Women Empowerment

Why the concerns of nearly fifty percent of the population have been falling on deaf years continuously?

The situation of women isn’t bad in one or two countries but is a worldwide phenomenon. From rapes and molestations issues in country like India to the fight for abortion rights and control over one’s own body in USA, the world seems to have no differentiation when the issue at being addressed is about gender sensitization and respect for women’s rights. Perhaps, that’s the reason why World Economic Forum stated that while it will take 100+ years to close the gender gap , it will take 200+ years to bring parity in workforce. One of the videos by P&G titled Always Like a Girl stands as the perfect example of how girls at a young age see themselves positively and are ambitious while the women in the later ages often do underestimate their capabilities and potential because of the constant tough societal circumstances they are subjected to.

While the Indian government was quick to dismiss the report compiled by Thomson Reuters recently which stated our country as being the most unsafe for women in the world, the situation of women in India needs to be understood in many contexts in order to get a real fact check regarding their standard of living and the opportunities available to them.

According to latest ASER report, 13.5% of the girls in age category of 15-16 are not enrolled in school. Even those girl students who are enrolled in school often have to face difficult times when they reach higher classes owing to lack of safe transportation, which results in them dropping out due to safety concerns of their parents. Girls being interested in engineering is proven by the fact that out of total 15 lakh students graduating as engineers from over 3000 institutes in India, around 30% of them are girls but the figure falls drastically when its about them being in India’s most prestigious colleges like IITs. This year the percentage of girls out of total number of students who qualified for admission into IITs stood at just 13.8%. The condition is somewhat similar across the STEM fields.

This leads us to measure the condition of women when they join the workforce after completing their education. The participation of women in workforce in India has fallen sharply from 32% in 2015 to 25% in 2018, with again the non-availability of safe public transport facilities emerging as one if the biggest issues. While our government’s own data from MoSPI does accepts that women do make up 42% of the new graduates who join the formal workforce, the number continues to depreciate to just 10% women present in the senior level management roles which further dwindles to only 1% reaching the CEO role finally.

The biggest culprit behind this constant degradation of the women in our society is the unknown bias with which the male population acts constantly. In a recent study, it was found that women candidates have 30% less chances of being called for a job interview despite having same CV quality as that of male candidates while applying for the same job. Additionally, the unconscious bias of men in terms of seeing women lacking the capability to take tough business decisions and being more driven by emotions hugely disincentivises their chances of being recruited on stereotypical grounds.  Even in the personal lives with friends and family, a woman is subjected to uncomfortable situations when the male members use cuss words which have an underlying derogatory tone targeting the female gender, or referring to the weaker male as being girlish. These unacknowledged biases have a deep unconscious effect on an individuals’ future behaviour as well as shape up what the children do learn from their observations thus compounding the bad situation.

There is a need to enable more women to rise to leadership roles because that would bring innovative solutions through empathetic behaviour and understanding for solving the problems faced by women employees. An excellent example is of Mrs Arundhati Bhattacharya who during her stint in the HR domain at SBI revamped the prevailing sabbatical leave structure after identifying the three most crucial stages at which women are forced to leave a job. Those three stages were when a woman used to have childbirth, when her kids would be preparing for entrance examinations and when her in-laws or parents would get sick for prolonged period of time - all standing as excellent examples of our patriarchal society. The biggest failure of empowering woman has been caused by the political leaders of India who over the years have been only giving lip service to this cause while doing nothing to bring ground change. Only 14% of current parliamentarians are women which is a huge misrepresentation when compared to their population. The fate of Women Reservation Bill in Parliament hasn’t still seen the light of the day. An even bigger challenge today is the future of women in work with increasing automation and adoption of Artificial Intelligence. Today only 22% of AI professionals are women and this number faces further threat with the organizations looking to trim down the costs of operations.

Thus, what we need today is to bring in all the stakeholders from a diverse set of fields to work towards the common goal of enabling women and girls to succeed and making available the opportunities they have deserved since ever, but we as a society have failed in safeguarding that for them. This cant be possible without sensitising the men first regarding their responsibilities and making the children of today more aware regarding these things in order to fasten the progress we can make in empowering the new women leaders of tomorrow.

