This Part 2 of the Ethics Series – What is Good and What is evil?
Part I can be read from here – Click Here
Note :- Not all names of philosophers to be remembered or used. The idea is to show the under current of thought and processes that shaped the idea of good and evil. So, a word of caution, don’t be over-whelmed by the reference to various philosophers.
The Ethical Views of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle:-
SOCRATES was stimulated by the Sophists but was unwilling to go all the way with them. He, too, was most interested in the problems related to living a good life. Thus a great deal of his teaching dealt with the meaning of right and wrong.
Arguing that ‘man is the measure of all things’, the Sophists were skeptical about the existence of the gods and taught a variety of subjects, including mathematics, grammar, physics, political philosophy, ancient history, music, and astronomy.
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It was Socrates’ firm belief that there must be a basic principle of right and wrong, a measure which would apply far beyond the beliefs of any one individual. Thus, he asked time and again: What is the good? What is the highest good by which all else in the universe is measured? And his answer was that knowledge is the highest good.
If one knows what is right, he argued, he will do it “No man,” he said, “is voluntarily bad.* When one knows that a thing is good he will choose to do that thing. Therefore the most important endeavor of man is to discover what is good. Socrates spent his life trying to help men discover what is good. Thus, for him, a life which is always inquiring and trying to discover what is good is the best kind of life, the only life worth living.
PLATO took up the problem of good and evil where Socrates left it. For him, goodness is tied up with his theory of the nature of the universe. The world of sense, he taught, is unreal, fleeting, changing. This is evil. The real world of pure, unchanging ideas is the world of good. Man can know this real world only through his reason. Therefore, reason is the highest good for man. The end or goal of life is release of the soul from the body so that it can contemplate the true world of ideas.
But man may live a just life even though he is held down by the body and remains in a world of changing shadows of real things. This can be done, Plato believed, so long as the rational part of man rules his every action. Plato thought of man as consisting of three parts. The appetites are concerned with bodily functions and desires. The will, or spiritual part of man, is concerned with action, courage, bravery. And the reason is concerned with the highest and best in man. A man is living a good life when reason rules the will and the appetites, and when, as a result, he is wise, brave, and temperate.
Thus, a life of reason is the highest good for man, a life noted for wisdom, courage, and self-control. And, Plato taught, this kind of life will be the happy life. Happiness and goodness go together. However, one should not seek pleasure as the end of life. Pleasure comes when one has attained the good life, a life in which the highest, reason, rules the lower, will and appetites.
ARISTOTLE pointed out that every action of man has some end in view and that these ends seem to be an endless chain. One acts in order to get something, but this something is obtained in order to get something else, and so on. What, he asked, is the highest good, the good for which all else is done?
He reached an answer to this question by pointing out that the aim of everything in the universe is to realize itself to the fullest. Each thing is different from all others. It has certain talents, abilities. Thus, it is good when it has realized these talents and abilities to the fullest. Thus, self-realization is for Aristotle the highest good, the goal of all else that is done.
Now, the distinguishing feature of man is his reason. No other entity in the universe possesses reason. Man alone has this characteristic, ability. Therefore, the highest good of man is the complete realization of his reason. This, Aristotle believed, brings happiness. Pleasure accompanies the full realization of man’s reason; it is a natural result of such realization.
But, as Plato also taught, reason is only a part of man. He also has feelings, desires, appetites. Therefore, a good life is one in which all these factors are realized in perfect harmony, in which reason rules and the feelings and desires obey. The goal of human life is a rational attitude toward the feelings and desires.
What is this rational attitude? Aristotle taught that it consisted of the “golden mean.” For example, courage is to be thought of as a mean between cowardice and foolhardiness. The good man is one who lives a life according to this golden mean, who does not go to extremes in action but balances one extreme over against another.
Thus, the good life for Aristotle is one in which man realizes to the fullest the supreme part of his nature, reason. Such a man will be noble, just, honest, considerate, and will give evidence of all the other virtues of life. And he will do these things because he desires to do them from the depths of his own being. He is not forced to act in this way by some authority outside of himself, but is driven to good actions by his own nature. As Aristotle wrote, “Virtue is a disposition, or habit, involving deliberate purpose or choice, consisting in a mean that is relative to ourselves, the mean being determined by reason, or as a prudent man would determine it”
Good and Evil According to the Epicureans and Stoics:-
What was for Plato and Aristotle a part of a whole philosophic system became for later philosophers the dominant problem. Both Plato and Aristotle thought of the good life as a natural and logical result of their entire philosophic theories. The Epicureans(disciple or student of the Greek philosopher Epicurus), however, made this problem central to their thinking.
