Relevance: GS-2: Welfare Schemes for Vulnerable Sections of the population by the Centre and States and the Performance of these Schemes; Mechanisms, Laws, Institutions and Bodies constituted for the Protection and Betterment of these Vulnerable Sections.

Key Phrases: Gender Inequality, Global Gender Gap Index for 2022, World Economic Forum, Economic Participation and Opportunity Educational Attainment, Health and survival, political empowerment.

Why in News?

• India has got another opportunity to do much better for half of its population with the Global Gender Gap Index for 2022, released by the World Economic Forum, placing it at 135 out of 146 countries.
• But the new data - India’s ranking in 2021 was 140 out of 156 countries — hardly brings cheer as India has fared the worst in at least one of the parameters — ‘health and survival’ — in which it took the last spot.

Global Gender Gap Index:

• The Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks the current state and evolution of gender parity across four dimensions:
  • economic participation and opportunity;
  • educational attainment;
  • health and survival, and
  • political empowerment.
• On each of the four sub-indices as well as on the overall index the GGG index provides scores between 0 and 1, where 1 shows full gender parity and 0 is complete imparity.

Key findings:

• India ranks poorly among its neighbours and is behind Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Bhutan.
• Only Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan perform worse than India in the region.
• In 2022, coming on the back of a pandemic, war and economic crises, the global gender gap has been closed by 68.1%, which means at the current rate of progress it will take 132 years to reach full parity.
• Among all the regions, it will take the longest for South Asia to reach the target — 197 years — “due to a broad stagnation in gender parity scores in the region”.

Reasons for India’s poor performance:

• There have been enough numbers from the ground to indicate that India, with a female population of approximately 66 crores, has faltered on the road to gender parity.
• In the pandemic years, as incomes shrank, women faced hurdles on every front, from food, health, and education for the girl child to jobs.
• The latest NFHS data (2019-2021) show that 57% of women (15-49 age bracket) are anaemic, up from 53% in 2015-16;
  • Though 88.7% of married women participate in key household decisions, only 25.4% of women, aged 15-49 years, who worked in the last 12 months (2019-2021), were paid in cash.
• Women having a bank account or savings account that they use has increased to 78.6%, with schemes such as the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana helping, but women’s participation in the labour force has shrunk.
• According to Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) data, in 2016-17 about 15% of women were employed or looking for jobs; this metric dipped to 9.2% in 2021-22.

What needs to be done?

• Improve Representation:
  • An exception has to be made to get the Women’s Reservation Bill 2008 passed in Parliament.
  • Even as this is pending, political parties should start nominating women for one-third of the seats.
• Gender-responsive innovation:
  • Renewed thrust on innovation that focuses on a gender-responsive approach to the innovation process, promotion of innovations by women, support for innovations for the underprivileged, and so on.
• PPP partnerships:
  • Encourage public-private partnerships in this area and also recognise businesses that contribute to the national gender parity goals.
  • Embrace healthy public-private partnerships to support women in business and bring tech to aid innovative processes, solutions and products to enhance their economic participation.
• Implement the numerous schemes announced in true spirit:
  • Government can start with spending the allocated budgets fully and hold district collectors accountable with metrics similar to Aspiring Districts initiative. (The Nirbhaya fund was seriously under-utilised.)
  • It is time to upgrade “Beti-Bachao-Beti-Padhao” to “Beti-Padhao-Beti-Kamao”.
  • Start-up India must develop schemes to build an ecosystem for women entrepreneurs to thrive.
• Independent authority for gender parity:
  • Create an independent authority like the UIDAI for gender parity that can be the nodal agency for scaling up at district levels with clear objectives, metrics, targets and good governance.
  • It can address a multitude of areas like education, skilling, safety, transparency in informal sector labour participation, wage parity, and women’s business opportunities.
• Easy credit availability:
  • Data has continuously supported the fact that women with the support of financial literacy are more disciplined in repayment of their micro-loans.
  • Perhaps India Post could replace the profiteering micro-finance and provide better credit to women entrepreneurs.
• Embracing government initiatives and policies:
  • Enterprises must embrace the government initiatives and should embrace policies for inclusion that help women progress in their careers, with up-skilling and “return-to-career” schemes, Flexi-work, special leave, wage parity, hybrid working models, and so on.
• CSR funds for women-specific works:
  • Channel the CSR funds more strategically towards localised women’s community engagement and skilling. This could be in partnership with district administrations.
  • Lobby the government to add women-specific work as a key CSR focus.

Conclusion:

• The best way to improve India’s abysmal ranking is to do it right by women.
• Both government and business owe it to the “other (better) half” for their contribution towards the $5 trillion economy mission.
• For that, it is imperative to increase the representation of women in leadership positions at all levels so that women get greater access to jobs and resources.
• It is up to the Government to move beyond tokenism and help women overcome staggering economic and social barriers.

Source: The Hindu,  The Hindu BL

Mains Question:

Q. India needs to help women get greater access to jobs and resources to bridge the gap of gender inequality. Comment.