Ankit Thakur

H19127

Little Women, Large economies

When even in 2019, an amplitude of feminist movements are being termed as farcical exercises of privilege, it becomes essential to explore the impact feminism creates on global economy and prove to the insular populace that women rights actually matter. While it is imperative to define feminism in order to perform this exercise, the variety of narratives and approaches to the idea puts forth a dilemma. Sacrificing the pluralistic nature of the ideology and simply stating “Feminism is empowering women” sounds ideal, the depth and variety of the topic is only justified when we talk about how feminism has evolved over the years. The first wave of feminism, which ranged from the 19^th to earlier 20^th century mainly focused on Women’s political rights in Europe and USA. While the first wave of feminism was predominantly led by white women, it was during the Second wave where racism against women of colour was finally shed and their contributions were recognized and feminism bloomed as an ideology. However, the failure of second wave of feminism to create any tangible impact birthed the third wave of feminism. It was now that the definition of empowerment went beyond the boundaries of qualitative ideologies and had more quantifiable factors, such as enrolment in schools, women employment rates amongst others. The third wave of feminism coupled with the internet boom enabled the message of intersectionality, transfeminism and post-modern feminism to evolve and change social dynamics way more rapidly than ever before.

Empowering a woman implies providing the woman not only a choice of being capable but providing her the right means and tools to exercise her choice in a sustainable manner. Historically, most policies that intended to empower women were mostly focused on their well being. While there is absolutely no denial about the nobility of the intention that went behind these programs or the colossal impact they had in reducing the suffrages of these women, very few of them actually focused on increasing a woman’s financial independence. However, there is substantial evidence that attempts of making women capable through welfare route has not always translated into an economic benefit for the society. This is proved by Ester Boserup’s empirical research on how modern agriculture was introduced to men and not women in several parts of the world, thereby creating a pay parity. The steady but noticeable reduction in pay for primary and secondary teachers as women began to take over the positions generally filled up by men also proves how most governing bodies have always considered a woman’s income as supplementary and not necessary. This is further confirmed by the standing wage gap at 23% along with the penalties a woman has to pay during and after pregnancy. This is without considering the unpaid domestic work every woman provides to her family.  However, in there is one notable instance where women were economically empowered to drive change. In case of Grameen Bank, set up  in 1983, was an initiative which stemmed in Bangladesh wherein the concept of microcredit was used not just to singularly empower women, but to empower the country in general. With over 95% of its loan takers being women, Grameen Bank within 10 years of it’s foundation had mobilized USD 306 million and disbursed approximately USD 1 billion . Grameen Bank’s success story has inspired many countries to replicate its model in some way or other.

The advantages of having women in all domains of work is further proved by “Women Parliamentarians Impact on Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Analysis Evidence” wherein Eman Khorsheed mathematically explores the effect under-representation of women in political bodies has on national economies. The author uses three economic indicators: (i) GDP/capita, (ii) FDI inflow and (iii) population growth for 20 countries for a period of 12 years; from 2006 to 2012. His findings support what countless feminists have been lobbying for ages, that women inclusion has a positive impact on the economy. A recent IMF report on the economic benefits from including women in the work force further goes on to prove that the direct cost of gender parity can be upto 20% of welfare and growth costs in India, several countries in North America and the middle-East as well. The paper goes on to prove that women have a crucial role to play in not only bringing diversity but also in sector re-allocation. The estimates shown in the report also prove how men and women complement each other in production. It also proves that depending on the initial value of Female participation in Labour force, closing the gender gap will actually have an increase from 10-80% in GDP.

IMF estimates further show how in countries like Ireland, Brazil where Female Labour Force Participation has rapidly increased has had a positive effect on the Total productivity factor as well as the the GDP, when compared to countries like Morocco and Egypt where Female Labour force participation has stagnated. Even with this high cost of gender parity, 104 out of 189 economies have laws preventing women to work in specific jobs. Adding to this there are 59 economies have no laws on sexual harassment in the workplace, and 18 economies, where husbands can legally prevent their wives from working.

Women have always had an important function in economies, whether it be as the head of household regulating the outflow of income or as an individual earning member. The aim of feminist movements, while not restricted to, but largely focused on aiding a “modern” woman’s journey to financial independence has huge impacts on economies simply because they enable women to work. These movements play a crucial role in ensuring this independence and thereby reducing the damage that gender parity will bring to economies. But, even with this knowledge in public domain, in 2019, an amplitude of feminist movements are being termed as farcical exercises of privilege.

References:

https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/economic-empowerment/facts-and-figures

https://beijing20.unwomen.org/en/in-focus/economy

https://intpolicydigest.org/2019/01/23/replicating-grameen-bank-miracle-in-developing-economies/

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/12/economic-gains-from-gender-inclusion-even-greater-than-you-thought/

Anushree Ghosh

B19126@astra.xlri.ac.in