India Gender Inequality Project

India gender inequality project

In the world, women suffer of inequality and unfair treatment. Gender inequality is an issue which exists everywhere but in this project I will focus on gender inequality in India. Important areas to consider are education, birth ratios, health, employment, life expectancy, family size, migration, legal rights and land tenure. Education

Gender inequality in education means that women don’t get as good education as men, and many women don’t even get an education; this has many negative impacts, on the women and their families as well as the economic development of the country. Studies show illiterate women have high mortality and fertility levels, they also have bad nutrition and not much authority within their house; also, if there is a lack of educated people in a country, the country’s economic development is affected. India has one of the lowest female literacy rates in Asia. In 1991, less than 40 percent of the women aged 7 and over was literate out of 330 million, therefore today there are over 200 million illiterate women. There are dramatic differences in literacy rates by place of residence, with rates in rural areas lagging behind rates in urban areas. In 1991, the urban female literacy rate was more than twice that of the rural rate, 64 (urban areas) and 31 percent (rural areas). There is a very extreme difference amog the states concerning female literacy; for example, kerala has a high percentage of female literacy while Bihar has a very low percentage of female literacy, Bihar is one of the states with the biggest population in India. Girls are often taken out of school because their families want them to help with responsibilities like as caring for younger members of the family. Girls are also likely to be taken out of school when they reach puberty because people in India feel that it protects their honour. The data on school attendance by age show that the number of girls attending school decreases as their age increases while for boys it remains stable. In 1992-93, only 55 percent of girls aged 11 to 14 were going to school while in the younger age group there were 61% of the girls going to school. At college level, there is a very small amount of people who go to school, but of the ones that do, the majority is of men. There is, however an alternative education which is the Non-Formal Education (NFE). This is for children who work or for girls who don’t go to school; the classes are adapted to fit the student’s needs as well as the curriculum and the teachers are locals who have been trained to run the NFE’s. Around 40% of these NFE centres are exclusively for girls. The NFE’s help with the education problem however the quality of the centres varies depending on the location. There are different reasons why the education for girls isn’t very good in India; the poor families won’t be able to afford to get all their children to school because of the cost of books, etc and if they have to choose between a girl and a boy, they will choose to educate the boy and there is a big quantity of population who live below the poverty line. Parents with a bad attitude can also have an influence in the girls not having a good education, they may see it as a waste of money because they will end up married and caring for a family and educating the girls won’t benefit the parents at all. Gender inequality is also present in textbooks; men are portrayed as men with high-prestige occupations and shown as strong, adventurous and intelligent. On the other hand, when women were included they were shown as weak and helpless, often shown as the victims of abuse and beatings.

The graph above shows that even though, it’s getting better in terms of equality, there has always been and still is a difference between education for men and women. Birth Ratios

India is the country that adds more people to the world each year; their birth ratio is higher than sub-Saharan Africa and it’s also higher than china’s. The fertility rate is going down but the number of women who can reproduce isn’t going down. The percentage of families using contraceptives has increased by quite a lot (13 to 41% in 23 years). India is the country with the biggest number of people who have HIV/AIDS with 2 to 5 million people with it.

The graph on the left shows that there are more males being born than there are females and this will continue until at least 2020. There is generally more men than women at each age group and this can be a consequence of genocide, STDs, abusing of women, etc. Because some families in India prefer having boys rather than girls, there will generally be more boys in India, because, some people would even abort if they knew they were having girls and there is about 10, 000 cases of female infanticide in India, a year. Many people think that India’s population won’t stabilize until 2060 and to show this I have a population pyramid of 2050; the birth rate has decreased and you can see that the number of males and females is becoming more equal.

Sex Ratio is defined as the number of females per 1000 males. Sex Ratio is important to indicate how equal males and females are at a given point of time. It mainly shows sex differentials in mortality, sex selective migration, sex ratio at birth and the difference of sex in the population. According to the Census of India, 2001, the sex ratio of India stands at 933. Health

In general, men and women don’t have the same life expectancy at birth since women live longer generally; in India, this doesn’t happen. India is the only country where women and men have the same life expectancy at birth and this shows that there is some sort of problem with their health since women’s life expectancy should be more than men’s. This is mainly because people feel that sons are more likely to take care of them as they age and that women are an economic burden and they have little autonomy; they live under the control of their fathers, then their husbands and then their sons. Women’s poor health isn’t only an issue for them, their children won’t be as healthy as they should, they will be less able to care for their children and families and they will have more problems in the labour force. There are five main reasons to women’s health being lower than men’s; these are: reproductive health, violence against women, nutritional status, unequal treatment of girls and boys, and HIV/AIDS. Women’s health varies from state to state. India has a very high maternal mortality, in 1993, there were 453 deaths for every 100,000 births and over 100,000 women die each year due to pregnancy-related causes. About 37% of all pregnant women (1992) received no prenatal care and there is still a big number of women who receive no prenatal care, it varies from rural to urban areas; women in rural areas are less likely to receive prenatal care than women in urban areas.

