The Great Gender Divide: Globally, young women are becoming more liberal than men, but what about India?

 

There is evidence globally of a growing gender divide on ideological lines. In the past decade, young women are becoming more liberal. What about India?Not so long ago, we’d look at generations as a whole. Millennials think this about that, or this is what Gen Z believes. Now it turns out that around the world, men and women under the age of 30 have increasingly divergent views. Women have become more liberal in the past decade; men of the same age, more conservative. “Gen Z is two generations, not one,” writes John Burn-Murdoch in the Financial Times [gift link]. “In countries on every continent, an ideological gap has opened up between young men and women.” American women have become more liberal since the 1990s, finds a new Gallup poll and the shift is more evident among young women and senior women—up by 11 points.

When it comes to comparisons with men, women aged 18-30 are 30 percentage points more liberal than men of the same age.

There’s a similar gap to be found in Germany. In the UK, the gap is around 25 percentage points.

Using data from the Gallup poll, analysis of general social surveys of Korea and the British Election Study, FT reports even starker divisions outside the west – in China, for instance and South Korea.

“As long as Korean men continue to dominate management and socialise with other men, they are immersed in cultures of self-righteous sexism,” writes Alice Evans, a visiting fellow at Stanford who is working on her book, The Great Gender Divergence. South Korean women, on the other hand, are increasingly feminist. “Inspired and emboldened, they have shared stories of abuse and publicly supported each other.”

The India story

“The first signs of a challenge to the status quo are now visible,” write Rahul Verma and Ankita Barthwal of the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) in this 2020 article published in Mint, Is India on the Cusp of a Gender Revolution? The change is being driven largely by young, educated women. Looking the 2020 You-Guv-Mint-CPR Millennial survey, Verma and Barthwal examine gender preferences across marriage, parenting, professional space, friendship and politics.

The similarities in career aspiration, they say, are “driven at least in part by the greater equality of opportunities between men and women.” It signals the “weakening of gendered norms in dictating career choices of women.” For instance, when it comes to dream careers, men and women with the same educational qualifications have strikingly similar aspirations.

But differences are emerging as well.

For instance, an equal number of men and women want to get married, but more women than men—70% to 62% of the 10,005 respondents across 184 towns and cities interviewed online--said they’d prefer love marriages. Women also want to marry later; 19% said after the age of 31, only 14% of men said they’d rather marry after that age. Women also want fewer children than men: 65% of men wanted two children, among women, 58%.In terms of friendships, it’s women who are more likely than men to have friends outside of identity circles like caste, religion or gender. Just 13% of women said they had no friends outside their caste (20% for men); 15% of women said they had no friends outside their religion (21% for men), and 18% had no friends outside their gender (25% for men). This actually is remarkable when you consider the restrictions and policing of women’s mobility and movements.

It’s too early yet to see a trend, cautions Verma. “We might have green shoots but I’m not yet seeing a trend,” he said. “Certainly, young women are becoming more politically inclined but women are still behind on a lot of parameters.” Two possible reasons are being offered for this gendered divergence. The first is the impact and fallout of the #MeToo movement. As women came forward to share their experiences of workplace sexual harassment, they found an online movement that gave them a democratic, open space. It helped create virtual networks around the world. And it primed women to speak up and create resistance on a range of issues. In Iran, for instance, the movement against enforced head scarves. But the movement also created a solidarity of women who found they could connect very quickly around the world and organise at least virtual sisterhood networks.

The second could be the roll back of hard-won rights with the most obvious being the back pedalling in the US in June 2022 on Roe v Wade, which ended the Constitutional right to abortion.

But, for me, there’s a third crucial reason. When it comes to challenging the status quo of patriarchal societies, where men are literally served hand and foot by an army of mothers, sisters, wives and daughters, those to gain the most are women. Men have everything to lose and women have everything to gain.

“There is a huge rise in aspiration among young women,” says Shrayana Bhattacharya, the author of Desperately Seeking Shahrukh Khan. But, “young men are not being able to adapt to these new aspiration. They are not being raised to cope with this new generation of aspirational women.”

So, while we might not yet be at a Venus/Mars divide, women are increasingly questioning the roles into which they have been slotted. Change is coming.

The following article is an excerpt from Namita Bhandare’s Mind the Gap. Read the rest of the newsletter here

Source: Hindustan Times, 18/02/24

Does the Indian judiciary have a ‘patriarchy problem’?

 

As Justice Fathima Beevi, the first woman Supreme Court justice in India, passes away, a look at the representation of women in the Indian judiciary.

Justice Fathima Beevi, the first Indian woman to become a Supreme Court judge, died on Thursday at the age of 96 in Kollam, Kerala. With her appointment to the SC in 1989, Justice Beevi became the first Muslim woman judge of the Supreme Court, as well as the first woman Supreme Court Justice in Asia.

Even as she acknowledged that the judiciary is a patriarchal institution, Justice Beevi also famously said that she has “opened the door” for women with her appointment.

What is the representation of women in India’s Supreme Court?

Since 1989, only 10 women have made it to the Supreme Court. Currently, there are only three female judges of the 33 Supreme Court judges – Justices Hima Kohli; Bela Trivedi; and BV Nagarathna.While Justice Nagarathna is in line to become the first-ever female Chief Justice of India on September 25th, 2027, her tenure will be only 36 days.However, the appointment of Justices Kohli, Nagarathna, and Trivedi to the top court in 2021 created history, as this marked the first time that so many females were appointed to the SC in one go. Additionally, this was significant as for the first time we had four female judges in the SC at once, the highest number so far.

Apart from this, there have been only eight other female judges in the history of India’s apex court. They include Justices Sujata Manohar, Ruma Pal, Gyan Sudha Misra, Ranjana Desai, R. Banumathi, Indu Malhotra, and Indira Banerjee and Fathima Beevi.