EPICURUS taught that the goal of all human activity is pleasure, that happiness is the supreme good for all. But, he cautioned, man should be careful when choosing pleasures. Some immediate pleasures eventually result in pain and suffering. Here is an excellent meal and it is a pleasure to eat it, I eat and eat far beyond reason. I enjoy it all immensely. But later I suffer with indigestion, gout, and other discomforts. Therefore, we need to be able to see way ahead to the consequences of all the pleasures which we enjoy. This will often mean that we will avoid certain immediate pleasures because their eventual consequences are bad.
Further, for Epicurus, mental pleasures are better than physical pleasures, and it is wise to choose pleasures of the intellectual life.
Experience shows, he pointed out, that we obtain pleasure by satisfying desires or by being free from desires. Therefore, we should seek to get rid of desires by satisfying them completely. This brings freedom from pain, the pain of desire, and is therefore good.
The Stoics taught that man’s highest good lay in acting in harmony with the universe. Man, for them, is part of the universe, with a definite function to perform for the complete development of the whole universe. As the ruling power in the universe is reason, so reason should rule each man in his individual actions.
Further, man should submit to the rule of the laws of the universe; he should live according to nature. The good man is one who lives so that he fits into the scheme of nature, obeys its laws, and is determined in all he does by reason which is part of the universal reason.
Thus man must know the laws of the universe. If he knows the good, knows his place in the scheme of things, knows what is expected of him by nature, he will be good. And the result of such living is happiness. Happiness is not to be sought after nor is it to be gained by itself. We do good, live a virtuous life, and happiness inevitably follows.
The early Greek thinkers conceived goodness as a harmony within the universe. Evil for them was only imaginary, the result of a failure to see that apparent evil was actually part of a whole which is good, a discord which is harmony when heard in relation with the rest of the music.
The later Greeks were interested primarily in man’s relation with his fellows. Thus, goodness to them was a matter of the good life. The Stoics sought to reconcile these two positions, but leaned more in the direction of the early Greeks.
Stoicism, a school of thought that flourished in Greek and Roman antiquity. It was one of the loftiest and most sublime philosophies in the record of Western civilization. In urging participation in human affairs, Stoics have always believed that the goal of all inquiry is to provide a mode of conduct characterized by tranquillity of mind and certainty of moral worth.
The Position of the Greco-Religious Thinkers
With the rise of the definitely religious movement in philosophy a sharp distinction was made between the principles of good and evil. This is easily traceable to the Babylonian, Assyrian, and other religious traditions from which the religion of the Western world received much.
These early religions drew a sharp line between light and darkness, life and death, good and evil. Indeed, in many instances they conceived of special gods ruling each realm. Although some of the Greek thinkers relegated evil to matter, they were not as definite about the distinction as were the more religious thinkers
PHILO, for example, thought of God as perfect purity, in no way whatsoever in contact with matter. God was the source of all good, and matter the source of all evil. Like-wise, the spiritual part of man, his mind or soul, is the seat of good; and his body, which is thought of as matter, is the seat of evil.
Consequently, when the soul is incorporated in the body it suffers a fall from divine perfection and becomes predisposed to evil. Thus, the goal of man is freedom from the body and all its sin, and return to Cod and perfect goodness. The position of PLOTINUS was very similar. Matter is the source of evil and God the source of good.
The Ethical Views of the Early Christian Thinkers:-
Thus a definite dualism is to be seen throughout the Western religious tradition, a dualism borrowed in substance from the religions of the early East Christianity accepted this dualism and made it basic to its treatment of the whole problem of sin and redemption.
The Apologists taught that God had created man good, but he turned from God to the flesh, the body. By this, sin came into the world. The Christian interpretation of the story of Adam, the first man, is a picture in symbolic terms of the coming of sin, a sin which was then transmitted to all men as original sin.
Because man is man, a descendant of the first man, he is harassed by evil and must seek salvation through the divine grace of God. SAINT AUGUSTINE found that the presence of evil in the universe gave him no end of trouble.
