Gender-inequality conundrum: Some unexpected solutions
Female foeticide and neglect, and the consequent skewed sex ratio in the population (48.5%) means that scores of millions of women are ‘missing’ in India. This is a moral as well as a development problem. When women are discriminated against in such a fundamental thing as survival itself, it can be no surprise that daughters get less spent on their education and on their medical treatment than sons.
The issues are complex and inter-related. Son-preference exists because there is no old age security and parents have to rely on sons in their old age. In a state such as Uttar Pradesh, mortality rates are very high, with a newborn having only 80% chance of surviving to adulthood. This leads to hoarding behaviour by parents, i.e. to have more children than needed, to allow the possibility of some children not reaching adulthood.
To hoard children, women have to bear the physical burden of repeated child bearing and rearing, which confines them to the home and prevents them from labour-market earning work, leading to economic dependence, which in turn lowers their status within the family.
Even if parents recognise that there are benefits of educating girls, they also know that any economic returns from a son’s education accrue to the parents and that any economic returns from a daughter’s education accrue to the parents-inlaw. This asymmetry reduces parents’ desire to educate girls.
This narrative gives some important clues about the factors and causes behind gender inequality. While the causes of gender inequality are many and complex, some of the most important factors are:
Lack of old age security – leads to son-preference. The solution is for government to provide old age security via an old age pension scheme, so parents are not so dependent on sons for old-age support.
Land to labour ratio – the British economist Adrian Wood points out that in south Asia, the low land-to-labour ratio means that when a young woman joins a family at marriage, she is seen as an extra mouth to feed (thus her low status), whereas in Africa where the land-to-labour ratio is high, women have higher status since they are seen as an extra pair of hands to till the plenteous land. This suggests that it is important to promote women’s economic empowerment via subsidized education, improving labour market policy to offer more flexible part-time employment, better wages, and providing crèches.
Pro-male alimony and other laws – Pro-female property laws, stricter alimony laws and implementing both these, will strengthen women’s status because the husband will realise what the wife would be entitled to from him, in case the woman goes for dissolution of the marriage.
Another factor behind the stubbornness of gender stereotypes and lack of women’s empowerment is the role of the media, specifically its portrayal of women. The media has a profound impact on culture and attitudes. Advertisements with provocatively clad women, and beauty pageants so avidly covered by media channels, present women as objects to be admired for their physical attributes, and they may strengthen male perceptions that women are to be enjoyed for their bodies, rather than viewing them as human beings with soul, mind, feelings, talents and faculties. The media needs to reflect on its role, and play its part.
Another factor in the perpetuation of gender inequality is the role of religion in promoting patriarchy. While religion has long been seen as a bastion of conservatism, today religious leaders need to proactively make gender equality a key theme in their sermons and promote pro-equality attitudes. Otherwise religion will seem uncaring for half of humanity, make itself seem irrelevant, and remain open to attacks that discredit religion as a force for backwardness and oppression.