Gender discrimination pervades India’s socio-economic pyramid. At its upper reaches, we encounter anecdotes of single women entrepreneurs finding it difficult to get bank loans.
According to the report, India has closed 62.5 per cent of its gender gap till date. The country had ranked 140th among countries in the Global Gender Gap Index 2021
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Key Findings for India
There are four sub-index:-
- Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex
- Educational Attainment subindex
- Health and Survival subindex
- Political Empowerment subindex
- Countries such as China, India, Azerbaijan and Pakistan have achieved scores that are lower than 94%, with China slightly progressing since the last edition. The main driver of cross-country variation is the skewed sex ratio at birth.
- China and India together account for about 90%–95% of the estimated 1.2 million to 1.5 million missing female births annually worldwide due to gender-biased prenatal sex selective practices. Further, China, India and Pakistan register excess female mortality rates (below age 5) related to neglect and gender-biased postnatal sex selection practices. The estimated number of ‘missing women’ was 142.6 million in 2020, twice as much than in 1970.
- The countries with the largest economic gender gaps are Iran (just 37.5% of the gender gap closed so far), India (32.6%) , Pakistan (31.6%), Syria (28.5%), Yemen (28.2%), Iraq (22.8%) and Afghanistan (18%).
- In India only 22.3% of women participate in the labour market, translating to a gender gap of 72%.
- When it comes to wages for similar positions, gaps remain even among the best-performing countries, including Iceland.India, El Salvador, Bolivia and Lesotho only 46%–49% of this gap has been closed to date
- Among the countries where the share of women ministers declined the most are India (from 23.1% to 9.1%)
- The gap on Health and Survival has remained substantially stable over the past few years. Although it can be considered virtually closed in most countries, there are still countries—including Qatar (94.8%), Viet Nam (94.5%), Pakistan (94.4%), Azerbaijan (93.9%), India (93.7%) and China (93.5%)— where uneven access to health for women and pre- or post-natal sex selection persist.
- Following the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia is the second-lowest performer on the index.India is the third-worst performer in the region, having closed 62.5% of its gap. Because of its large population, India’s performance has a substantial impact on the South Asia region’s overall performance. Home to 0.65 billion women, India has widened its gender gap from almost 66.8% closed one year ago to 62.5% this year.In addition, only Bhutan and Nepal have demonstrated small but positive progress towards gender parity this year, while all other countries in this region have registered either slightly reduced or stagnant performances.
- Only 22.3% of women in India, 22.6% in Pakistan, and 38.4% in Bangladesh are active in the labour market.
- In India, only 29.2% of technical roles are held by women, and in Pakistan the share is 25.3% and in Afghanistan 19.3%.
- The presence of women in senior roles is even more rare: women make up just 4.1% in Afghanistan, 4.9% in Pakistan, 10.7% in Bangladesh and 14.6% in India. As a result, the disparity in income between men and women is large in most countries. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, the income of an average woman is below 16% of that of an average man, while in India it is 20.7%. Only in Nepal and Bhutan is the gap lower than 50%, as the income earned by a woman is 74% and 58%, respectively, of that of a man
- Female literacy rates are as low as 53.7% in Afghanistan, 65.8% in India, 59.7% in Nepal, 57% in Bhutan and 46.5% in Pakistan, with little sign of closing in the near future
- India has fallen 28 places in the ranking. Most of the decline has occurred on the Political Empowerment subindex, where India has regressed 13.5 percentage points to reach a level of gap closed to date of just 27.6%. The main change that took place this year is the significant decline in the share of women among ministers, which halved, from 23.1% in 2019 to 9.1% in 2021.
- In addition, the share of women in parliament remains stagnant at 14.4% and the share of the last 50 years in which a woman has been head of state is 15.5.
- Decline also took place on the Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex, albeit to a lesser extent. India’s gender gap on this dimension widens by 3% this year, leading to a 32.6% gap closed to date. Among the drivers of this decline are a decrease in women’s labour force participation rate, which fell from 24.8% to 22.3%.
