Fifty years ago, on the morning of 5 June, the Middle East was about to witness a tectonic shift. It all started at 8.10 am Egyptian time. Israeli jets fitted with rockets started taking off from their bases. Within a few minutes, more than 200 jets, 95 per cent of total air power of the Israel Air Force (IAF), were in the air flying low enough to avoid getting detected by Egyptian radars.
The surprise element was the key to success of the operation. Most of the jets first flew towards the Mediterranean Sea and then turned towards Egypt. Others took the Red Sea route to enter through the southern side. At 8.30 am, the jets were inside the enemy airspace undetected.
Israel’s aim was to render the Egyptian bases unoperational and damage as many jets as possible. Their task was further made easy by the fact that Egyptians parked different types of jets in separate bases. This helped the IAF prioritise the targets, taking out the most lethal ones first. Thanks to a robust intelligence network inside Egypt providing real time information, IAF already knew the locations of all the enemy jets and pilots assigned to them.
At 8.30 am, Israeli jets hit their first target. It was just another day for Egyptian pilots who were having breakfast. They had returned from routine morning patrol. In 30 minutes, IAF had neutralised six air bases and taken out half of the enemy’s air force. By 10.30 am, Egyptian air force, as a fighting force, had ceased to exist.
Though it may sound farcical to suggest that the war didn’t start on 5 June but it isn’t entirely untrue. The events that would culminate into Six-Day War were set in motion weeks ago, if not months.
Which was the one incident most responsible for breaking out of the war?
It depends on who you ask. But one thing is clear. Had Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser not ordered the closure of the Straits of Tiran on 22 May, the war in June would not have commenced. Israel had made its position abundantly clear that it would treat closing the straits as an act of war.
But the Egyptians would not have closed the straits in the first place had Nasser not ordered the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) to pack off and leave on 19 May. (UNEF was stationed in the Sinai Peninsula after the Suez crisis of 1956. They acted as a buffer between Israeli and Egyptian forces.) And there would have been no need to ask the UNEF to leave if the army hadn’t crossed the Suez Canal and entered Sinai.
Why did Nasser send the army into Sinai and oust UNEF? Some commentators point towards the 13 November 1966 incident when Israeli forces raided As Samu’, a village in what was then South Jordan.
The reason being the death of three Israeli paratroopers in a landmine attack by Fatah, a fledgling guerrilla group which was gaining notoriety with such acts of terror. Israel’s patience had run its course. And it tried to punish the perpetrators it thought were hiding in As Samu’ but what was supposed to be a small punishing raid across the border escalated quickly as Jordan forces came face to face with Israeli paratroopers. Many civilians died. King Hussein of Jordan was humiliated. He mocked Nasser for failing to help Palestinians and hiding behind UNEF’s skirts.
It is this comment many construe that led Nasser to send his army across the Suez.
Israel’s Prime Minister Levi Eshkol’s military aide Israel Lior, however, believed that the Six-Day War began on 7 April.
Israel’s patience was wearing thin with Syria too, which was harbouring and supporting guerrilla groups, carrying out terror attacks in Israel. A small skirmish on the Syrian border like the As Samu’ raid quickly escalated into a mini war in which as many as 130 jets got involved. IAF ended up chasing Syrian jets all the way to Damascus and taking a victory lap around the city. After King Hussein, it was Syria’s turn to be humiliated. Egypt did not come to Syria’s defense despite having signed a mutual defense treaty six months back. Once the flag-bearer of Arab nationalism, Nasser was increasingly becoming an object of ridicule.
But all he was trying to do was avoid getting entangled into a needless conflict with Israel. Not least because the Jewish state was any less of an anathema to him but he knew Egypt was not yet ready to take on Israel’s military might. He was biding his time.
His longtime comrade and one of the closest advisers, Abdel Hakim Amer was also egging him on to get rid of UNEF and close the Straits of Tiran but with little success.
Then came the Israeli Independence Day parade which was scheduled to take place in the Israeli part of Jerusalem that year. The thought of Jewish soldiers triumphantly marching on the streets of the city evoked intense passion and anger among the Arab population living in the eastern part. It was suggested that the parade be shifted to another city but Eshkol refused.
However, his government understood the exigency for an unostentatious affair to calm the tempers and decided against parading tanks and artillery. Only if they knew that de-emphasising the affair would have an exact opposite effect.
