March 8 was International Women’s Day, when women in the Soviet Union protested for the right to vote, which they obtained in 1917. Some countries celebrate March as Women’s Month and some others as Women’s History Month. International Women’s Day is meant to uphold feminist values and celebrate womanhood, to recognise the achievements and contributions of women. Indians celebrate March 8 with events and awards to women achievers. Yet these are about educated, upper and middle class women. The rest are left out in the cold. India is still far away from achieving gender equality and its skewed sex ratio of 940 females per 1,000 males is deplorable.
More than half of the work done by women in India is unpaid and informal. Although women comprise almost 40% of agricultural labour, they control only 9% of the land. Nearly half of India’s women do not own a bank account, and 60% own no assets, although the Supreme Court ruled that daughters have equal rights to Hindu family property. Indian women’s contribution to the GDP—17%—is less than the global average of 37%. The IMF estimates that equal participation of women in the workforce could increase India’s GDP by 27%. More than half of India’s women do not own mobiles, and 80% of those who do are not connected to the internet. The Government of India’s Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana scheme provides loans to non-corporate, non-farm small/micro enterprises: Women entrepreneurs account for about 78% of the total number of borrowers under Mudra, while Direct Benefit Transfers under the Jan Dhan Yojana seek to empower women. Yet Indian women are not empowered economically—no equal pay for equal work.
The biggest problem for women in India is physical insecurity. The rate of crimes against women in India stands at 53.9%. In Delhi, 92% of women reported having experienced sexual or physical violence in public areas. Violence against women is far more ubiquitous than it appears, as many forms of violence are not considered crimes or may go unreported. India is considered to be one of the world’s most dangerous countries for sexual violence against women. Rape has become so common in India that, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), one woman is raped every 20 minutes.
According to the latest data released by the NCRB, India recorded 88 rape cases every day in 2019. Women do not receive justice after rape because police do not give them a fair hearing or refuse to register an FIR, while medical evidence is often unrecorded, making it easy for offenders to get away.
I do not understand the male mindset that would forcibly molest or rape a woman or a child. Don’t Indian parents teach their sons good values? Most rapes happen when girls go to the fields in the absence of a toilet. But as the Nirbhaya case showed, even a city girl waiting for a bus is not safe. It does not help when politicians blame the girl for staying out late or wearing Western outfits. It’s none of their business. Their job is to provide safety for women.
Meanwhile, the coronavirus pandemic has increased the socio-economic drivers of early marriage, such as poverty and limited access to education. Covid-related school closures have interrupted the education of nearly 1.6 billion children worldwide. The 2013 outbreak of Ebola resulted in girls leaving school, followed by child marriages, which relieves the girl’s family from economic stress. The loss of family income has been forcing Indian families to marry off young girls, perceived as a financial burden. A UNICEF report suggests that millions of underage girls are at risk of being forced into early marriages around the world due to the coronavirus pandemic. It is estimated that 1.5 million child brides get married every year in India alone, according to the United Nations. Since the pandemic began, I have been reading horror stories of young girls being married off to older men so that their unemployed parents may have one less mouth to feed.
The Indian government is committed to education for all, and has passed the Right to Education Act to enable all children to get an education. In 2018, 13.5% of girls between the ages of 15 to 16 were out of school, as against more than 20% in 2008, according to the Annual Status of Education Report. Unfortunately, girls often drop out to look after younger siblings and help with housework, while the lack of toilets and safety are other concerns. Covid-19 is the latest villain. The proportion of schools with usable girls’ toilets has doubled since 2010, reaching 66.4% in 2018, while schools with boundary walls increased by 13.4% to 64.4% in 2018. While the overall Indian literacy rate is 64.8%, the male literacy rate is 75.3% and that of females is 53.7%, a gap of 21.6 percentage points. The gap is greater in rural areas. However, there is no end in sight to this pandemic.
Education and economic independence are the only solution for women’s empowerment. The pandemic has forced the closure of schools. One more year of this and Indian girls will be in the doldrums. Schools, colleges and training institutes must open in June, with protocols for wearing masks and social distancing, perhaps through smaller numbers in class and shift systems. Indians are innovative. If permitted to open, the schools will find a way. If they remain shut, we can only foresee more child labour and early childhood marriages, and the general debasement of women.
Nanditha Krishna
Historian, environmentalist and writer based in Chennai
(nankrishna18@gmail.com)