- In addition, the share of women in professional and technical roles declined further to 29.2%. The share of women in senior and managerial positions also remains low: only 14.6% of these positions are held by women and there are only 8.9% of firms with female top managers. Further, women’s estimated earned income is only one-fifth of men’s, which puts India among the bottom 10 globally on this indicator
At the other extreme, in the poverty-ridden ‘red corridor’ that runs along a belt from Jharkhand to Andhra Pradesh, injustices of the most violative kind are observed to have driven women to join the Maoist insurgency.
These phenomena are not recent. But instead of improving, by and large, life for women is worsening in the country. The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Gender Gap Report 2021, released last week, lays bare our silent crisis of gender inequality, aggravated by the covid pandemic in ways that we are yet to fully understand.
India has slipped 28 places to 140th position among 156 countries on the WEF’s Global Gender Gap Index. The country is now 37.5% short of an ideal situation of equality, by its index, a wider gap than reported last year, when we had a 33.2% deficit on the whole.
Back in 2006, when the index began, we were almost 40% short, but even the slight progress made over the past 15 years has been highly uneven; while gains were made on the education and political empowerment of women, we slid sharply on health and economic parameters. Now with covid playing the great unleveller, we have no option but to address this sad state of affairs.
To be sure, the WEF report has bad news for the entire world. The average gap has widened globally over the course of the pandemic year.
It is now 32% short of the index’s ideal score. But many of our deficiencies are pre-covid. Some of the drop in India’s international rank over the past two years, for example, has to do with regression in the field of political power.
The proportion of women ministers more than halved to 9.1% of the total, though our count of female Parliamentarians did not budge from its long stagnancy. Perhaps a greater cause for concern is our poor performance over the past decade-and-a-half on women’s economic opportunities and participation.
Not only has the Indian workforce been turning more predominantly male, senior managerial positions in the corporate sector have not seen sufficient female appointees to correct a steep tilt in favour of men. At the aggregate level, our income disparity is glaring.
Women earn only a fifth of men, which puts India among the world’s worst 10 on this indicator. We fare worse on women’s health and survival, with India beaten to the last rank only by China.
Several efforts have been made to figure out why proportionally fewer Indian women are in paid jobs, despite rising education levels. One explanation is that sociocultural attitudes militate against women going out to work, unless the family lacks sustenance, and deprivation has been in decline for decades.
Another is that families prefer educated mothers to invest time in teaching their kids. Both these motives are said to be influenced by upward income mobility and a quest for better lives.
Yet, the covid setback to both family incomes and gender progress would suggest the reasons are mostly attitudinal. If so, then tax incentives and other schemes are unlikely to get women taking up more jobs.
What we need are new forms of social persuasion, which must go with credible assurances of gender equity in every sphere. It promises to be a long haul. But so is economic success. And no country’s economy can get far without empowered women.
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- Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition, a collective of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway governments, came up with a $1 billion fund.
- LEAF is supported by transnational corporations (TNCs) like Unilever plc, Amazon.com, Inc, Nestle, Airbnb, Inc as well as Emergent, a US-based non-profit.
- The world lost more than 10 million hectares of primary tropical forest cover last year, an area roughly the size of Switzerland.
- Ending tropical and subtropical forest loss by 2030 is a crucial part of meeting global climate, biodiversity and sustainable development goals. Protecting tropical forests offers one of the biggest opportunities for climate action in the coming decade.
- Tropical forests are massive carbon sinks and by investing in their protection, public and private players are likely to stock up on their carbon credits.
- The LEAF coalition initiative is a step towards concretising the aims and objectives of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism.
- REDD+ was created by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It monetised the value of carbon locked up in the tropical forests of most developing countries, thereby propelling these countries to help mitigate climate change.
- It is a unique initiative as it seeks to help developing countries in battling the double-edged sword of development versus ecological commitment.
- The initiative comes at a crucial time. The tropics have lost close to 12.2 million hectares (mha) of tree cover last year according to global estimates released by Global Forest Watch.
