Women’s equality issues in Public Spheres.

Charul Mishra, Rohit Pradhan | 30th September 2019

Introduction

Gender Equality is an important goal now. It is not a fundamental right but it is important for the stable growth of the society, proper nourishment of human rights establishment and peaceful living of all the human beings. Due to legit unfortunate reasons, we are not able to develop the way it is marked in the legislation. For the purpose of the count, two main reasons are the irresponsible implementation of laws, and no knowledge of legislation to the needy class of people. In Urban Areas of the country, gender inequality is not seen as much as seen in the rural areas. That are various differences which create such inequality like economic, social, political, and legal. Although there are so many legislations made in India to protect women’s rights but still there a lacuna left in the form of gender disparity which diverge the implementation of the laws.

Equality issue that persists in the society

India has the potential to carry on an exceptional growth, and recently government has announced that, India will achieve 5 trillion $ economy by 2024.[1] It is very hard to wonder, that country with half the potential will ever succeed in doing this, a country where half of the population is discriminated and underestimated, how come a country will ever succeed to achieve such goal. There are many issues that surrounds the potential of the growth of country with obstacles, which are discussed below-

I. Female Infanticide

Lower sex-ratio has always been a concern and that is the reason Female Infanticide has always drawn attention to itself.[2] From various surveys including in the places like Assam, Mysore, Manipur and some of the tribes in Bengal, it has come to the sight that the act of Female Infanticide is still followed in India.[3] The main reasons for such act are said be either superstitions or for protection of the tribe.[4] Female Infanticide is a deliberate and premeditated act of killing a female child within one year of its delivery either unswervingly by using fatal organic and inorganic chemicals or secondarily by deliberate carelessness to feed the new-born by either one of the parents or other family members or neighbours. There were many reasons which withheld such practise in the country like dowry system, lack economic independence, social customs and traditions that have relegated the female to a secondary status.[5] Through various past reports, it is reported that Female infanticide has existed since 1789 which had spread from Rajasthan to various other stated like Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar etc.[6] Though, afterwards, various national policies and laws were made regarding the act which recognized the rights of the girl child to equal opportunity, to be free from hunger, illiteracy, ignorance and exploitation.[7] Also, in 1997, the government launched a Balika Samriddhi Yojana to raise the overall status of the girl child.[8] Although, there are various strong legislation to remove such act of society, these still prevail and could not remove from the root level because it is not only about the gender equality in the economic development but there are various socio-cultural factors which could not be removed even after so many schemes and policies.[9]

II. Tradition of sonship

i. PREFERENCE FOR SON

Since the time immemorial, parental preference for male child has become a tradition in India. It has resulted in female feticides, depriving education, health, and care to female children. It has adversely affected the gender ratio in the country. It is estimated that globally at-least 1.1 crore girls goes missing due to female feticide and shockingly 0.5 crore girls alone goes missing in India only.[10] Government report says that 6.3 crore women are missing across India and 2.1 crore girls are considered as unwanted by their families.[11] Indian states like Haryana as per NITI AYOG report 2013-15 where gender ratio is 831 is considered to be having a very low gender ratio but shockingly the capital of country Delhi, has the gender ratio of 869 and in Daman and Diu it goes to as low as 618,[12] here north eastern state can be an ideal for other states, as here there is comparatively higher sex ratio than other states.[13] The main reason that parent prefer son over daughter lies in the ideology that sons are investment and daughters are liabilities.

Criminalizing sex determination during pregnancy though is a step to deter such heinous act, but there down lies a very strong rooted ideology that need to be removed to stop such act. Even in educated family female feticides happen; hence a constructive step is the need of the time.

III. Constitutional provision to achieve desired constructive goals

Article 15 of Indian Constitution states[14]–

Prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.—(1) The State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them.

(3) Nothing in this article shall prevent the State from making any special provision for women and children.