This means that among the total 268 judges in the Supreme Court’s history, only 11 have been women. In other words, only 4.1% of all Supreme Court judges have been women, while the remaining 96% are men.

Is the situation in High Courts any better?

Presently, India has 25 high courts with a total sanctioned strength of 1,114 judges. However, according to the Department of Justice’s website, only 782 judges are working while the remaining 332 judges’ posts are vacant. Among these, only 107 judges, or 13% of all HC judges, are female.

Currently, none of the country’s 25 HCs have a female chief justice, barring the Gujarat High Court, where the collegium appointed Justice Sunita Agarwal in July this year because there weren’t any women HC CJs in the country.

Responding to a question by Lok Sabha MP Asaduddin Owaisi on the representation of weaker sections among high court judges, Union law minister Arjun Ram Meghwal said in July that appointments to the higher judiciary are made under Articles 124, 217, and 224 of the Constitution, which don’t provide reservation “for any caste or class of persons.”

Despite this, the Centre requested that HC CJs duly consider suitable candidates who are women, minorities, scheduled castes, or tribes, among others, while sending proposals for appointing judges, to “ensure social diversity” in the process, Meghwal said.

Before this, in February, while responding to a question by Rajya Sabha MP Rakesh Sinha on the strength of female judges and lawyers in the high courts and the Supreme Court, the then Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju revealed, “As on 31.01.2023, in the High Courts, against the sanctioned strength of 1108 Judges 775 Judges are working out of which 106 are women Judges and 669 are male Judges. The percentage of women Judges is 9.5% of the total strength and 13.6% of the working strength of High Court Judges. At present no women Chief Justice is working in any High Court of the country.”

Speaking of the subordinate judiciary, a 2018 study by the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy found that while representation of women in the lower judiciary is relatively higher at 27%, it hit a glass ceiling in higher appointments — as district judges and subsequently at the high court level.

What is the situation for the lower judiciary?

In its 2018 study on the representation of women in the lower judiciary, Vidhi found that there were 15,806 judges in the lower judiciary between March and July 2017.

The report found that only in three of the smallest states — Goa, Meghalaya, and Sikkim, with a collective total of a mere 103 judges — did the percentage of women judges cross 60%. Barring Telangana and Puducherry, the percentage of women judges remained below 40% for all other states, regardless of geography, cultural considerations, or other differences.

Though there is no reservation for women in the higher judiciary, several states have provided quotas for women in the lower judiciary, including Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttarakhand, which provide between 30% and 35% of the total seats for which recruitment is done through direct appointment.

More recently, another study titled the India Justice Report (IJR) 2022 revealed that “only 13% of High Court judges and 35% of Subordinate Court judges are women.” At the level of district courts, Goa had the highest, or 70%, of women judges, while Meghalaya (62.7%), Telangana (52.8%), and Sikkim (52.4%) came close behind, the report said 

So why is there a lack of Indian women’s representation in the judiciary?

Reasons for the lack of female representation in the judiciary include an entrenched “old boys’ club mentality”, which makes it harder for women to lobby for judicial posts.

Speaking to The Guardian in 2017, senior advocate Indira Jaising pointed out the small courtesies offered by men to other men, such as the chance to have their cases heard first, the friendly body language of male judges when speaking to male lawyers and said, “It gets to be depressing not to have a community to bond with. [Women] are increasing now, but they’re also not very bonded, they are isolated.”

Besides this, factors like sexual harassment, clients not trusting women advocates with high-stake cases and lack of supportive infrastructure, from toilets to maternity leave also contribute to higher attrition rates of women in judiciary and litigation as well.

The lower judiciary is better than the High Court and Supreme Court. That’s perhaps because entry to the lower judiciary is through an examination, while the High Court and Supreme Court are decided by the collegium which works through informal channels of picking candidates.

In April 2021, while hearing an application filed by the Supreme Court Women Lawyers Association for intervention in the case ‘M/s PLR Projects Pvt Ltd v Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd’, where the issue of unfilled vacancies of HC judges was being considered, former CJI SA Bobde underscored that appointments are not an institutional issue but a matter of finding the right woman.

“Chief Justices of high courts have stated that many women advocates, when invited to become judges, declined the offer citing domestic responsibilities about children studying in Class 12 etc,” Bobde said.

Several female members of the bar responded, including Bombay-based advocate Veena Gowda, who said, “There are many men who refuse judgeship because they have a successful practice and do not want to take a cut in their earnings. But has that stopped the collegium from seeking more men and making them judges?”

Written by Khadija Khan

Source: Indian Express, 26/11/23

The Gender Snapshot 2023 Report

 he United Nations has released a report stating that the goal of achieving gender equality by 2030, as set by the U.N., is unlikely to be realized due to deeply ingrained biases against women in various sectors such as health, education, employment, and politics. The report, titled “The Gender Snapshot 2023,” highlights that active resistance to gender equality and chronic underinvestment are key factors slowing progress and even leading to reversals in some cases.

Issues like unequal access to sexual and reproductive health, political underrepresentation, economic disparities, and a lack of legal protection contribute to this challenge. The report also calls attention to setbacks for women and girls in conflict-affected regions and the adverse impact of climate change.

What is the status of poverty among women according to the report?

The report notes that one in every ten women today, or 10.3%, lives in extreme poverty, defined as having less than $2.15 a day. If current trends continue, it predicts that 8% of the world’s female population will still be living in extreme poverty in 2030, with a significant proportion in Sub-Saharan Africa.

How does the report assess the status of education for girls and young women globally?