- Of this, a loss of 4.2 mha occurred within humid tropical primary forests alone. It should come as no surprise that most of these lost forests were located in the developing countries of Latin America, Africa and South Asia.
- Brazil has fared dismally on the parameter of ‘annual primary forest loss’ among all countries. It has lost 1.7 mha of primary forests that are rich storehouse of carbon. India’s estimated loss in 2020 stands at 20.8 kilo hectares.
- Between 2002-2020, Brazil’s total area of humid primary forest reduced by 7.7 per cent while India’s reduced by 3.4 per cent.
- Although the loss in India is not as drastic as in Brazil, its position is nevertheless precarious. For India, this loss is equivalent to 951 metric tonnes worth carbon dioxide emissions released in the atmosphere.
- It is important to draw comparisons between Brazil and India as both countries have adopted a rather lackadaisical attitude towards deforestation-induced climate change. The Brazilian government hardly did anything to control the massive fires that gutted the Amazon rainforest in 2019.
- It is mostly around May that forest fires peak in India. However, this year India, witnessed massive forest fires in early March in states like Odisha, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Mizoram among others.
- The European Union’s Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service claimed that 0.2 metric tonnes of carbon was emitted in the Uttarakhand forest fires.
- Implementation of the LEAF Coalition plan will help pump in fresh rigour among developing countries like India, that are reluctant to recognise the contributions of their forest dwelling populations in mitigating climate change.
- With the deadline for proposal submission fast approaching, India needs to act swiftly on a revised strategy.
- Although India has pledged to carry out its REDD+ commitments, it is impossible to do so without seeking knowledge from its forest dwelling population.
Context:-
At the recently concluded Leaders’ Summit on Climate in April 2021, Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition, a collective of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway governments, came up with a $1 billion fund plan that shall be offered to countries committed to arrest the decline of their tropical forests by 2030.
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Why LEAF Coalition?
Brazil & India
According to the UN-REDD programme, after the energy sector, deforestation accounts for massive carbon emissions — close to 11 per cent — in the atmosphere. Rapid urbanisation and commercialisation of forest produce are the main causes behind rampant deforestation across tropical forests.
Tribes, Forests and Government
Disregarding climate change as a valid excuse for the fires, Indian government officials were quick to lay the blame for deforestation on activities of forest dwellers and even labelled them “mischievous elements” and “unwanted elements”.
Policy makers around the world have emphasised the role of indigenous tribes and local communities in checking deforestation. These communities depend on forests for their survival as well as livelihood. Hence, they understand the need to protect forests. However, by posing legitimate environmental concerns as obstacles to real development, governments of developing countries swiftly avoid protection of forests and rights of forest dwellers.
For instance, the Government of India has not been forthcoming in recognising the socio-economic, civil, political or even cultural rights of forest dwellers. According to data from the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs in December, 2020 over 55 per cent of this population has still not been granted either individual or community ownership of their lands.
To make matters worse, the government has undertaken systematic and sustained measures to render the landmark Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 ineffective in its implementation. The Act had sought to legitimise claims of forest dwellers on occupied forest land.
Various government decisions have seriously undermined the position of indigenous people within India. These include proposing amendments to the obsolete Indian Forest Act, 1927 that give forest officials the power to take away forest dwellers’ rights and to even use firearms with impunity.
There is also the Supreme Court’s order of February, 2019 directing state governments to evict illegal encroachers of forest land or millions of forest dwellers inhabiting forests since generations as a measure to conserve wildlife. Finally, there is the lack of data on novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) deaths among the forest dwelling population;
Tardy administration, insufficient supervision, apathetic attitude and a lack of political intent defeat the cause of forest dwelling populations in India, thereby directly affecting efforts at arresting deforestation.
Way Forward
Tuntiak Katan, a global indigenous leader from Ecuador and general coordinator of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, aptly indicated the next steps at the Climate Summit:
“The first step is recognition of land rights. The second step is the recognition of the contributions of local communities and indigenous communities, meaning the contributions of indigenous peoples.We also need recognition of traditional knowledge practices in order to fight climate change”
Perhaps India can begin by taking the first step.