Article 15(3) clearly gives the state, power to make provisions that is beneficial for upliftment of women in social strata.  If at every field women’s are given limited preference over men, i.e., reservation; consequently in every field there will be women representation. As a result the very idea that girls are liability and boys are resourceful will diminish and girls will be on equal footing to that of men. Indian courts have been very insightful in this regard. Supreme Court in one matter held that even reservation of 50% of posts in favour of female candidate not to be an arbitrary decision.[15]

 IV. Gender pay gap and Gender employment gap

Gender pay gap means difference between the earning of men and women, through this parameter it can be easily deduced that how the half of the population of country is treated. As per Word Economic Forum (WEF) India ranks 108^th out of 149 which is considered very low and moreover to that India made no improvement in its overall ranking.[16] According to the Monster Salary Index survey women in India earn 19% less than men, which make the current high gender gap, quite evident.[17] It states that Gender pay gap has narrowed to 1%, but still where the governing institution has higher ambition of moving the economy to 5 trillion$ economy in a very short span of time,[18] 1% deduction in such gap is not encouraging.  While there is plenty of survey and statistical report present for high skilled work, there not plenty number of literature and data, which pertains to low skilled works.

If the employment issue is put to the consideration, Period Labour Force Survey (PLFS) for 2017-18 released by The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, first of all unemployment rate is sky high and the gender difference in workforce is very high, in state of Bihar only 4% female workforce is there; a place which is 3^rd most populated state in the country.[19]

V.  Women Equality in Education

i. Schools

UNICEF quantifies the Gender Equality in Education Index (GEEI) and attendance rate which reflects the quality of education, where India has very low performance.[20] Conditions are disappointing in rural areas, where girls continue to have lesser educational access with respect to boys.[21] As per the study done in 2017 by Santosh Kumar and Adriana D. Kugler,[22] one of the crucial factor that taints the chance of a girl to continue its study is the family size, where upon increment in family size chance of continuing school is taken off from girl member of the family and the same study shows that, education level of mother in a family plays a crucial role, where in the family mother has achieved good educational exposure, there in that family, chances are high that girl from that family will also be exposed to such enigma.

  ii. Secondary Education

Most of the drop out are from the transition phase, i.e., the phase where student shifts from primary to secondary educational phase. Most of the female drop out from their studies after crossing the age of twelve,[23] which is due to many social reasons, one study suggest that among 20% of the student who take drop after primary schools, 70% are females.[24] The same study when interviewed the concerned group, reason that came out for the dropping out is social reason, distance, security of girl etc.

iii. Post Secondary Education

Girl’s participation in higher studies is a dynamic phenomenon, it has changed in the course of time, studies suggest that though girls’ participation has gone up in the higher education, but still there exist disparity.[25]

This study states that, while if overall disciplines are taken into consideration, boys are having uniform participation across it, while girls are concentrated in selected few disciplines.

Narrowing Gender Biasness in Education

The ideology that persisted for so long that, daughters are responsibility and sons are investments, is one of the gruesome factors responsible for parent’s inclination to impart quality education to their son compared to daughters where either she has to drop off from her educational institution or is never admitted in any educational institution. If 2011 census is taken into consideration, literacy rate of the country is 74.04% where male literacy rate is 80.9% and 65.46% for female.[26] This sheer difference in imparting of quality education to both gender hold backs the country’s overall growth and put it among countries like Bangladesh, Sudan, etc.

If regional aspect is taken, considering the current political ambition that government is carrying, to achieve the position of a super power in world; India still lies far behind its neighbors like China, where literacy rate of age 65 years and older is 73.91 where male counterpart has 86.06% and female counterpart has 62.64% this difference was narrowed down and it reflects in the age group of 15 years and older where male literacy rate is 97.48% and female literacy rate is 92.71%, specifically literacy rate for the age group of (15 – 24) year old for male is 99.69% and that of female is 99.59%.[27] This is the level of political commitment which was made and which is now making China literate and advance. Similarly, India’s neighbor Sri-Lanka showed similar changes; where difference in literacy rate among both gender decreased to zero and further literacy rate of women surpassed that of men, which was prosperous six decades before.[28] Myanmar astonishingly brings the literacy rate difference from 21% to 1%.[29]

Whereas India’s gender disparity had no such improvement, which has been witnessed by India’s neighbor, hence the lack of political commitment to bring females to education stream has to be overcome and be dealt accordingly.