God, for him, was all good, all perfection. And God created the universe out of nothing. If this be true, how could a good God, all powerful, create a universe in which there was evil? How account for evil in a world created by an all-good God?
To solve this problem, Augustine taught that everything in the universe is good. Even that which appears to be evil to us is actually good in that it fits into the whole pattern of the universe. Shadows, dark spots, are necessary to the beauty of a painting. If seen by themselves, broken away from the whole picture, they appear bad. But when seen in the picture they make possible the beauty of the whole.
Evil, then, is relative for Augustine, and is actually an absence of good just as darkness is absence of light. The evil which we find in the universe is put there by God to make the whole universe good. Further, for Augustine, the goal of all mankind is complete union with God and escape from the world.
Man should turn his back on the pleasures of this world which are thin and pale, and direct his attention wholly to God who is perfect goodness. This union with God is to be attained through love of God as opposed to love of the world.
The Views of the Medieval Christian Thinkers
The position of Augustine is also held very largely by the philosophers of Scholasticism. Believing in an all-good God who created everything, they had to explain apparent evil as actually a part of the good whole and thus actually good.
ABELABD added a new note when he taught that the rightness or wrongness of an act does not lie in the act itself but in the intention of the actor. If one steals from another, the act itself is neutral. If the thief intended it as something good, it was thereby good. “God,” he wrote, “considers not what is done, but in what spirit it is done; and the merit or praise of the agent lies not in the deed, but in the intention.’
If one acts in terms of what he thinks is right, if he believes he is doing good and seeks to do good, he may err, but he does not sin. Goodness, morality, then becomes a matter of conscience. The truly sinful man is one who acts with a desire to do wrong. He is sinful because he shows in his action a deliberate contempt for God.
THOMAS AQUINAS, in his theory of good and evil we find the philosophy of Aristotle joined with the basic principles of Christianity. God made everything, including man, for a purpose, and the highest good of all things is the realization of this purpose. As one realizes the purpose for which he was created, he reveals God’s goodness. Therefore, the highest good is the realization of oneself as God has ordained.
Further, the highest form of action is the contemplation of God. This may be done through reason or faith, but it reaches its height in what Aquinas called “intuition,” a coming to God which can be completed only in the world to come, in heaven.
Aquinas follows Augustine, also, in holding that the goodness or badness of a particular action depends upon the aim or purpose of the actor. An act may have good consequences, but it is not good unless the actor intended it to have these consequences and knew that they would result. However, Aquinas does not hold with Augustine that an evil act may be good if the actor intended it to be so. Intention will not make a bad act good, but it is the only thing that will make a good act truly good.
The best way to attain goodness is to abandon worldly goods and seek die life of God. Thus, the life of the saint in a monastery devoting himself entirely to service to God is ideal. Evil, for Aquinas, is privation, a lack of the good. All things, created by a good God, aim at goodness. When they fail, evil results
The mystic teachings of MEISTER ECKHART emphasize the unity of God and the individuality of man. Since God is the pure unity of the world, the universe, any individuality must be a breaking away from God and therefore evil Consequently, the good life is one which strives to return to the divine unity and become one with God. “Whoever would see God,” he writes, “must be dead to himself and buried in God, in the unrevealed desert Godhead, to become again what he was before he was *
The good life for Eckhart, then, is not one of deeds but one of being. We do not attain goodness by striving to do good. We reach that which is perfect goodness by losing ourselves in the unity of God.
Western religious movement, emphasized the great gulf between God and all that is less than God. Goodness is created by God and is to be found in adjustment to God’s plan or purpose. Evil is in some way attached to matter, the body, or the world. But God, being the sole Creator of the universe, would not create evil. Therefore, evil must not actually be evil, but must be part of the great good.
Western Religion has never been able to solve the problem of evil and sin. On the contrary, Eastern religions were more realistic in this matter. They did not make their gods the creators of the whole universe. Rather they had at least two gods, one the god of goodness and the other the god of evil.
God is thought of as the source of all good, and the Devil is the evil principle. But, to the question “Did God create the Devil?” there is no answer. A dualism of good and evil works well until the attempt is made to account for the creation of the universe; but that presents difficulties which have not been solved.
To Be continued in Part-III
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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.