While access to education is increasing for both boys and girls, the report reveals that millions of girls never enter a classroom or complete their education, especially in conflict-affected areas. It estimates that up to 129 million girls and young women may be out of school globally in 2023, with an estimated 110 million still out of school in 2030 if current trends persist.

What financial measures does the report suggest are needed to achieve gender equality by 2030?

The report estimates that $6.4 trillion per year is required across 48 developing countries to achieve gender equality in various key areas by 2030. It calls for increased funding for programs promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment. The report warns of an annual shortfall of $360 billion if current government expenditures continue on their current trajectory, and it appeals for additional funding to bridge this gap.

Gaping gap: Editorial on pay gap between men and women

 Psychological stress is also the result of embedded discrimination

An important sign of gender inequality across the world is the pay gap between men and women doing the same job and with the same level of productivity. Globally, women earn only 77 cents on an average for every dollar earned by a man. This gap is present in India too, and may be worsening over time. Between April and June 2022, the female wage rate ranged across states from just over 50% to 93.7% in rural India, and from just under 50% to 100.8% in cities. The gap in rural areas has worsened over the last decade in most states. The urban gap has, however, diminished. The data have been released by the National Statistical Office in the report, Women and Men in India 2022. In some states where the male wage is among the highest in India, the gender gap is also the widest. The data do not reveal any obvious patterns. According to the report, in the states of West Bengal, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh, the rural wage gap has increased by more than 10% between 2011-12 to 2022. These three states have different patterns of development, ranging from very rapid to quite slow. The figures are perhaps indicative of the deep-rooted patriarchal belief that women are less productive and more likely to leave the labour force or be absent.

The pay gap is not only unfair in terms of the ethics of equal pay for equal work but it also has long-term consequences for the economic development of a nation. The lifetime earnings of women turn out to be less compared to men. Women often end up in poverty despite having similar wage employment. Poverty is disempowering. Thus, the ability of a woman to have an effective influence over decisions affecting her own life, such as education, health, personal expenses and childcare, is likely to be poor. This engenders low self-esteem and self-worth, reinforcing beliefs of gender inequality. Psychological stress is also the result of embedded discrimination. In some situations where women may have other job opportunities available, they may not work for the same employer for long. This creates a self-fulfilling condition of lower productivity for women. This is caused by the fact that they are either constantly on the lookout for higher-paying jobs or for matrimonial alliances to augment their access to a higher family income. Getting rid of the wage gap and other forms of discrimination is not too difficult, provided there is adequate political will among those who govern.

Source: Telegraph, 27/03/23

Ripple effect: Editorial on study claiming gender parity helps prolong life expectancies

 Returning education to girls and boys, along with other incentives for closing the gender gap, should be prioritised on a war footing.

Meeting social welfare goals — gender equality, justice, and empowerment — can, at times, yield unexpected benefits. A new global study published in the journal, PLOS Global Public Health, bears evidence of this. The said research has hypothesised that gender parity can prolong life expectancies of both men and women. While the correlations between gender equality and economic and health benefits are well established, the relationship between gender equality and life expectancy has not been explored extensively; this makes the findings of the report interesting. This first-of-its-kind research used a modified global gender gap index developed by the World Economic Forum and examined data in four spheres — economic opportunity, education, health and political representation — across 156 countries from 2010 to 2021. Excluding the health parameter, it was found that a 10% rise in mGGGI resulted in an increase of 4.3 months in women’s life expectancy; the figure for men is 3.5 months for the year, 2021. This indicates that even though the gender gap in life expectancy widens initially, the ripple effect of a — utopian? — gender-equal society would ultimately benefit men’s longevity. The study offers some important deductions. It challenges, indeed dismantles, the myth of gender parity being conducive to women’s welfare only. It also reinforces the importance of a gender-equal world at a time when disparities between the sexes have been amplified by the pandemic.

António Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, has rued that the decades of advances made in gender equality are being wound back at an alarming rate and that it would take another 300 years to close the global gender gap if the current — regressive — trends continue unchecked. Several global surveys have also validated Mr Guterres’ concern and the situation in India is no better. According to the WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report 2022, India stands at 135 out of 146 countries. The need of the hour is to arrest the decelerating momentum. Several studies have shown that developing gender sensitivity early in life can positively impact equality. Interestingly, the PLOS study too emphasises educational equality. Dishearteningly, the recent All India Survey of Higher Education report has shown that the Covid-19 pandemic has widened the gender gap in higher education. Returning education to girls and boys, along with other incentives for closing the gender gap, should be prioritised on a war footing.

Source: Telegraph India, 16/03/23

Gender equitable world by 2030 is a distant dream

 n 1936, Reza Shah Pehlavi, stopped women from wearing the hijab which many believe ‘more to be in tune with the prevalent tradition and culture of the majority of women than on any devout religious beliefs’

I ran has erupted into a frenzy of protests once again with the rallying cries of ‘Women’, ‘Life, ‘Liberty’, in the aftermath of the custodial death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-yearold Kurdish-Iranian woman, arrested by the Iranian morality police for violations of the ‘hijab code’.

 In 1983, Ayatollah Khomeini introduced mandatory hijab wearing for women and girls above the age of nine in public places. Over the years, Iranian women underwent several restrictions, the latest being the government decree this year barring women’s entry into government offices, banks and in public transport without a complete hijab. 

While the headquarters of the office for the promotion of virtues and prevention of vices, with a renewed vigour embarked on facial recognition technology for tracking offenders, the ‘Morality Police’ took up increased patrolling, arrests and detentions. Under the Islamic Constitution, women in Iran are subjected to a slew of discriminatory civil and criminal laws which segregate them from men, punish them disproportionately, and deprive them of equal rights in personal freedom and family laws.

