Oct 29 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

India slides 13 slots in world gender equality rankings

New Delhi: AP





Stands 114th Among 142 Countries

Indian women still face some of the world’s worst inequality in access to healthcare, education and work, despite years of rapid economic growth, according to a survey of 142 nations released on Tuesday.The annual Gender Gap Index by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum showed India falling to 114th place, after being ranked 101st out of the 136 countries surveyed last year. That puts India below other fast-developing nations including South Africa, ranked 18th, China at 87 and Brazil at 71.
Nordic nations led the world in promoting equality of sexes, with Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark occupying the top five spots. The US climbed three places to 20th. “Achieving gender equality is necessary for economic reasons.
Only those economies who have full access to all their talent will prosper,” Klaus Schwab, WEF founder and executive chairman, said.
Yemen, Pakistan and Chad remained at the bottom of the index, that ranks countries on health and survival, access to education, economic opportunity and political participation.
India ranked a high 15th for female political participation. But it was among the bottom 20 in terms of income, literacy, work force participation and infant survival.
Activists feel that there was some improvement in number of girls going to primary schools, the overall lack of safety was still preventing many from traveling for higher education or taking jobs far from home.

Indian Journal of Gender Studies

Table of Contents

October 2014; 21 (3)

Articles

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  • Akanksha Misra

  Challenging Social Attitudes and Making a Change: The Struggle of Feminist Organisations in Turkey and India against Incest

  Indian Journal of Gender Studies October 2014 21: 329-352,doi:10.1177/0971521514540706
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  • W.S. Handapangoda

  Is Transnational Labour Migration Empowering for Women? Re-evaluating the Case of Married Sri Lankan Domestic Maids

  Indian Journal of Gender Studies October 2014 21: 353-377,doi:10.1177/0971521514540704
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  • Meraj Ahmed Mubarki

  The Monstrous ‘Other’ Feminine: Gender, Desire and the ‘Look’ in the Hindi Horror Genre

  Indian Journal of Gender Studies October 2014 21: 379-399,doi:10.1177/0971521514540708
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  • Fatima Imam

  Decoding the Rhetoric of Morality in 18th Century India: The Interventionist Nature of the Jaipur State

  Indian Journal of Gender Studies October 2014 21: 401-419,doi:10.1177/0971521514540709
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  • Suma Scaria

  A Dictated Space? Women and Their Well-being in a Kerala Village

  Indian Journal of Gender Studies October 2014 21: 421-449,doi:10.1177/0971521514540710
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Discussion

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  • Rachel Simon-Kumar

  Sexual Violence in India: The Discourses of Rape and the Discourses of Justice

  Indian Journal of Gender Studies October 2014 21: 451-460,doi:10.1177/0971521514540711
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Personal Narrative

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  • Zakia Pathak

  Mixed Marriage: Anxieties of Identity

  Indian Journal of Gender Studies October 2014 21: 461-483,doi:10.1177/0971521514540712
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Book Reviews

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  • Manjeet Baruah

  Book Review: Tiplut Nongbri, Development Masculinity and Christianity: Essays and Verses from India’s North East

  Indian Journal of Gender Studies October 2014 21: 485-489,doi:10.1177/0971521514540713
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  • Shalu Nigam

  Book Review: Devaki Jain and Diane Elson (Eds), Harvesting Feminist Knowledge for Public Policy: Rebuilding Progress

  Indian Journal of Gender Studies October 2014 21: 490-494,doi:10.1177/0971521514540714
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New Resources

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  • Meena Usmani and
   
  • Akhlaq Ahmed

  New Resources

  Indian Journal of Gender Studies October 2014 21: 495-500,doi:10.1177/0971521514540715
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Marital and other rapes grossly under-reported

Just 2.3 per cent of rape was by men other than the husba

Husbands commit a majority of acts of sexual violence in India, and just one per cent of marital rapes and six per cent of rapes by men other than husbands are reported to the police, new estimates show.

In keeping with the widely held belief among women’s rights activists in India that sexual violence is grossly under-reported, social scientist Aashish Gupta with the Research Institute for Compassionate Economics compared National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) statistics on officially reported cases of violence against women with data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), which asked women respondents whether they had faced any sexual or physical violence.

Since the most recent round of the NFHS was conducted in 2005, Mr. Gupta compared the NCRB statistics for that year with the extent of violence that women had admitted to in the NFHS survey.

Mr. Gupta found that while 157 per 1,00,000 women reported to NFHS surveyors that they had experienced rape by men other than their husbands in the past 12 months, 6,590 said their husbands had physically forced them to have sexual intercourse against their will. This meant that just 2.3 per cent of all rapes experienced by women were by men other than their husbands.

For both marital and non-marital rapes, however, the officially reported figures were extremely low, Mr. Gupta said in a working paper he shared with The Hindu. Comparing the NCRB and NFHS data in 2005, just 5.8 per cent of rapes by men other than the woman’s husband were reported to the police, and just 0.6 per cent of rapes by the husband. Since marital rape was not recognised as a crime in India, it was probably reported as “cruelty,” Mr. Gupta found.

While India lacks a “crime victimisation survey,” which in countries such as England has largely replaced police statistics as official crime data, Mr. Gupta’s findings are confirmed by other sources.

The NFHS itself asks women who experienced violence if they reported it to the police; just 0.6 per cent said that they had.

The Delhi-based women’s rights organisation Jagori made similar findings in a sample survey in Delhi in 2011 — just 0.8 per cent of women who had been sexually assaulted, stalked or harassed reported it to the police. “There have been some area-specific studies like ours, but the NFHS is really the only victimisation study that India has,” Kalpana Viswanath, researcher and executive committee member of Jagori, told The Hindu. “Our recommendation has been for the NFHS to expand their questions on violence and look at sexual violence other than rape too,” she said.

Severe physical violence was equally under-reported, Mr. Gupta found. At the State level, Mr. Gupta looked at physical violence and marital rape, since the numbers on rape by men other than the husband were too small at the State level for statistical analysis.

Delhi has the lowest actual incidence of violence against women and highest rates of reporting in the country.

In general, States associated with gender equality — the North-Eastern States, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka — had both lower levels of actual incidence of violence and higher levels of reporting, but no State reached double digits in its extent of reporting.

Keywords: marital rape, rape reporting, crimes against women