Neither Free nor Equal

If women were treated equally in India, there should have been 512 million women in the present population of one billion. However, estimates show that there are only 489 million women. Where are the 'missing' 25 million women? Some are never born, and the rest die because they are not given the opportunity to survive, contends the United Nations' latest report on Indian women.

 Commissioned by the United Nations, the report entitled 'Women in India: How Free? How Equal?' takes a hard look at the status of women. Co-authored by development experts Kalyani Menon-Sen and A.K. Shiva Kumar, the Report analyses data on education, health, economic growth and Constitutional rights to measure the degree of empowerment and equality achieved by Indian women.

 Some statistics seem to provide a measure of optimism. For instance, 50 years after the adoption of the Constitution, women can hope to live longer. From an average of 32 years in 1951, this figure has nearly doubled to 63 years. But is this really true for all women? This average hides more than it reveals - the figures do not indicate that women have to be lucky to be born in a state which has consciously promoted social justice and equal access to health and education to be able to live up to 63 years.

 Thus, the life expectancy of a woman born in Bihar or Madhya Pradesh is 18 years less than that of a woman born in Kerala whose life expectancy is 75 years. Of all the states, Madhya Pradesh reports the lowest female life expectancy at 57 years.

 The Report counters the widely believed theory that poverty is the main cause of low life expectancy. It backs its contention with statistics that show that Haryana, even while having a higher per capita income than Kerala, has a lower life expectancy -- women in Haryana live eight years less than women in Kerala.

 Similarly, it is not poverty alone that kills baby girls. Customs and traditions shape choices and when resources are scarce, girls are more likely to die than boys. Girls are discriminated against in several ways, which cause poor health and shorten the life span.

 Says Kalyani Menon-Sen, "It is this lifelong discrimination in nurturing and care that is the real killer of girls -- less visible and dramatic, but as lethal as female foeticide and infanticide."

 Women's right to health still remains mere rhetoric in a majority of the states, which are reluctant to make even small investments to help in strengthening women's health knowledge and health skills. Consequently, almost 300 women die every day due to childbirth or pregnancy-related causes. This means one death every five minutes.

 The most populous state Uttar Pradesh is the biggest culprit. Accounting for more than 40 per cent of maternal deaths in the country, the state has the dubious record of one maternal death every minute.

 But this data does not seem to have shocked policy makers. Health budgets have been slashed, and women continue to be excluded from decision-making. Leave aside participation in political decision-making, startling statistics reveal that a majority of women do not have control over their everyday lives.

 Ninety per cent of the women in Uttar Pradesh and 80 per cent of the women in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana need permission to go to the market and 72 per cent of the women in Punjab need permission to visit friends and relatives. Surprisingly, even in Kerala, where women supposedly have the greatest degree of freedom, almost 50 per cent of them need to seek permission even for mundane tasks.

 Therefore, it comes as no surprise to find women being given few chances to make public decisions. Although 58 per cent of the women exercised their franchise in the last elections, their representation in the Lok Sabha has remained more or less stagnant. According to the Report, low participation of women does not have any direct correlation to literacy. Although close to 250 million women still cannot read and write there has been a more than five-fold increase in female literacy during the last 50 years.

 For long now, gender equality, education, health, population and safe drinking water have been dubbed as 'women issues'. The 'hard sector’, which includes fiscal policy, defence, industry, agriculture and trade, has traditionally been the domain of men. But even this so-called 'hard sector' concerns are women's issues because they have a direct bearing on their lives.

 Unless all these become people's issues, Indian women will continue to be neither free nor equal even after more than 50 years of Independence.

Self Defence |  Women's Organizations | Health/Fitness