The Soviets told the Egyptians, pointing to the absence of tanks and artillery in the parade, that Israel was massing armies with heavy artillery on the northern border and preparing to invade Syria. Amer who was itching for war vouched for the authenticity of the Soviets’ intelligence. Nasser found it hard to ignore Amer any longer. Amer had full control over the army and had installed his cronies in important ranks in the army. He caved in.
Israel’s leaders however didn’t lose sleep over the reports of the Egyptian army moving into Sinai. Nasser was just flexing his muscle, they thought. Maybe that’s what Nasser was really doing, moving the army into Sinai as a caution to deter Israel from attacking Syria, allaying any doubts about his leadership of the Arab world and more importantly trying to appease the disgruntled populace, giving them what they wanted.
However he wouldn’t be able to completely control the events he set in motion. The expulsion of UNEF on 19 May and closing of the straits on 22 May set alarm bells ringing in Israel. The generals wanted to preemptively strike Egypt and gain unassailable advantage but Eshkol trod with caution. He didn’t want to go to war without securing the support of the US which was imploring it not to attack first.
Egypt was all set to strike the first blow on 27 May but after the USSR’s intervention, Nasser called off the operation. Jordan signing a mutual defence pact with Egypt on 30 May and the MIG sorties over Israel’s nuclear facility in Dimona were ostensibly the last straws. Israel could sense the noose tightening around its neck. It had waited long enough. On 4 June, the Cabinet decided to take the plunge.
It wouldn’t be wrong to say that Israel had won the war within three hours of firing the first shot. The only concern now was to occupy as much enemy territory as it could before the UN knocked the warring parties to the negotiating table to agree on a ceasefire. The astonishing rate at which the country expanded in six days surpassed even the wildest expectations of its people.
Twelve Things The Six-Day War Changed
First, the most obvious change was in the geography of the region itself. Israel had won 42,000 square miles of extra territory in war booty which made it three and a half times the size it was on 4 June. In less than one week, the Arabs lost Sinai, West Bank, Golan Heights and most important of them all, Jerusalem.
In 1947, the UN partitioned the British Mandate Of Palestine. Israel got only 56 per cent of the land and resembled a moth-eaten entity. But thanks to the 1948 war the Arabs waged to wipe Israel from the face of the earth, Israel ended up with 30 per cent more land than the UN had given it.
The Six-Day War as it was officially christened, evoking the six days of creation, had indeed created a new Middle East.
Second, the accession of territories brought with them a new problem, that of hundreds of thousands of refugees and a completely new citizenry, a hostile one at that, into Israeli fold. It was anyone’s guess whether they would prove to be an asset or a liability.
Given the circumstances, Israel’s leadership would’ve agreed to trade the newly acquired territories in 1967 for peace treaties with Arab nations, however the latter didn’t show any inclination for direct talks.
Israel would do so many years later. In 1982, it returned Sinai to Egypt in exchange for a peace treaty and unilaterally gave up control over Gaza in 2005. While it holds on to the Golan Heights, Israel has handed over its control in some areas in West Bank to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
Third, the war changed the nature of the Israeli state. The addition of lakhs of new people presented its own problems. Giving Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank political rights would mean a dilution of the Jewish nature of Israel but not doing so would invite charges of imperialism and oppression. Israel chose the latter. Until 1981, the occupied territories remained under military rule and then under a civil administration run by a unit in the Defense Ministry.
In just six days, Israel’s status went from a defensive state fighting for its survival to, as Ian Lustick puts it, an imperialist one.
Fourth, the new populace, which was very poor compared to Israeli citizens, solved the problem of Israel’s growing need for low cost mass labour. They took up tasks that Israel’s citizens would rather not do. This proved to be a boon not only for the Israeli economy but also for the poor Arabs as their economic conditions changed dramatically. Political rights remained a far cry but unemployment in Gaza kept falling as more and more refugees found opportunities to work in nearby Israeli towns. Agriculture activity boomed in West Bank where farmers were not only free to trade in East Bank in Jordan but were provided with markets in Israel to the west. Under the guidance of Israeli experts, farmers also started shifting from low-price crops to labour-intensive ones.
Fifth, the peace, however, didn’t follow the improvement in economic conditions of people in the occupied territories. The decisive and one-sided Israeli victory had created a sense of hopelessness in the general population in Arab countries that Israel could not be defeated. Their leaders also realised that engaging Israel in a conventional war would only spell more doom for them.