Another factor affecting women’s health is malnutrition; malnutrition among young children and malnutrition is a frequent cause of death among girls below age 5. Girls are breast-fed less frequently. As children and adults, males are fed first and better. Adult women consume approximately 1,000 fewer calories per day than men. The second graph on the previous page shows children who suffer from malnutrition in India and this is related to the level of education of women in India.

Women receive less healthcare facilities than men and as girls they are often rejected during illness which is why they end up dying of preventable causes and women in India today are less likely to admit that they are ill. Violence is another reason why women’s health is worse than men’s health; every five minutes a violent crime against a woman is reported in India. There are 35 million women/girls who should be in the Indian population but are not in it.

Another factor affecting health is HIV/AIDS and it is something that very little people know about in India. Because not many people know about AIDS, then they will do less to prevent it and so it is more likely that they will end up infected with it so there will be more deaths because of it.

Employment

In India, people believe in different things which will affect their possibilities to work in certain jobs or work at all. Some women work in farms, some work in households weaving and women also have to do the chores around the house like cooking and cleaning. However, a lot of women do work and they contribute to the economy quite a lot yet their work isn’t documented since the best source of work for women is the informal sector. The problem with the informal sector is that the women are unskilled, have a low pay and they don’t get a health care with the job; 90% of all working women are working in the informal sector; women work in the informal sector because they don’t have access to factories and public stores. The cultural restrictions that don’t allow women to work are that in their culture there is a very clear hierarchy concerning family life; in the north women are more restricted than they are in the south (of India), since the south is more equal than the north.

Discrimination to women in the employment sector is also presented with difference in wages. Women earn about 80% of what men do despite laws which state that the pay for men and women should be equal. In the rural areas there are more women employed than in the urban areas since a lot of women are able to work in farming.

India is experiencing a shortage of workers in the formal sector because so many women are employed in the informal sector. Because India needs more workers for the economy to advance, there are now more opportunities for women to work and their working conditions are improving.

The map above shows the female employment rate in India, per state.

Life expectancy Because India is a developing country, the life expectancy will not be very high, it is in fact of 60-61 years of age and the percentage of people over 61 is 4%. There are many reasons why life expectancy isn’t very high but the main reasons are poor health care, a large population, malnutrition, diseases and other reasons. In this project, life expectancy is closely linked with health.

Generally, women live longer than men therefore have a longer life expectancy but this doesn’t happen in India, as I mentioned in the health section. Firstly, more boys are born than girls because of the strong son preference and fewer boys are aborted and there is more female infanticide.

In India, quality life for women is improving and the life expectancy is getting better but before, in every state life expectancy would be the same for men and women or even better for men than women. Now, in states which are better off like Kerala, women do have a longer life expectancy while in states which aren’t doing so well, like Uttar Pradesh men have a longer life expectancy. To show this I have a graph which shows the life expectancy by gender of Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and India as a whole.

In this graph, the y- axis is the life expectancy and the x-axis just shows the states. You can see that in Kerala, women do live longer than male and this is because Kerala is one of the states with better health care for everyone and a better distribution of resources and it is a state which is generally better off and this benefits women because it means that they’ll be better off; it is also a state in the south, meaning that there is less inequality based on gender. In Uttar Pradesh, on the other hand, the life expectancy is low to start with and it is higher for men than women; this is one of the states with a big population which means that less people have a good quality of life and men are put before women in terms of better health care and job opportunities. If you look at the columns of life expectancy for India as a whole, you can see that it’s pretty much even, it looks like that because there are states similar to Kerala concerning life expectancy by gender and then there are states similar to Uttar Pradesh, so when it comes to an average, the life expectancies even out.

Family Size In India, population is something which the government is very concerned about; there have been lots of family policies since the 1950’s. Since the population in India is increasing faster than China’s, it is said that India’s population will be greater than China’s at some point.

A big problem that affects population growth in India is that a lot of people aren’t informed about contraceptive methods so as well as large populations, in India there is a lot of HIV/AIDS and other STDs. Another problem is that in India there is a very strong preference for boys than girls and some women marry when they’re 18 and end up having as many children as they need until they have two boys.

The use of contraceptives is increasing as many couples seen happy using contraceptive methods and there are special beds reserved in hospitals that are exclusively for sterilization and there are some camps where there are free contraceptives and information about sterilization. Also, family planning and birth control are now part of the school curriculum.

Health issues are also a reason why there are so many babies being born; because there are high levels of infant mortality, fertility levels increase so people will have more children in case their children die. Some other people have lots of children so that they can help around the house if needed.

The map on the left shows the percent of married women by state using contraceptives; the stripy territory is the territory which is being disputed with China.

Migration In India there is a lot of migration, both nationally and internationally. Not all of the migration is recorded because of the data collection systems in India. In the 1960’s and 70’s migration used to be mainly of men looking for jobs to support their families, but female migration has been growing and now there is as many women as men migrating.