. Domestic violence is not a crime in Iran, while marital rape is legal. In most of the cases, victims of non-marital rapes are discouraged from reporting, and even if they venture to do so, they are often slapped with charges like adultery, which is punishable with execution. A US-based Iranian academic remarked that in ‘Iranian politics women’s body played out differently at different times’. 

In 1936, Reza Shah Pehlavi, stopped women from wearing the hijab which many believe ‘more to be in tune with the prevalent tradition and culture of the majority of women than on any devout religious beliefs’, while the religious establishment considered it as a ‘blow to its values and power’. With the establishment of an Islamic regime, women’s veil was reimposed as a part of ‘Islamic identity’.

 However, many religious scholars and theologists opined that Muslim religious writings are not entirely clear on whether women should veil, some others are of the view that even if it is mentioned in the Quran, it is more for separation and protection of women’s modesty. Nevertheless, a 2020 survey in Iran disclosed that 58 per cent of the surveyed informed that they don’t believe in the hijab altogether, around 72 per cent opposed the compulsory hijab, while 15 per cent insist on legal obligation to wear the hijab in public. 

“The present generation youth living in a securitised State with a crumbling economy, isolated from the rest of the world, has had enough of it,” commented an Iranian affairs expert. Many feel that the large number of killings and arrests signifies that the ongoing demonstrations, in which, men have also joined, are now for a broader battle for serious political changes, and not limited to fighting against the ‘gender apartheid’. 

Are such flagrant violations of women’s bodily rights restricted to Iran alone? No, they are not. In postRoe America, women are also up in arms with slogans like ‘My body, my choice’, ‘Bans off our bodies’ et al. Many legal analysts commented that the US government regulates women more than guns, as the SC while striking down the 100-year-old New York gun restrictions, immediately after the Roe decisions, interdicted the States from legislating their own gun laws, whereas in overturning Roe, it allowed States to enact abortion restrictions. Abortion care is now unavailable in 14 States.

Further, states like Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Ohio, and South Dakota are coming up with stricter abortion bans. Notwithstanding, pro-life conservatives are not happy with the enforcement of the restrictions, and are demanding more digital surveillance. Texas is framing a law that would require internet providers to block all abortion pill websites. Moreover, some research studies reported about “gross gender bias in medicine……..and that reproductive health conditions are commonly ignored.” Nevertheless, this year’s midterm elections showed some pro-choice gains, and Democrats could score critical wins in Michigan, California, Pennsylvania and also in red States like Kentucky and Montana.

While President Biden has been limited in his ability to protect abortion access, women in the oldest democracy await the outcome of the 2024 Presidential elections, critical for restoration of universal abortion care. Looking at India, about 30 per cent of women, 31.6 per cent urban and 24.2 per cent rural, in the world’s largest democracy, reportedly, have been victims of physical, emotional or sexual abuse within the four walls of their homes, mostly by their intimate partners, and a large number of such cases (77 per cent) remain unreported, mainly, for fear of victimblaming (NFHS-5).

 India is not among the fifty countries which have outlawed marital rape. In 21st century India, internalised patriarchy, conservative societal norms and deeply ingrained gender favouritism still condition women’s behaviour like what to wear, where to go or whom to marry, etc. No wonder that an actress’s outfit has recently created a political storm, while the growing vigilantism against ‘love jihad’ reflects a new trend in ‘gender governance’. 

The nations of the world under the aegis of the United Nations pledged to turn the world genderequitable by 2030′. Nevertheless, this year’s Global Goalkeepers report, belied any such hopes, and that it is not likely to be reached until at least 2108. As many women’s rights protagonists contend, it is discriminatory social norms that perpetuate systemic gender imbalance. Global efforts must counter such regressive trends, both in policy framework and implementation process, by involving multiple actors from community leaders and civil society to governments.

ARCHANA DATTA

Source: The Statesman, 8/01/23

Real picture: Editorial on abysmally low representation of women in entertainment industry

 Despite the need to correct India’s gender imbalance, serious challenges persist. The percentage of women in the country is 48.04; yet, sectoral representation of women remains abysmal. The entertainment sector is a classic example. India is one of the fastest-evolving media and entertainment markets globally, producing the highest number of films every year. But a recent study conducted jointly by Ormax Media and Film Companion and supported by the streaming platform, Amazon Prime Video, shows that only 10 per cent of key industry roles — editing,directing, writing, design, cinematography — were held by women. The survey, which analysed 150 films and series across eight languages, found that none of the 56 mainstream theatrical films that were surveyed was directed or edited by a woman. Male actors also spoke three times more than women when it came to trailers, while film promotions remain male-centric. Over the top platforms were found to be a tad more inclusive,with more than 60 per cent passing the Bechdel test — a measure of representation of women in fiction — against more than half of mainstream cinema that has failed to improve its poor record since 2019. The report, a first of its kind, confirms suspicions about entrenched prejudice. Mainstream entertainment remains discernibly skewed when it comes to gender balance.That perhaps explains the stereotypical representation of women in the content of popular cinema. OTT platforms may be open to exploring women-centric content, but a lot more needs to be done to ensure inclusion. Correcting this imbalance is important, not least because popular cinema and digital content play an instrumental role in shaping public consciousness.