Egypt and its Arab allies including guerrilla organisations now sought to bleed Israel by a thousand cuts. Egypt with its air force replenished within months of the June war started harassing Israeli forces in Sinai with heavy aerial bombardments along the Suez Canal and raids into Sinai. Its guerrilla allies on the other hand launched terrorist attacks with the help of local Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank. Israel paid them back in the same coin but peace remained elusive.
The Six-Day War had changed the nature of warfare in the region.
Sixth, the main reason why Egypt could recover from the humiliating defeat in the June war so quickly and force the war of attrition on Israel was solely because of the Soviet Union which replenished its arsenal, most importantly its air force. Israel’s complete dominance over its enemies during the 1967 war threatened to reduce the USSR’s dominance in the region. To protect their hard-earned clout, the Soviets decisively shifted towards Arabs, a major geopolitical orientation with great ramifications.
The United States, though sympathetic to Israel before 1967, was trying to keep both sides happy and went to great pains to refute the allegations of collusion with Israel in attacking Egypt.
But with the USSR’s tilt towards the Arabs and the presence of the sizable politically conscious and influential Jewish population in America, it became easier for the US to pivot towards Israel. The war changed a friend into a strategic ally, as Israel’s former ambassador to America, Michael Oren recently put it.
Seventh, the 1967 war changed so much—geography, geopolitics, demographics, economy, politics couldn’t have remain insulated for long. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the Six-Day War sowed the seeds for the growth of the right wing in Israel. The bone of contention was the newly occupied lands which the Labour parties wanted to trade in exchange for long lasting peace agreements with Arabs. Right wing parties vehemently opposed the idea as did traditional Zionists. West Bank and Gaza, they reasoned, were part of the promised land, the Greater Israel. The war threw up a new leader in Menachem Begin. An insignificant entity before the war, the right-wing coalition led by Likud under the leadership of Begin, would go on to form the government in 1977. Since then, the right wing coalition has ruled for the major part of the last four decades.
Eighth, the Six-Day War had an unmistakable impact on the economy. In 1966, the prevailing economic conditions in the country were pretty harsh. Low population growth and decreasing immigration coupled with a drop in foreign investments pushed construction and housing—two very important economic activities in Israel into a downward spiral. Rising unemployment figures dominated the newspapers. But the war changed all that. The construction industry, buoyed by thousands of fresh contracts in newly occupied areas, came out of its coma. Unemployment started dropping and immigration as well as investment picked up as sense of security returned. The tourism industry got a big fillip, too.
Ninth, the economy was not just improving, a structural shift was also taking place. From traditional strongholds of construction and agriculture, people were moving to factories. Availability of cheap Arab labour from the newly occupied territories was of immense help in facilitating this transformation. Israel was reaping millions of dollars in profits from oil wells in Sinai.
It didn’t have a great military ally like Egyptians who had the USSR that could provide them all the weapons they needed. Pushed to the wall, Israel ventured on its own and bet big on defense manufacturing. It paid off and the fruits of their labour weren’t limited to advanced military equipment alone. It had a spillover effect on various industries that would turn Israel, a country of socialist kibbutzes into an innovation nation.
Tenth, the June war put an end to Israel’s social crisis too. The country’s morale in 1966 was sapping due to the failing economy, rising unemployment and increasing terrorist attacks. Forget immigration, even Israeli Jews were fleeing the country. The fact that the people were choosing the Diaspora over the Homeland was insulting to the majority of the people. “There could be no greater blow to the Zionist ego,” as Tom Segev puts it succinctly in his book on the 1967 war.
The war reversed the situation. The post-war country suddenly looked huge. And more than the size of new territories, it was the return of Judaism’s holiest sites under Jewish control after 2,000 years that swelled the Jews throughout the world with immense pride. For Jews, no amount of territory could’ve transcended the symbolism of repossessing the most sacred sites like Temple Mount, Western wall and Biblical towns such as Hebron and Bethlehem.
Before the war, a strain in relations was developing between the Ashkenazi Jews, an educated, elite lot who had immigrated to Israel from Western countries and the Mizrahi Jews, their poorer brethren immigrating in hordes from Arab countries due to increasing hostilities against them. The former felt threatened by the latter’s increasing population. However, the war shattered such ethnic and class barriers. Arabs who were poorer than the Mizrahi Jews now replaced them as a group to be looked down upon.