Migration in general is mainly due to poverty, in both male and female migration. Female migration might exist for many different reasons. When women migrate it might be like a movement of empowerment because in their origin place they don’t have much authority and they might have more authority and a better quality of life in the place they’re moving to. Another reason for female migration maybe is that if they move from a place with lots of population to a place where there is less people, they might have more access to better health care and a better chance of job opportunities.

In some cases, women migrate because they are victims of sexual abuse or bad treatment at home or at work. In 2002, 17% of women suffered from sexual, physical and verbal abuse in domestic works and 20% in factories. The problem with women migrating is that they don’t get any money and migrants have lower wages. On average, women migrants get wages which are 20% less than the contract wage. If the woman in the house is absent, the remittances go to the husband if he’s present and if the woman isn’t married, the remittances will go to parents or to elder siblings.

Legal Rights In India, there are rights which benefit women; in the constitution there are articles which talk about how men and women should be equal. However, even though there are rights that are good for women and benefit them quite a lot, women are unaware of these rights and because of oppression and illiteracy, women can’t find out about these rights. In the constitution, four articles refer to special protection to women and gender inequality, those articles are these ones:

Article 14: government should not deny to any person equality before law or equal protection of laws.

Article 15: declares the government should not discriminate against any citizen due to gender. Also, makes a special provision enabling the state to make affirmative discriminations in favor of women and the government can pass special laws in favor of women.

Article 16: guarantees no citizen shall be discriminated in matters of employment because of their sex.

Article 42: directs the state to make provision for ensuring fair working conditions and maternity relief.

It used to be very horrible in the past, women were considered the property of the men and there was no legal age for getting married so women would be forced to get married at very young ages like 12 or 13. However the British passed laws against this, like the child marriage law which states that the legal age for marriage is 18 for girls and 21 for men.

The problem isn’t that there are no rights for women but that the rights aren’t put into practice. Discrimination towards women still exists on a large basis and women are still treated as inferior by some people but since women don’t know about their rights, they aren’t able to defend themselves.

Land Tenure In India, researchers discovered that access to ‘house and land’ is very important in women’s empowerment. Something else that was found is that women are excluded from holding a title to land either through legal aspects or culture, and that women’s economic status is affected because they are not in control of any land. Even though men and women in India have the same legal rights concerning property ownership, many cultural traditions don’t allow women the right to land inheritance or management, but it is very hard to fight for equal rights.

Men are better informed about legal aspects of land tenure than women, so women won’t really know what they can fight for. Some landlords said that they have reservations about renting to women because they’re not sure about the economic security of female-headed households.

Building a religious structure in a certain location is something fairly common even in slums where the quality of housing is extremely poor. According to slum residents, in addition to these structures being places of worship, they also act as community halls and provide shelter from bad weather for those who could not afford to secure their homes against it.

While women benefited as much as men from the security of having a religious building in their community, studies suggest that women were less likely to take advantage of its use as a gathering place because of social restrictions for women. In many places of India it is thought that women and men interacting in public places should be aginst the law.

Very few women in India own their property, no matter how important they are in society. In Keshav Nagar, a slum with full legal tenure, both male and female residents had contributed money and labour towards the acquisition of their plots, but the land revenue officials gave clear preference to male household heads in issuing property titles. There were no joint titles for married couples, and the only two women in the community who received independent titles did so because there was no male household head in their families.

Conclusion In India there is still a lot of gender inequality in different aspects of life, yet it all used to be a lot worse. Concerning education, because of cultural aspects and discrimination towards girls, there is still more and better education for boys rather than girls; however certain policies and the NFEs are helping improve the situation. Concerning birth ratios, health, family size and life expectancy, the preference for boys stands out as there is more female infanticide and better health care for men. Employment is linked with migration because sometimes the reasons why women migrate are to get a job and earn a living; discrimination is present here because women always get smaller wages and worse working conditions. If you look at employment, you can see that more women are getting employed yet some of these jobs are in the informal sector and this doesn’t benefit the women. Land tenure and legal rights both benefit women, they are pretty equal for men and women however they need to be put in to practice in a fair way otherwise only men benefit from legal rights and land tenure. Overall, I think that gender inequality still exists in India but if all aspects keep improving, then slowly India will become an equal society concerning gender.

Bibliography: http://www.census.gov/ipc/prod/wid-9801.pdf education http://www.articlesbase.com/law-articles/rights-of-women-in-india-745972.html rights http://www.mse.ac.in/pub/santhi_wp.pdf migration http://www.census.gov/ipc/prod/wid-9802.pdf employment http://www.indiatogether.org/health/infofiles/life.htm http://www.indianchild.com/life_expectany_mortality_india.htm life expectancy http://www.census.gov/ipc/prod/wid-9803.pdf health http://www.unchs.org/downloads/docs/1556_72513_CSDWomen.pdf land tenure http://www.indexmundi.com/india/birth_rate.html http://www.iloveindia.com/population-of-india/sex-ratio.html birth ratios http://www.census.gov/ipc/prod/ib-9701.pdf http://www.country-studies.com/india/population-and-family-planning-policy.html family size