This is not to suggest that the entertainment industry is the only culprit. Estimates suggest that more than 90 per cent of women workers exited the workforce during the pandemic, making the labour force even more lopsided. The presence of women in the top echelons of India Inc is sparse. Little wonder then that the Global Gender Gap report predicted that it will take about 197 years for countries in South Asia — India is among them — to achieve full gender parity. The prime minister,Narendra Modi, has hailed “naari shakti” as the beacon of hope. High rhetoric will not do. The dodgy nature of government commitment towards gender parity is evident from the traditional inertia on, say, the women’s reservation bill. That is but one instance of the gap between word and deed of successive regimes

Source: The Telegraph, 26/08/22

This is what keeps educated women out of the workforce

 A recent international Deloitte survey reports how women’s workplaces are driving them out of full-time jobs, while the pandemic years have only made things worse in terms of burnout and work/life balance. A few vignettes from our study of educated, middle-class, non-working women in Delhi illustrate this:

“My husband has a lung problem; he and my teenage kids are on their computers and I am in the kitchen the whole day. We have our allocated spaces to avoid Covid; he can’t work if he has doubts…”“We cannot step out, someone delivers our groceries; my husband says he may get ill if we go out.”“Hygiene and care is important and I need to be with my teenage children once they’re home, I cannot leave them to the maids. But I’m in the kitchen all day since Covid arrived”.“I did a PhD from AIIMS in biotechnology and worked there, then my husband moved from Delhi and we had a daughter… Since Covid began, I did some online classes with school children, so I can manage my child and WFH husband”.In India, low and declining levels of women’s workforce participation demonstrated in official data has stimulated research seeking to understand demand and supply side drivers. Another approach is to look at factors influencing decisions of non-working women. NSS data suggests that non-working women respond positively when asked if they are willing to work part-time. What relevance does this have for educated women? Based on interviews before and during the pandemic, we explored some of these questions. There are societal patterns that have emerged in the social milieu of education and work, wherein boys become family breadwinners while girls prioritise functions of care and reproductive work. How does this play out in the lives of women?One respondent said: “I have a lot of girl cousins, and what I saw was that they went to school and college while they waited to marry”. Anita, in her mid-40s, with a postgraduate degree in management and 12 years of corporate sector experience, gave up her job to support her children at the crucial “end of school and college entry” moment. Sudesh, in her mid-40s, with long experience in HR, started her own recruitment company. Concerns over the security of her school-going children, apart from domestic responsibilities, mean that she now works intermittently. Neera, in her late 40s, has a Bachelors and Masters degree in English and Management respectively; and 10 years of corporate sector experience. Having married a colleague, she had twin girls, hoped to get back to work, but one of the twins was autistic: “This was the end of corporate work for me; autism is a complex condition with medical, behavioural, and developmental issues, you have to immerse yourself in finding solutions.”

“Marriage is not so important these days, career is,” said 47-year-old Mohini, while speaking about her daughter, although she quit work once her daughter was 7. “My job was not a 9-to-5 one, I never got home before 7 pm; I had no time to see to my daughter,” Mohini added. She started a handicrafts business, which is on hold now as her child approaches the school-leaving stage. Another respondent said: “I got married and was on night shifts. Work was not possible without family support and there was no one to take care of the kids. ”Running through all these conversations are rigid workplace demands, lack of sustained family/social support, personal responsibility to guide children and ensure their security. This reflects absence of good-quality childcare, counselling and mentoring. These inexorably influence choices. Educated women, however, exercise agency. Many in our sample actively engage in voluntary and paid activities including teaching, home-based marketing, consulting, tutoring etc. Periods of hectic work are interspersed by spells of no work. Such productive work contributes to society and economy, but being intermittent and often unpaid or voluntary, it goes unrecorded. For women to work consistently, during pandemics or otherwise, we need stronger supportive infrastructures. Then we may not face the bewildering situation of poverty driving women into the workforce, while education seems to drive them out of it. The choice then need not be between familial care and pursuing careers.

Written by Ratna M Sudarshan , Mala Khullar

Source: Indian Express, 5/04/22

Boys at greater risk of repeating grades, failing to complete education than girls: UNESCO

 Boys are more likely than girls to repeat primary grades in 130 out of 142 countries, with data indicating their poorer progression through school, according to a new Global Education report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

The report titled ‘Leave no child behind: Global report on boys’ disengagement from education’ pointed out that no less than 132 million boys of primary and secondary school age are out of school.

It said boys are more likely than girls to experience physical bullying and are often targeted because of their real or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity or expression (SOGIE).

“Boys are more likely than girls to repeat primary grades in 130 out of 142 countries, with data indicating their poorer progression through school. In 57 countries, with data on learning poverty, 10-year-old boys fare worse than girls in mastering reading skills and adolescent boys continue to fall behind girls at the secondary level.

“While girls are more likely than boys to never attend school, boys in many countries are at higher risk of failing to advance and complete their education. As it stands, 132 million boys are currently out of school,” the report stated.

Shedding light on the factors driving boys’ disengagement from education, the UN report attributed the trend to harsh discipline, corporal punishment, gendered norms, poverty and the need to work, among major reasons.

“Poverty and the need to work, for instance, can lead boys to drop out. Gendered norms and expectations can also affect their desire to learn. In particular, certain subjects can run counter to traditional expressions of masculinity, making them unpopular with boys. Harsh discipline, corporal punishment and other forms of violence at school also negatively impact boys’ academic achievement, while increasing absenteeism and dropouts.

“In many countries, boys are at greater risk than girls of repeating grades, failing to complete different education levels and having poorer learning outcomes in school. Where previously boys’ disadvantage seemed most notable in high- or upper-middle-income contexts at the beginning of the millennium, this has shifted and now includes several low- and lower-middle-income countries,” it said.

The report noted that secondary education is where boys’ disadvantage is most prevalent.

“The right to education remains unfulfilled for many boys. Far too many children and youth of primary and secondary school age are out of school. Just over half of them are boys. It has been a concern that COVID-19 pandemic would lead to an increase in school dropouts. In 2020, the last school year before the pandemic, an estimated 259 million children and youth of primary and secondary school age were out of school, 132 million of whom were boys.

“There will not be a clear picture of Covid-19 effects on enrolments before the end of 2022,” it said.