Eleventh, the June war also had unintended consequences. Before 1967, various guerrilla groups—Fatah, the PLO—were fighting separately, launching attacks separately in their own chaotic ways. The stunning defeat of Arab forces made these groups come together and fight as Palestinians. PLO and Fatah merged. Michael Oren recently opined how “The biggest winners of the Six-Day War” were Palestinians. He couldn’t be more right when he says that the war shaped the Palestinian identity as it exists today because “the concept of a ‘Palestinian’ did not exist as we now know it.”
Twelfth, the 1967 war became a cult which military leaders throughout the world cited and drew their own lessons from. The importance of air power and first strike couldn’t be more pronounced. However, six years later, in 1973, Israel would forget this lesson when Prime Minister Golda Meir decided not to attack first and paid the price for it, thankfully not as heavy as Egypt did in 1967.
The Arabs underestimated Israel’s military might. Egypt’s president, instead of leading his people, ended up being led by them. In his quest to win their hearts and minds, he goaded the country into ruin.
Nasser placed his camaraderie with Amer over the interests of the country. Amer in turn did the same and promoted people to important military ranks based on their loyalty to him rather than competence.
The war also teaches us how the fire of irrational hatred can consume even the best of people. Nasser was a great leader but got into an unwarranted war started by someone else (Syria) and ended up losing the most. King Hussein showed poor judgment. He couldn’t contain himself from attacking Israel after hearing misleading initial reports of Egyptian victories.
There are a lot of lessons to learn for India as well. On how to deal with insurgency in Kashmir or Pakistan’s strategy of warfare through non-state actors. India fares badly at deterrence. Israel hasn’t perfected the concept but has learned to achieve significant successes by imposing very heavy costs on the enemy.
But will we learn? That is the question.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.
On March 31, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released its annual Gender Gap Report 2021. The Global Gender Gap report is an annual report released by the WEF. The gender gap is the difference between women and men as reflected in social, political, intellectual, cultural, or economic attainments or attitudes. The gap between men and women across health, education, politics, and economics widened for the first time since records began in 2006.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]No need to remember all the data, only pick out few important ones to use in your answers.
The Global gender gap index aims to measure this gap in four key areas : health, education, economics, and politics. It surveys economies to measure gender disparity by collating and analyzing data that fall under four indices : economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.
The 2021 Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks 156 countries on their progress towards gender parity. The index aims to serve as a compass to track progress on relative gaps between women and men in health, education, economy, and politics.
Although no country has achieved full gender parity, the top two countries (Iceland and Finland) have closed at least 85% of their gap, and the remaining seven countries (Lithuania, Namibia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Rwanda, and Ireland) have closed at least 80% of their gap. Geographically, the global top 10 continues to be dominated by Nordic countries, with —Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden—in the top five.
The top 10 is completed by one country from Asia Pacific (New Zealand 4th), two Sub-Saharan countries (Namibia, 6th and Rwanda, 7th, one country from Eastern Europe (the new entrant to the top 10, Lithuania, 8th), and another two Western European countries (Ireland, 9th, and Switzerland, 10th, another country in the top-10 for the first time).There is a relatively equitable distribution of available income, resources, and opportunities for men and women in these countries. The tremendous gender gaps are identified primarily in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.
Here, we can discuss the overall global gender gap scores across the index’s four main components : Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.
The indicators of the four main components are
(1) Economic Participation and Opportunity:
o Labour force participation rate,
o wage equality for similar work,
o estimated earned income,
o Legislators, senior officials, and managers,
o Professional and technical workers.
(2) Educational Attainment:
o Literacy rate (%)
o Enrollment in primary education (%)
o Enrollment in secondary education (%)
o Enrollment in tertiary education (%).
(3) Health and Survival:
o Sex ratio at birth (%)
o Healthy life expectancy (years).
(4) Political Empowerment:
o Women in Parliament (%)
o Women in Ministerial positions (%)
o Years with a female head of State (last 50 years)
o The share of tenure years.
The objective is to shed light on which factors are driving the overall average decline in the global gender gap score. The analysis results show that this year’s decline is mainly caused by a reversal in performance on the Political Empowerment gap.
Global Trends and Outcomes:
– Globally, this year, i.e., 2021, the average distance completed to gender parity gap is 68% (This means that the remaining gender gap to close stands at 32%) a step back compared to 2020 (-0.6 percentage points). These figures are mainly driven by a decline in the performance of large countries. On its current trajectory, it will now take 135.6 years to close the gender gap worldwide.
