Gender equality is more than just a fundamental right. It is a basic necessity for an equitable and inclusive growth of a nation. India has witnessed Gender disparity in its worst form over centuries and it has percolated deep into the cultural roots of our society.
Last year’s Gender Gap report from the World Economic Forum ranked India 87th out of 144 countries in terms of the relative gaps between women and men in health, education, economy and politics. That put India below neighbouring Bangladesh, as well as countries like Brazil and Thailand.
SDG 5 – Gender Equality
The Sustainable Development Goals 2030 adopted by the United Nations lay an important focus on Gender Equality as a necessary factor of development.
Goal 5 aims to eliminate all forms of discrimination and violence against women in the public and private spheres and to undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources and access to ownership of property.
Nature of Discrimination Against Women In India
Discrimination against women and girls is a pervasive and long-running phenomenon that characterises Indian society especially at grassroots level. While Gender Inequality is rampant in corporate space, we are restricting our observations and opinions to the problems faced by women in underprivileged communities and rural areas who form a significant part of Indian population.
In a staunch male-dominated country like India, female foeticide is still prevalent in several parts, despite a legal ban on the determination of sex of a child during pregnancy. In 2011 Census, the sex ratio in India was observed at 943 girls to every 1000 boys, with Daman and Diu having the worst sex ratio at 710 girls per 1,000 boys and Kerala with the highest at 1084 girls per 1000 boys.
Drop-out rate of girls shoots up after primary education, up to which the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act applies. Net enrolment ratio for girl children dips from 88.7% at primary to 51.93% at secondary and to a dismal 32.6% at higher secondary levels. Roughly one in every five girls enrolled drop out after class 8.
The girl child is often looked at as a ‘burden’. Often, young women are married at a very young age to get rid of this perceived burden on parents. Nearly 12 million Indian children were married before the age of 10 years, 84% of them being Hindu and 11% Muslim, reveals IndiaSpend analysis of recently released census data.Child marriages further prove to be detrimental in their overall health leading to early pregnancy, high maternal mortality rates, multiple abortions, household pollution due to lack of clean energy and a neglect towards their general well-being.
Cultural institutions in India, particularly those of patrilineality (inheritance through male descendants) and patrilocality (married couples living with or near the husband’s parents), play a central role in perpetuating gender inequality and ideas about gender-appropriate behaviour. – Source.
How Are Social Entrepreneurs Helping Address Gender Inequality
Education for Girls
As the popular Marathi slogan for girl education goes,
Mulga Shikla Tr Toh Sakshar Hoil, Pan Mulgi Shikli Tr Akkha Kutumb Sakshar Hoil
What this means is – ‘If a boy learns, it’s only he who is educated. But if a girl learns, the entire family is educated.’
Education, as a basic necessity, gives girls an opportunity to make informed choices in life. Education empowers a girl to grow up armed with the know-how and the ability to bring about a sustainable positive change to her family, society, and the nation at large.
The effects could be something like this. An educated woman is, for example, likely to marry at a later age and have fewer children. Cross-country studies show that an extra year of schooling for girls reduces fertility rates by 5 to 10 percent. And the children of an educated mother are more likely to survive. In India, for example, the infant mortality rate of babies whose mothers have received primary education is half that of children whose mothers are illiterate.
An educated woman will also be more productive at work — and better paid. Indeed, the dividend for educational investment is often higher for women than men. Studies from a number of countries suggest that an extra year of schooling will increase a woman’s future earnings by about 15 percent, compared with 11 percent for a man.
Educate Girls Foundation, by Safeena Hussain, identifies out-of-school girls in India through their on-ground Team Balika and convince their parents to send them to school. Today, Educate Girls operates in around 21,000+ schools across 12,000+ villages in India having enrolled over 200,000 out of school girls back into schools. Their vision is to achieve behavioural, social and economic transformation for all girls towards an India where all children have equal opportunities to access quality education.
Voice 4 Girls, is a social enterprise that imparts critical knowledge and life skills to girls from rural areas. They conduct spoken English classes, activity-based camps etc. to enable rural girls to take up a vocation in the future.
Sanitation, Hygiene and Clean Energy
The 2011 Census reveals that only 25.4% households in rural India have bathrooms compared to the 19.7% who do not have a roof over their heads. And the situation gets worse when women have to bathe in public places since the water source is miles away. Lack of access to toilets and affordable personal hygiene products combined with lack of access to clean cooking fuel affects women more than men thus taking a toll on their health.
Samagra, a for-profit social enterprise by Swapnil Chaturvedi aka The Poop Guy, is solving the problem of lack of access to clean toilets for women, one community toilet at a time. Today, Samagra operates 3 community toilet blocks that offer ventilation, clean water and lighting across Pune which comes down to 128 toilet seats and 4,300 daily users, of which 2,098 are young girls and women.
Next up, targeting the 850 million households that still use traditional chulhas to cook, is Greenway Grameen. Greenway Grameen is working for those 70% of women in India who are exposed to indoor pollution by introducing a sustainable, biomass stove that reduces smoke by 70% and delivers fuel savings of upto 65%.
Empowering Women Productivity and Entrepreneurship
In India, only 23.7 percent of eligible Indian women are part of the workforce as against 75 percent of men. In its India Development Report, the World Bank said, India had one of the lowest female participation in the workforce, ranking 120th among 131 countries for which data was available. While overall job creation has been limited, most of the new ones have been grabbed by men given the social norms, the report said.
With more than 42% of women who are graduates, lack of economic opportunities laced with social stigma is depriving our country of an evident growth trajectory.
It has been proved that increased opportunities like access to jobs in the formal sector, access to credit for micro entrepreneurship and ownership of economic assets to women can elevate our GDP to a great extent.
With the right support and motivation, rural women have flourished by managing enterprises on a small and medium scale.
Nanohealth through their door-to-door community health workers called Saathis, deliver last mile health solutions to rural households at a subsidised cost. Saathis, are trained health workers who deliver basic health treatments, medicines, continuously monitor the health of their patients and recommend advanced treatment as necessary.
Shanti Life, started by Sheetal Walsh provides microloans to women in rural areas at low interest rates. Additionally, to ensure its effectiveness, Shanti Life deliver training to these women on financial management, bank account operation and education in different areas which the women can utilise to start their own ventures.
Gender equality can be really achieved if there is a general shift in the patriarchal mindset of Indian society. While efforts from the Government are helping in alleviating the situation, the role of social entrepreneurship in bringing about Gender Equality is substantial and their presence is crucial to achieving India’s SDG# 5.