At the global level, almost no country with data has achieved gender parity at the tertiary level.

The gender parity index data in 2019 for tertiary enrolment showed 88 men for every 100 women enrolled at tertiary level. While previously boys’ disengagement and dropout was a concern mainly in high-income countries, several low- and middle-income countries have seen a reversal in gender gaps, with boys now lagging behind girls in enrolment and completion.

“In 73 countries, less boys than girls are enrolled in upper-secondary education. In Mathematics, on the other hand, the gender gap that once worked against girls at the start of the millennium has narrowed or equalised with boys in half of all countries with data.

“Practices such as streaming of classes and gender segregation contribute to boys’ low motivation, underachievement and disengagement from education. Conflict and forced migration exacerbate challenges in accessing and completing education. Language barriers, mobility and discrimination contribute to educational exclusion,” the UNESCO report mentioned.

Experts pointed out that prolonged school closures and longer-term impact of COVID-19 on learning loss and school dropout are likely to exacerbate existing gender disparities unless steps are taken to address the learning needs of all.

“Despite boys’ clear disengagement from and disadvantage in education in certain contexts, there are few programmes and initiatives addressing this phenomenon holistically, with system-level, gender-specific policies even more rare. Scarce policy attention has been given to gender disparities in education that disadvantage boys. Existing policies are predominantly in high-income countries. Few low- or middle-income countries have specific policies to improve boys’ enrolment,” it said.

Advance equal access to education and preventing boys’ drop out, reform traditional practices or adapt their timing, such as initiation ceremonies, which pull boys and young men out of school, building on lessons of the extensive work identifying and addressing barriers to girls’ education, making learning gender-transformative, safe and inclusive for all learners and create gender-transformative and inclusive learning environments that address all learners’ needs, are among the recommendations made in the report.

Source: Indian Express, 11/04/22

Our gender gap in contraception needs public policy intervention

 The recently-released fifth round of our National Family and Health Survey (NFHS-5) highlights that there has been a more than 10 percentage-point increase in the use of contraception among currently married women aged 15-49 years: that is, from 53.5% in 2015-16 to 66.7% in 2019-20. A significant jump has been observed in the use of condoms, which rose from 5.6% to 9.5%. It’s noteworthy that despite the near doubling in the use of condoms, female sterilization continues to be the most popular choice, with an adoption rate of 37.9% (NFHS-5), even many years after the inception of family planning as a concept in India

This brings forth a glaring gender divide in the methods of contraception used in India. The divide could imply two things. First, it may indicate greater bodily autonomy exercised by women today; in charge of their own lives and bodies, women could be making their own contraception choices, thereby determining when and how they want to plan their children and careers. Alternatively, this divide could also indicate the deep-rooted patriarchy that exploits and subjugates women. To evaluate which of the two are at work, we need to take a diligent look at our data

According to the NFHS-4, conducted during 2015-16, only about 8% of women were found to make independent decisions on the use of contraception, while for nearly every tenth woman, it was the husband who decided contraception use. The irony is that while it is husbands who decide the method, the actual burden of it falls on women. Ipso facto, female sterilization is the most wide-spread method, with more than a third of India’s sexually-active population opting for it, despite the lower cost and safer procedure of male vasectomy. Interestingly, based on data from NFHS-3 and NFHS-4, we also observe that a higher proportion of women with college or higher levels of education tend to opt for male or female reversible methods of contraception (33.7%) over female sterilization (17.2%). All these facts give credence to the ‘subjugation’ explanation of the divide over the ‘bodily autonomy’ hypothesis outlined above.

These observations have also been highlighted in a recent study published as a working paper by O.P. Jindal Global University in 2021, titled Gender Gap in the Use of Contraception: Evidence from India. The study lends evidence to the pertinent role that women’s education plays in the choice of contraception. The Bihar model is an excellent illustration of this, with the Population Council of India’s director Niranjan Saggurti cited as saying, “The most significant [factor] in the Bihar case is the increase in education—which has translated into increased use of contraception and increased family planning."

Therefore, in addition to educating children, there is an imperative to impart knowledge about the use and benefits of different methods of contraception to the community at large. It is paramount to target such awareness campaigns at both men and women. Special emphasis should be given to convincing men about the relevance of family planning, and hence, the use of several male contraceptive methods that are safer, cheaper and procedurally simpler than female sterilization. This can be done by utilizing the country’s existing network of community health workers, like Asha workers or Anganwaadi workers or Auxiliary Nurse Midwives. However, currently, most of these frontline workers who have the mandate to disseminate information on family planning are females. Additional male workers could also be deployed to ease direct communication with men.

Additionally, India conspicuously has no law on contraception that makes access to a sound sexual health our legal right, despite it being one of the key indicator variables of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations (SDG indicator 3.7.1). Inclusion of sexual well-being as our legal right under the ambit of law can ensure that there are no unnecessary restrictions on the advertisement and publicity of contraceptives, thus easing people’s access to information and knowledge on them. Further, such a law could also be used to make the availability and accessibility of contraceptives easier by enrolling the services of Primary Health Centres, particularly to improve access in small towns, peri-urban and in rural areas.

With the introduction of a bill to amend the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006, so as to increase the legal age at marriage of girls from 18 to 21 years, the government has taken a step in the right direction. There exists literature that suggests that an increase in the age of marriage for females reduces the total fertility of women (Maitra, 2004). While this would be a relatively direct result of a higher age of marriage, as it simply reduces the reproductive years of married women, a probable indirect consequence of this move could be an improvement in the bargaining power of women, as it may reduce age gaps between husbands and wives.