– The gender gap in Political Empowerment remains the largest of the four gaps tracked, with only 22% closed to date, having further widened since the 2020 edition of the report by 2.4 percentage points. Across the 156 countries covered by the index, women represent only 26.1% of some 35,500 Parliament seats and 22.6% of over 3,400 Ministers worldwide. In 81 countries, there has never been a woman head of State as of January 15, 2021. At the current rate of progress, the World Economic Forum estimates that it will take 145.5 years to attain gender parity in politics.
– The gender gap in Economic Participation and Opportunity remains the second-largest of the four key gaps tracked by the index. According to this year’s index results, 58% of this gap has been closed so far. The gap has seen marginal improvement since the 2020 edition of the report, and as a result, we estimate that it will take another 267.6 years to close.
– Gender gaps in Educational Attainment and Health and Survival are nearly closed. In Educational Attainment, 95% of this gender gap has been closed globally, with 37 countries already attaining gender parity. However, the ‘last mile’ of progress is proceeding slowly. The index estimates that it will take another 14.2 years to close this gap on its current trajectory completely.
In Health and Survival, 96% of this gender gap has been closed, registering a marginal decline since last year (not due to COVID-19), and the time to close this gap remains undefined. For both education and health, while progress is higher than economy and politics in the global data, there are important future implications of disruptions due to the pandemic and continued variations in quality across income, geography, race, and ethnicity.
India-Specific Findings:
India had slipped 28 spots to rank 140 out of the 156 countries covered. The pandemic causing a disproportionate impact on women jeopardizes rolling back the little progress made in the last decades-forcing more women to drop off the workforce and leaving them vulnerable to domestic violence.
India’s poor performance on the Global Gender Gap report card hints at a serious wake-up call and learning lessons from the Nordic region for the Government and policy makers.
Within the 156 countries covered, women hold only 26 percent of Parliamentary seats and 22 percent of Ministerial positions. India, in some ways, reflects this widening gap, where the number of Ministers declined from 23.1 percent in 2019 to 9.1 percent in 2021. The number of women in Parliament stands low at 14.4 percent. In India, the gender gap has widened to 62.5 %, down from 66.8% the previous year.
It is mainly due to women’s inadequate representation in politics, technical and leadership roles, a decrease in women’s labor force participation rate, poor healthcare, lagging female to male literacy ratio, and income inequality.
The gap is the widest on the political empowerment dimension, with economic participation and opportunity being next in line. However, the gap on educational attainment and health and survival has been practically bridged.
India is the third-worst performer among South Asian countries, with Pakistan and Afghanistan trailing and Bangladesh being at the top. The report states that the country fared the worst in political empowerment, regressing from 23.9% to 9.1%.
Its ranking on the health and survival dimension is among the five worst performers. The economic participation and opportunity gap saw a decline of 3% compared to 2020, while India’s educational attainment front is in the 114th position.
India has deteriorated to 51st place from 18th place in 2020 on political empowerment. Still, it has slipped to 155th position from 150th position in 2020 on health and survival, 151st place in economic participation and opportunity from 149th place, and 114th place for educational attainment from 112th.
In 2020 reports, among the 153 countries studied, India is the only country where the economic gender gap of 64.6% is larger than the political gender gap of 58.9%. In 2021 report, among the 156 countries, the economic gender gap of India is 67.4%, 3.8% gender gap in education, 6.3% gap in health and survival, and 72.4% gender gap in political empowerment. In health and survival, the gender gap of the sex ratio at birth is above 9.1%, and healthy life expectancy is almost the same.
Discrimination against women has also been reflected in Health and Survival subindex statistics. With 93.7% of this gap closed to date, India ranks among the bottom five countries in this subindex. The wide sex ratio at birth gaps is due to the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices. Besides, more than one in four women has faced intimate violence in her lifetime.The gender gap in the literacy rate is above 20.1%.
Yet, gender gaps persist in literacy : one-third of women are illiterate (34.2%) than 17.6% of men. In political empowerment, globally, women in Parliament is at 128th position and gender gap of 83.2%, and 90% gap in a Ministerial position. The gap in wages equality for similar work is above 51.8%. On health and survival, four large countries Pakistan, India, Vietnam, and China, fare poorly, with millions of women there not getting the same access to health as men.
The pandemic has only slowed down in its tracks the progress India was making towards achieving gender parity. The country urgently needs to focus on “health and survival,” which points towards a skewed sex ratio because of the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices and women’s economic participation. Women’s labour force participation rate and the share of women in technical roles declined in 2020, reducing the estimated earned income of women, one-fifth of men.
