.B. Vohra, the then Home Secretary of India, had presented in 1995, a report on the activities of crime syndicates/mafia organisations which had developed links with or were being protected by government functionaries and political personalities. The conclusions of the Vohra Committee reflect a moral crisis in the Indian governance system. Not that the decline is irreversible, strong and honest efforts can sincerely halt the process of decline. Certain Asian countries have already proven that it is possible to combat and curb corruption. It requires effective political and administrative will to do so.
In a civic culture or democratic society like India’s, politicians who get elected on people’s support and vote, are primarily concerned with strengthening their constituencies, and thus are keen to dole out benefits to those who are their supporters. Administrators, on the other hand, are keener to follow the prescribed procedures. In situations of conflict between the politicians and administrators, there is either a stalemate, or eventually, the politicians win.
But the most convenient course for the politician is to win over administration to their side and make them partners or collaborators in corruption. With the protective hands of politicians above them and with a temptation for gaining extra (illegitimate) benefits administrators consciously align with their political masters and indulge in corruption. Very rarely, do the honest and strong administrators stand up to the politician and refuse to succumb to politicians’ pressures and cajoling. Likewise, there may be only a few politicians who actually apply brakes to the bandwagon of administrative corruption.
During Bill Clinton’s presidency, Al Gore, the U.S. Vice President, advocated through the National Performance Review’s (NPR) version of the NPM, that ethics implied achieving high degree of customer satisfaction. It believed that people – in government or outside – were basically honest and well intentioned and there was no need for wasting time and energy on focusing on corruption. Trusting them is bound to lead to a favourable climate for ethical behaviour. The cost of deterring corruption is too high in terms of red tape that such efforts create. The NPR underscored that reinventing government required innovations, which in turn implied deviations from the grooves of tradition. Distrusting and accusing people for their creative initiatives dampens their enthusiasm for innovation. Trusting the employees as well as the people they serve would help carve a more effective administrative system in the selfgoverning democracy.
FUTURE PERSPECTIVE
When A.D.Gorwala presented his report on Public Administration in India in 1951, he had emphasisd that integrity was one of the cardinal philosophical premises of good administration. It is paradoxical that despite visible decline of moral standards in public life, the mainstream reports on administrative reforms have not focused on ethical issues.
Except for the Santhanam Committee report on the Prevention of Corruption in India in 1964 and a specific segmented report on the theme, the Railway Corruption Enquiry Committee by Acharya Kriplani in 1955, there have been no major efforts at recommending strategies for integrating moral values with the administrative system at various levels. True, the ARC report on Lok Pal and Lok Ayukta was published in 1966, but that again was confined to structural changes rather than bringing about a new ethical order in public systems.
How is the administrative ethics of the twenty-first century likely to be different from that of the twentieth century? The answer is to be found in the increasing convergence of ethical concerns at the cross-national level. Globalisation of the economic order is likely to pave the way for the globalisation of governance issues. Not that there would be universally uniform configurations of the governance systems, much less the bureaucratic systems. But with the mitigation of chasm among nations in the realm of the goals, philosophy and strategies of governance, the ethical concerns are likely to transcend international boundaries.
CONCLUSION
Ethics is a comprehensive concept, encompassing all facets of administration. Emphasis on moral and ethical norms has been an integral part of our tradition. Though vices of corruption, malpractices and bureaupathologies have slowly creeped in our system, the combat measures have not been very effective. Administrative reforms measures have to be holistic enough taking into their purview questions on nature of work ethics, various dimensions of ethics, foci and concerns of ethics and also the nature of obstacles to ethical accountability.
For any governance system to be transparent, accountable, efficient and sensitive, a Code of Ethics in the form of service rules, procedural norms, and administrative strategies the requirement of the day is. It is not possible to bring into force a Code of Ethics if it is self-serving and is subject to constant external interference and manipulation. A certain degree of autonomy is a pre-requisite for any code to be successful.
We are witnessing a change in the pattern of authority, obedience and discipline. Moreover, globalisation trends have brought in a kind of universalisation of ethical norms and values. Philosophy of governance has transcended international boundaries. Almost every rung of administration is involved in decision-making. The conflict between individual values, organisational standards and societal norms is clearly visible.
Though the code may not reflect a consensus of opinion on ethical issues, it can still provide direction and advice with regard to ethical conduct and assist the administrators in analysing their options and alternatives in the right perspective.
KEY CONCEPTS
Bureaupathologies
The major ills of bureaucracy such as red tape, conflict, duplication, waste and corruption could be called the pathologies of bureaucracy. Victor Thompson termed the negative aspects of Weberian theory of bureaucracy as ‘bureaupathologies’.
Logical Positivism
It is a general philosophical position, also called logical empiricism, developed by members of the Vienna Circle on the basis of traditional empirical thought and the development of modern logic. It confined knowledge to science and used verificationism to reject metaphysics not only as false but meaningless. The importance of science led leading logical positivists to study scientific method and to explore the logic of confirmation theory, which talked of solving the problem of induction (inductive knowledge).
Post-behaviouralism
It refers to the developments that took place as a protest against Behaviouralism. It is an approach to psychology based on the proposition that behaviour is interesting and worthy of scientific research. Behaviouralism as articulated by Easton, tries to organise research in political science on model of natural sciences. It emphasises the need to develop a pure science of politics, giving a new orientation to research and theory building exercises within the discipline. This movement remained prominent till 1960s. The Post-behavioural movement of 1970s rejected the behavioural tendency to stress on what could be easily measured rather than what might be theoretically important. The tendency in Behaviouralists to concentrate on phenomena that were readily observable rather than studying the profound structural factors that contribute to change and stability within the political system was criticized by Post behaviouralism
Utilitarianism
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) made an attempt to create a liberal ethical philosophy called Utilitarianism. The case of this philosophy is the utility principle, which means greatest happiness of the greatest number is good. It is the belief that i) Value of a thing or an action is determined by its utility, and ii) All actions should be directed toward achieving the greatest happiness. This philosophy judges everything in terms of its utility or usefulness. It holds that actions are right in proposition, as they tend to promote happiness and wrong, as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness, is intended pleasure and absence of pain and by unhappiness, presence of pain and the deprivation of pleasure
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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.