Further, exceptional pandemic measures like lockdowns and the exigencies of essential supplies have interrupted contraceptive supply chains. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), family planning has been severely affected during this period, with seven out of ten countries affected. According to United Nations Population Fund, of 114 low/middle-income countries, more than 47 million women were unable to access contraceptives. India alone, as per the report Resilience, Adaptation and Action: MSI’s Response to Covid-19, witnessed 650,000 unwanted pregnancies during the covid pandemic.

Therefore, it is a need of the hour that sexual and reproductive health become a priority at the policy level. Fostering better informed and healthier reproductive behaviour among the country’s masses is a long-term endeavour that should not cease on account of a health emergency.

Sonal Dua, Aditi Singhal & Divya Gupta are assistant professors, O.P. Jindal Global University

Source: Mintepaper, 16/02/22

Gender justice remains elusive in Malayalam film industry

 In April 2021, SAG-AFTRA, the union of entertainment industry professionals in the US, standardised its procedures for filing sexual harassment claims in the entertainment sector through a digital platform called “Safe Place”, that would locate patterns in the complaints and prevent repeat offenders from going unchecked. While the #MeToo movement in the US has led to some positive actions, such as the creation of the Hollywood Commission headed by Anita Hill to safeguard the rights of the complainants without fear of retaliation, the response to the movement has been tepid — even hostile — in many other industries, including South Korea and India.

Take, for example, the 2017 assault against an actor in Kerala, which continues to rock the state. The assault and the ensuing events — which resulted in the survivor recently making her identity public and seeking the chief minister’s intervention to ensure justice — are a blatant exhibition of male privilege and show a disregard for the professional and personal dignity of women who work in the industry. In other instances, we have seen brief apology statements; but a majority of the allegations have been countered by defamation suits — a silencing strategy seen with filmmaker Leena Manimekalai and journalist Priya Ramani. Most telling is the sheer apathy with which even the Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA) responded to the 2017 assault, which was allegedly masterminded by another actor. While both actors remained part of the organisation, the survivor received little support.

The formation of the Women in Cinema Collective in 2017 was a result of such institutional silences that allow sexual harassment, wage inequity and lack of safe working spaces to prevail. Right from its inception, there have been concerted efforts to delegitimise the WCC as an exclusive space built through a nexus of class privilege. While it is true that there is room for improvement in the WCC’s larger coalition-building efforts, especially with women’s collectives outside cinema, social scientists such as J Devika have noted how there are “common threads of patriarchy that run through our (separate) struggles.” This patriarchal hegemony can be observed in how the WCC’s actions are monitored and held to higher standards than organisations such as AMMA or the Film Employees Federation of Kerala (FEFKA). Even media platforms are guilty of perpetuating such gendered expectations. Take the WCC’s press conference in 2018, when members who were addressing the media were met with a barrage of questions, demanding that they reveal the names of harassers, as if only the declaration of names could legitimise their claims. One wonders if the journalists would have addressed an AMMA meeting the same way. Not long after the formation of the WCC, as part of its Silver Jubilee celebrations, AMMA staged a “comic” skit that disparagingly portrayed a thinly-veiled reference to the WCC through the fictional organization “WhatsApp Women Empowerment Group”. Among its many offensive strategies was the inclusion of a character who was shown to be negotiating an abusive marriage—a tactical move to delegitimise the political awareness that led to the constitution of WCC in the first place. Such diversionary strategies came across as part of a hypermasculine tradition of labelling women as “emotional,” “lacking real skill in organising” and as a “bunch of feminists” pushing their personal agendas.

When one considers the focus of the WCC, it’s not hard to see why such responses emerge. The WCC demands accountability from film organisations and seeks the constitution of an internal complaints committee (ICC) as per the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013. While this is yet to materialise in Malayalam cinema, one wishes that the Film Chamber of Commerce (FCC), FEFKA and AMMA would proactively institute a complaints redressal mechanism that does not alienate the complainant. While the functioning within workspaces needs to be addressed using the mechanism of the ICC, it is equally crucial to ensure that cyberattacks on women actors are also dealt with strongly, as fan groups are ready to rally behind male stars, no matter their offences.

The recurrent demands from the film fraternity to release the Justice Hema Commission report speaks volumes about the way reports of constitutional bodies end up in the attics of bureaucracy. In 2017, the Kerala state government constituted a three-member commission headed by the retired High Court Justice K Hema, to explore “options for improving women’s safety, security, a better salary, service conditions and creation of a conducive working environment.” Despite the submission of the report to the government in December 2019, it has not become a public document yet. While one can understand why the Commission might not want to make the entire contents of the report public, particularly to guard the confidentiality of the respondents, one wonders if an amended version redacting the concerned portions is not within the scope of legal and ethical possibilities. The material collected by the Commission is crucial for policy-level actions pertaining to gender equity in the film sector. Not making its core findings and recommendations public restricts meaningful engagement with the issues highlighted by the Commission and makes a mockery of the labour, emotion and time invested by those who have testified. What we require are not just judicial commissions, but tangible possibilities of implementing corrective measures to ameliorate the conditions of women who work or want to enter the industry. Alongside infrastructural support and financial resources, work conditions have to be inclusive enough for any long-term change. While the state government’s decision to constitute a cinema regulatory authority for resolving labour disputes is certainly a welcome move, only careful deliberation can tell us whether it will have the desired impact. Since we do not have any comprehensive data set on issues related to gender, wage, and labour rights in the film industry (except the survey that the WCC has initiated), the time is ripe for considering the inputs of cine-workers. Perhaps, a survey on the labour conditions of cine-workers could showcase how apprenticeship and unpaid labour is normalised in the system as one way of going forward. And at every step, we must remember that it is never a question of either labour or gender, but about labour and gender. Intersectional thinking is key, if we want to see lasting change in this industry, and perhaps we would all be well served to remember Audre Lorde’s dictum, “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”

Written by Darshana S Mini 

Source: Indian Express, 13/01/22

Prolonged closure of schools due to Covid poses threat to gender equality: UNSECO

 

Drawing on evidence from about 90 countries and in-depth data collected in local communities, the report shows that gender norms and expectations can affect the ability to participate in and benefit from remote learning.