I. Sarva Siksha Abhiyan

Initially to bring all the stakeholders to elementary level, 86^th amendment was done in the Constitution making education for children between the age of 6 and 14 free and compulsory, though it was back in 1993-1994 when government launched District Primary Education Programme (herein after referred as DPEP).[30] Here central government and state government both mutually worked for efficient working of DPEP which aimed to achieve the objective of universal primary education; by distributing the expenditure in between central and state government, where central government was bearing 85% of cost and state government was bearing 15% of cost. External agencies like UNICEF, World Bank and Department for International Development also contributed to the central government to continue DPEP.[31] Though DPEP didn’t do well in improving the number of enrollment of girls in school but overall it was an initiative which laid down the precedent.

After DPEP, Sarva Siksha Abhiyan came to existence, it was 1^st April 2010 when, Right to Education came to force, it is then believed that after the enactment of Right to Education that Sarva Siksha Abhiyan got strengthened and got the legal force for implementation purpose.[32] So it can’t be said that no steps had been taken to strengthen the ideology decreasing the literacy rate gap between both the genders, but it were more of ineffective, gradually the gender gap in literacy rate narrowed, but to a non-astonishing level.

II. Schemes adopted by Chattisgarh government

Chattisgarh which was formed in 1^st November 2000 had no remarkable literacy within the state, state didn’t had good education infrastructure. As per 2001 census report, state had 65.18% literacy rate, where male and female literacy rate were 77.86% and 52.40% respectively. [33] By the time of 2011 census, where the gender gap earlier was 25.46 it reduced to 20.[34] This reduction though not settles an astonishing example or precedent but, importantly the schemes that has been initiated by the state has the potential to narrow done such difference to even greater extent.

i. Free textbooks

One of the factors that parents consider before putting their wards to schools is to evaluate the total cost they will be incurring, books now-a-days are very expensive[35], which demoralizes the potential intent of the parent to put their ward to schools, especially the girl child who is abused of parental ignorance hence, by ‘free textbook distribution programme’[36] where free books are distributed till class 8^th.  Here one of the major obstacle which parents might had experienced is removed. Hence it is one of the scheme that is commendable.

ii. Mid Day Meal

One of the lucrative assistance that government is providing is that, parents can be carefree for their wards while they are in school, they will be getting free and healthy food, which sort out the problem, moreover in poor families where, getting food for family is a challenge, there mid day meal can be said as a assistance that government is providing, which other way around is benefitting the family economically. Currently mid day meal scheme covers 42904 schools as of 20^th May 2019.[37]

iii. Free Uniform

Similarly to assist and ease the financial burden of parents, state government came up with the said scheme, according to which every girl student of schedule caste and schedule tribe community studying in between class I to V are provided free uniform.[38]

iv. Saraswati Bicycle Scheme

Now the main problem that persisted was that, there was high dropout, especially for female students in their secondary level, to cope up with that, government has formulated the scheme where, cycles are distributed to Schedule Caste/Schedule Tribe/ Below Poverty Line girls, who are enrolled in class 9^th. This scheme encourages the female student to continue their education after completing their preliminaries.

v. Mukhyamantri Amrut Yojana

As per this scheme, primary school going children are provided with flavoured nutritious milk with the objective to eradicate malnutrition in the state, though it don’t target any specific gender, it is for greater good, that will eventually reflect upon number of children joining in primary school.[39]

vi. Porta Cabins

Chattisgarh has always been affected by Naxalites, places in Chattisgarh which are affected by it often referred as Left Wing Extremism (LWE), in those areas; it becomes very difficult for student to have the friendly environment to continue their education. To counter such situation, government came up with porta cabins where the educational infrastructure can be created in very less time, so even so if the construction is destroyed by the naxalites, it can be recreated without any considerable cost.