Learning from the Nordic region, noteworthy participation of women in politics, institutions, and public life is the catalyst for transformational change. Women need to be equal participants in the labour force to pioneer the societal changes the world needs in this integral period of transition.
Every effort must be directed towards achieving gender parallelism by facilitating women in leadership and decision-making positions. Social protection programmes should be gender-responsive and account for the differential needs of women and girls. Research and scientific literature also provide unequivocal evidence that countries led by women are dealing with the pandemic more effectively than many others.
Gendered inequality, thereby, is a global concern. India should focus on targeted policies and earmarked public and private investments in care and equalized access. Women are not ready to wait for another century for equality. It’s time India accelerates its efforts and fight for an inclusive, equal, global recovery.
India will not fully develop unless both women and men are equally supported to reach their full potential. There are risks, violations, and vulnerabilities women face just because they are women. Most of these risks are directly linked to women’s economic, political, social, and cultural disadvantages in their daily lives. It becomes acute during crises and disasters.
With the prevalence of gender discrimination, and social norms and practices, women become exposed to the possibility of child marriage, teenage pregnancy, child domestic work, poor education and health, sexual abuse, exploitation, and violence. Many of these manifestations will not change unless women are valued more.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]2021 WEF Global Gender Gap report, which confirmed its 2016 finding of a decline in worldwide progress towards gender parity.
Over 2.8 billion women are legally restricted from having the same choice of jobs as men. As many as 104 countries still have laws preventing women from working in specific jobs, 59 countries have no laws on sexual harassment in the workplace, and it is astonishing that a handful of countries still allow husbands to legally stop their wives from working.
Globally, women’s participation in the labour force is estimated at 63% (as against 94% of men who participate), but India’s is at a dismal 25% or so currently. Most women are in informal and vulnerable employment—domestic help, agriculture, etc—and are always paid less than men.
Recent reports from Assam suggest that women workers in plantations are paid much less than men and never promoted to supervisory roles. The gender wage gap is about 24% globally, and women have lost far more jobs than men during lockdowns.
The problem of gender disparity is compounded by hurdles put up by governments, society and businesses: unequal access to social security schemes, banking services, education, digital services and so on, even as a glass ceiling has kept leadership roles out of women’s reach.
Yes, many governments and businesses had been working on parity before the pandemic struck. But the global gender gap, defined by differences reflected in the social, political, intellectual, cultural and economic attainments or attitudes of men and women, will not narrow in the near future without all major stakeholders working together on a clear agenda—that of economic growth by inclusion.
The WEF report estimates 135 years to close the gap at our current rate of progress based on four pillars: educational attainment, health, economic participation and political empowerment.
India has slipped from rank 112 to 140 in a single year, confirming how hard women were hit by the pandemic. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two Asian countries that fared worse.
Here are a few things we must do:
One, frame policies for equal-opportunity employment. Use technology and artificial intelligence to eliminate biases of gender, caste, etc, and select candidates at all levels on merit. Numerous surveys indicate that women in general have a better chance of landing jobs if their gender is not known to recruiters.
Two, foster a culture of gender sensitivity. Take a review of current policies and move from gender-neutral to gender-sensitive. Encourage and insist on diversity and inclusion at all levels, and promote more women internally to leadership roles. Demolish silos to let women grab potential opportunities in hitherto male-dominant roles. Work-from-home has taught us how efficiently women can manage flex-timings and productivity.
Three, deploy corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds for the education and skilling of women and girls at the bottom of the pyramid. CSR allocations to toilet building, the PM-Cares fund and firms’ own trusts could be re-channelled for this.
Four, get more women into research and development (R&D) roles. A study of over 4,000 companies found that more women in R&D jobs resulted in radical innovation. It appears women score far higher than men in championing change. If you seek growth from affordable products and services for low-income groups, women often have the best ideas.
Five, break barriers to allow progress. Cultural and structural issues must be fixed. Unconscious biases and discrimination are rampant even in highly-esteemed organizations. Establish fair and transparent human resource policies.
Six, get involved in local communities to engage them. As Michael Porter said, it is not possible for businesses to sustain long-term shareholder value without ensuring the welfare of the communities they exist in. It is in the best interest of enterprises to engage with local communities to understand and work towards lowering cultural and other barriers in society. It will also help connect with potential customers, employees and special interest groups driving the gender-equity agenda and achieve better diversity.