Educational disruption due to prolonged closure of schools across the globe will not only have alarming effects on learning loss but also poses threat to gender equality, a new study by UNESCO has pointed out.

The global study titled “When schools shut: Gendered impacts of COVID-19 school closures” brings to the fore that girls and boys, young women and men were affected differently by school closures, depending on the context.

“At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, 1.6 billion students in 190 countries were affected by school closures. Not only did they lose access to education, but also to the myriad benefits of attending school, at an unparalleled scale,” said Stefania Giannini, UNESCO, Assistant Director-General for Education.

“Educational disruption of this extent has alarming effects on learning loss and school dropout. Beyond this, it poses threats to gender equality, including effects on health, wellbeing and protection that are gender-specific,” Giannini said.

Drawing on evidence from about 90 countries and in-depth data collected in local communities, the report shows that gender norms and expectations can affect the ability to participate in and benefit from remote learning.

“In poorer contexts, girls’ time to learn was constrained by increased household chores. Boys’ participation in learning was limited by income-generating activities. Girls faced difficulties in engaging in digital remote learning modalities in many contexts because of limited access to internet-enabled devices, a lack of digital skills and cultural norms restricting their use of technological devices,” the report said.

The study pointed out that the digital gender divide was already a concern before the COVID-19 crisis.

“The in-depth studies on Bangladesh and Pakistan in the global report revealed its gendered effects on remote learning during school closures. In the study on Pakistan, only 44 per cent of girls in participating districts reported owning mobile phones for their personal use, whereas 93 per cent of boys did so. Girls who did not own mobile phones reported that they relied on their relatives’ devices, typically those belonging to their fathers,” it said. “While some of the girls were able to use family members’ phones, they were not always able to do so. Their access was restricted since some parents were concerned that providing girls with access to smartphones would lead to misuse and could result into romantic relationships.”

“The longer girls were out of school, the higher was the risk of learning loss. From April to September 2020, the share of girls reporting that they did not study at all increased from 1 to 10 per cent,” it added.

Noting that the pandemic is a timely reminder that schools are sites not only for learning but also lifelines for girls and boys, an essential space for their health, well-being and protection, the report has several recommendations on how to challenge gender-based barriers for participation in remote learning.

“To advance equal access to gender-responsive and inclusive remote learning, it is recommended to provide a range of remote learning options including low-tech and no-tech solutions spearhead and support efforts to reach the most at-risk learners design, develop gender-responsive educational resources and tools besides providing appropriate teacher support and training use formative assessments to track learning outcomes,” it said.

Source: Indian Express, 22/11/21

Looking beyond the corporate gender equity

 

What needs attention is self-image of women and their dissociation with sexuality

The past few years have seen a surge in gender equity conversations, whether on changing the laws to support women at the workplace or designing interventions in organisations to create a more equitable culture.

The most common programmes towards this include setting diversity targets, creating policies for a smooth transition back from maternity leave, and leadership programmes for women.

Deepa Agarwal has two decades of experience in the field of diversity and inclusion. Her work has been recognised by the Women Economic Forum, which awarded her the title of Exceptional Woman of Excellence, and the Centre of Global Inclusion, where she is now an expert panel member. She has been a visiting faculty member at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and has broken new ground in the corporate sector working and consulting with large Indian and multinational companies, especially in the FMCG sector.

She is also a regular speaker at international forums such as the United Nations-Volunteers, the Forum of Emotional Intelligence, the Women Economic Forum, and Vividh. She now runs Re-Link, a research based advisory DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) firm.

“While all of these corporate policies and diversity programmes have helped moved the needle and more and more organisations are taking up the cause of gender equity, one of the aspects that is less talked about but needs attention is that of self-image and the dissociation with sexuality among women and the mental health issues associated with it,” she says.

“This is one of the reasons I wrote my recently launched book, The Hangover of Choices,” Deepa says.

“The leadership programmes for women are effective in helping them become more intentional about their careers, but these do not always touch upon the deep-seated mindsets and the deeper issues that are often the bigger roadblocks to equity in its truest sense.”

On the topic of the difference in traditional success parameters for men and women, she says, “Men are considered successful when their careers are flourishing and women are seen successful based on how well they are managing the domestic and home duties. Due to this, in spite of reaching the pinnacles of success at the corporate workplace, women tend to feel they are ‘not good enough’, and work harder and sometimes even change their behaviours in order to find acceptance. Here again, there is a dilemma: assertiveness in women is seen as aggressiveness, and not a desired quality for a woman to display. And yet, it is exactly this assertiveness, a celebrated attribute, that a leader should possess.”

The Hangover of Choices has received nationwide attention for its attempt to bring to the surface these unspoken aspects of mental health.

“The book has been presented in the form of fiction, to make it an engaging and a palatable read, rather than making it prescriptive. Through the story of the protagonist, my aim was to nudge the readers to take an honest look at themselves,” she says.

“There is pressure on women to look good and even perfect,” she says. “This is being amplified beyond proportions by the digitally altered world and filter-loaded images. A negative view of one’s own body has many repercussions leading to unhealthy lifestyles. At one extreme are over-exercising, over-dieting and/or restrictive eating. At the other, are overindulgence and an avoidance of being seen in public, especially of doing physical activities in public, from the fear of exposing oneself. All these create subtle stressors and mental health concerns,” she adds.

Source: The Hindu, 19/09/21