Crimes against women

I. Sexual Harassment

Women have always been treated as the subordinate to the men by the society. With the anti-discrimination statutes which have recently adored by the state, have granted the equal rights to the women now.[40] But, even after the formation and enforcement of legislations and statutes, the women remain disadvantaged in every place, whether it be the home or the work place or political life. The whole scene of sexual harassment is including misuse of the power and exploitation of the weak.[41] Hence, sexual harassment is often taken as result of Sexual Discrimination. It goes without saying that the act of Sexual Harassment violates two of the basic fundamental rights which is right to gender equality and right to life and liberty.[42] In our country, there are various codes like Criminal Procedural Code, 1973, Code of Civil Code, 1908, Indian Evidence Act, 1872 and Indian Penal Code, 1860 which prescribe various sections and principles which try to give protection to the women in some or the other way against the act of Sexual Harassment.[43] There are various international conventions and treaties which is signed and ratified by the country to protect the interests of the women and have become a source of law for new legislations with various other significant sources of law like precedents, landmark judicial statement. Though we have sufficient laws against the act of Sexual Harassment, but in most of the cases there are few discrepancies in the execution of such laws which might be there due to the biasness or money power or the muscle power, which are the most ridiculous means of diverting the justice to a wrong side and the essence of human rights is then banished. Hence, there government should focus on the proper execution of present laws rather than focusing on the making the new laws. Secondary, there must be authorised committees and a check system which would record the proper following of laws. 

i. Marital Rape

Rape is an unlawful sex without assent of a man because of physical drive or dangers, or due to deceitful demonstration of perpetuator. In India rape by an outsider is a penal offense under section 375 and 376 of IPC.[44] Shockingly, it unequivocally avoids marital rape from ambit of conviction. Marital rape is sex by spouse with his better half without her assent or by compel or danger.[45] Patriarchal framework that administers Indian families has constantly considered ladies as unimportant property of her significant other or guardian.[46] So rape was considered as theft of ladies and wrong against spouse or guardian. This belief system has impacted our legislatures in disregarding offense of spouse rape by giving it shield of wedding right of the spouse and by this they are noiselessly tolerating that ladies are only a protest of sexual satisfaction of her better half with no will of her own over her sexuality. This discernment has laid down ladies’ entitlement to uniformity and equity. Today numerous nations have either established marital rape laws, revoked marital rape special cases or have laws that do not recognize marital rape and ordinary rape. This demonstrates marital rape is currently perceived as an infringement of human rights. In 2006, it was assessed that marital rape is an offense rebuffed under the criminal law in no less than 100 nations and India is not one of them. Despite the fact that there have been a lot of enactments and institutions gone in India as to brutality against lady in her own particular house, similar to laws against female child murder and abusive behavior at home, marital rape has neglected to pick up acknowledgment as a wrongdoing according to strategy producers. Marital rape, in India, is holed up behind the hallowed drapes of marriage.

II. Dowry

Dowry often is seen as status symbol, by both the families, i.e., groom and bride’s family.  Those parents who are reluctant to spend on education, opposing partition to property for daughters, who have their rights for such, lavishly spend upon daughter’s marriage. This is not the sudden apprise of emotion that waves up during the marriage suddenly but, just to satisfy the expectation of the society.

Bihar is considered to be on the number one spot when it comes to the dowry deaths.[47]It is a matter of shame and very serious concern. Table 1.0 shows the number of dowry deaths that happened in Bihar in the span of 9 years, i.e., from 2001 to 2009. If we see, in 2001 it was 859, by the end of 2011 dowry death graph reached to a whopping 1154!, which is of 34.342% of annual growth!

III.  Cyber Bulling

Although development in technology has empowered the world with various powers of survival, Cyberbullying restricts all the opportunities offered by digitalization and technology of the present day.[48] Millions of women and girls around the world are subjected to deliberate violence because of their gender.[49] The growing reach on internet, the rapid spread of mobile information and communications technologies (ICTs), and the wide diffusion of social media have presented new opportunities and enabled various efforts to address Violence against women and girls.[50] The respect and security of girls and women must at all times be front and centre of those in charge of producing and providing the content, technical backbone and enabling environment of our digital society.[51] The increasing spread of the Internet frames the urgency for effective legal and social controls on attitudes and criminal behaviour online.[52] Rigorous oversight and enforcement of rules banning cyber violence against women and girls on the Internet is going to be a conditio sine qua non if it is to become a safe, respectful and empowering space for them. Failure to do so will clip the potential of the Internet as an engine for gender equality and women’s empowerment. The sheer volume of cyber violence against women and girls has severe social and economic implications for women and girls.9 Threats of rape, death, and stalking put a premium on the emotional bandwidth and put a stress on financial resources (in terms of legal fees, online protection services, and missed wages, among others). The direct and indirect costs to societies and economies are also significant, as needs for health care, judicial and social services rise and productivity goes down with the sense of peace and security required for business to thrive. Cyber Violence against girls and women can also have adverse impact on the exercise of and advocacy for free speech and other human rights. There are various imperatives in eliminating cyber bullying like prevention, implementation of safeguards to secure safe online spaces, and sanctions. A collective global effort, led by the United Nations system, has put in place the pillars for a 21st century sustainable development paradigm. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) establishing the global development priorities for the next 15 years includes a goal on gender equality, which places women’s access to technology for their empowerment as one of the core indicators for progress.

Women’s reservation in politics

Law making bodies can be considered one of the most influential and important organ in the country. Having a proper representation by women in these bodies will result in such law making that will have the potential to fill the gap of gender inequality. While various political parties demand reservations for various castes, when women’s reservation bill came to existence that demanded 33% reservation for women in Lok Sabha and in all state legislative assembly, though it was passed by Rajya Sabha,[53] it was never voted in Lok Sabha.[54]

Even after seven decades of independence, women’s participation in Indian politics is poor, Globally India ranks 20^th from below in terms of women’s participation in parliament.[55] Due to 33% reservation in Panchayati Raj Institutions, there is considerably a healthy participation.[56] India ranks 130^th on Human Development Index,[57] while 108^th in Gender Gap Index.[58] India had a very rich history, considering the current scenario which reflects least participation from a gender due to archaic ideology and to bring a positive change there should be women’s reservation in the law making institution. It has been evident that after the increase in women’s representation in Panchayati system, the performance and development of that village has increased,[59] figure given below provides the statistics for the same.

It shows that in villages after reservation been made for women there has been increase in drinking water facilities, irrigation pumps and sanitation across the chart. In the state like Bihar, after the state legislator’s move to reserve seat for women in Panchayat, there has been significant improvements in various segments.[60]

I. Vicious Cycle of Incompetency

There is a psychological concept known as Priming[61], where if a particular input is provided continuously then a set pattern of behavior is the outcome. If there is meager representation of women in law making bodies, which persist for long, assumption will be made then that women are incapable of being in such body and that makes it substantially more difficult for them to enter into national politics; and this leads to vicious cycle of presumed incompetency. Hence to break the vicious cycle, there has to be induction of women through reservation.

II. Other Countries with women’s reservation

Scandinavian country Norway has imposed women’s reservation in public limited company with 40% of it’s board member being reserved for women, after which those companies have become more professional and improved their performance as well.[62]

In Pakistan 17.5% of the seats are reserved for women in National Assembly, Bangladesh has 13% of its seats of Parliament reserved for women candidate, Nepal has 33% reservation for women.[63]

Asian countries like Indonesia,[64] Kyrgyzstan[65] and Uzbekistan[66] have 30% quota for women in their law making bodies. In Uganda, parliamentary seats of 39 districts are reserved for women.[67]

III. Setting the time limit for Reservation

As there is no time barrier for caste based reservation, most of the time it is used more often for political gain rather than to fulfill the objective of caste based reservation. Certain parameters shall be made and later on when all those parameters are fulfilled then gender based reservation need to be abolished in its strictest sense.

Final Conclusion

Hence, if all states put their efforts to consolidate the plan to narrow down the gender gap in the field of education, then it is highly possible to achieve such results.

Gender Equality is an important goal now. It is not a fundamental right but it is important for the stable growth of the society, proper nourishment of human rights establishment and peaceful living of all the human beings. Due to legit unfortunate reasons, we are not able to develop the way it is marked in the legislation. For the purpose of the count, two main reasons are the irresponsible implementation of laws, and no knowledge of legislation to the needy class of people. In Urban Areas of the country, gender inequality is not seen as much as seen in the rural areas. That is various differences which create such inequality like economic, social, political, and legal. Although there are so many legislations made in India to protect women’s rights but still there a lacuna left in the form of gender disparity which diverge the implementation of the laws.

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[14] INDIA CONST. art. 15, cl. 3.

[15] Rajesh Kumar Gupta v. State of Uttar Pradesh, AIR 2005 SC 2540.

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