The Hindu Business Line : Empowerment of women: Emerging opportunities and potential threats

WOMEN continue to play a marginal and peripheral role in the overall national context despite constituting almost half the population with a critical role in production and social processes. This is not only inequitable but also hampers development with high efficiency cost. For, no country can sustain its development if it underutilises its women as a productive resource.

Despite a heightened consciousness and a greater awareness of role of women, no society treats its women as well as its men. Consequently, women continue to suffer from diverse deprivations. All this leaves one with an uncomfortable feeling of frustration, of opportunities missed and challenges avoided.

Despite sharp regional variations in the status of women in India, their plight is reflected both in the Gender Related Development Index (GDI), which takes into account life expectancy at birth, adult literacy rate, combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratios and share in earned income and gender empowerment measure (GEM).

Widespread discrimination against women is structural and entrenched, reflected in the persistent pattern of under-representation in Parliament, administration, management, professional and technical work and share in earned income.

The correction of this tradition of unhappy and unequal development of women necessitates, inter-alia, focussed intervention targeting education, training, child-care, health, nutrition, credit, employment, welfare services support and legal safeguards. Investing in women's capabilities and empowering them is the surest way to enhance overall development.

Historically, the role of women has increased manifold. During India's struggle for Independence, the contribution of women to the national cause was significant. For, as Gandhiji stressed, ``subjugation and exploitation of women was a product of man's vested teachings and women's acceptance of them". It was, thus, realised that political freedom must ultimately lead to emancipation of women.

Attempts to provide de jure equality to women were not carried to their logical conclusion necessitating their reinforcement by tougher laws, stricter enforcement and exemplary punishment. There is also a compelling need to resolve certain basic issues about the socialisation processes inherent in a hierarchical society, resource and power distribution patterns and cultural values. Evidently, E-components — education, employment, earnings, empowerment, entitlement to property and effects of violence — as also health-care, vulnerability of women to trafficking, legislation to Advance Rights continue to be important in India.

Reservation for women at the level of villages, districts and local bodies was introduced to empower roughly about a million women at the village council level. But a situational analysis reveals that the majority of positions were cornered by men acting on behalf of women and women continued to suffer from several de facto inequities because of pronounced gender bias in the complex socio-economic milieu. Further, the scuttling, despite both a functional and moral case, of the Constitutional Amendment Bill seeking to reserve 33 per cent seats for women in national and state legislatures restricted political participation of women in the decision-making process.

The patriarchal family system practiced in most parts of the country places a heavy premium on the boy while the girl is considered a liability from the time of her conception.

While gender-based inequalities occur within families, women continue to be underprivileged in terms of almost all facets of gender equality — nutrition, maternity, life expectancy, health care, education, training, politico-economic participation. Rural women shouldered a heavy burden in the farm sector, but their role was largely confined to the lower socio-economic strata.

With greater concern for emancipation of women, exploratory questions such as what development, development for whom and when need to be raised. These questions are not merely academic but are central to the process of emerging development in India.

This necessitates an identification of the factors responsible for impeding advancement of women, such as inadequate access to housing and basic services, limited support services and technologies for reducing drudgery and occupational health hazards and for enhancing their productivity and devising a broad-based strategic action plan for realisation of equal partnership of men and women.

Emancipation of women

An avowed objective underlying plan programmes was to increase access to resources and ownership of productive assets to weaker and resource-poor sections of society, of which women constitute a significant part.

Women were traditionally subjected not only to denial of access to resources and ownership of productive assets but also to a host of social and other taboos.

Improvement in women's economic status could be facilitated by ensuring joint ownership of land, recognition of women-headed household, promoting women's self-help groups, encouraging women entrepreneurs/beneficiaries to take bank loans, increasing number of women's cooperatives and changing practices of women agriculture workers.

The Indian society has also been characterised by a symbiotic and mutually complementary relationship between government, women's movement and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Women's movement in India continuously interacts with and influences public opinion and governmental action.

The schemes of Support to Training and Employment Programmes (STEP) for women, Training-cum-Production Centres (TPCs), Rashtriya Mahila Kosh (RMK), Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) individually and severally attempted to empower women.

This was also attempted by women-related policies — National Health Policy (1983), National Policy on Education (1986), National Population Policy (1993) and National Nutrition Policy (1993). Several committees such as the National Commission for Self-Employed Women and Women in the Informal Sector (1988), Shramshakti Committee on the Status of Women in India (1974), National Plan of Action for Women (1976), Working Group on Employment of Women (1978).

These Committees recommended recognition of women's work in both formal and informal sectors as socio-economic producers, establishment of exclusive credit institutions for women, provision and linking of training programmes to employment.

While all these reports varied in details, they unmistakably stressed the importance of practical gender need as the basis of building a more secure system and a means of realising more strategic interests of women. But it has not been easy so far with the impoverishment of society and sex-based discrimination despite significant regional variations.

Consequently, gender-specific policies with emphasis on activities and resources beneficial to women may help in providing equal opportunities and reaping the benefits of development.

But what is, basically, required is affirmative action in a situation of structural and entrenched discrimination. In other words, a gender transformation policy is alone incapable of eliminating systemic inequalities.

Development of women in India continues to be constrained inter-alia by inadequate market information, inability to scale up production because of scarce capital, inability to adopt technology transformation for quality standards, inadequate infrastructure, absence of brand equity and tendency to remain small.

These necessitate urgent synchronised action such as enhancing institutional mechanisms for gender equality; maintaining gender balance in all decision-taking; a gender-based component for economic development, health-care, parity in culture and education and combating violence against women.

Since gender-bred inequalities are historically determined, these can only be corrected by rethinking the frame of gender equity and bringing about attitudinal changes. While gender is never absent, it is inextricably linked with class and other social relations.

Accordingly, the inclusion of gender-equity in the overall framework of distributive equity would also facilitate attainment of cherished objective of social justice.

The challenge of development of women relates to traditional role prescriptions, behavioural biases, gender role ideology, socio-cultural /psychological biases, limit on outside monitoring, inadequate access to credit, technology, and so on.

A SWOT analysis of the position of women in India today reveals that while their strength lies in the commitment and dedication, weaknesses relate to the inability of women to take calculated risks.

There are emerging opportunities of spread of education and liberalism but there is also the potent threat of competition from small and big units and the necessity of leaving enterprise due to family pressures.

The question of women's equality needs to be pursued through the prism of economic equality as a central mediator (though not the sole determinant) in the achievement of gender equality in other spheres.

Development of women entrepreneurs requires access to information on entrepreneurs to women periodically; encouragement to association of women entrepreneurs; continuous design, planning and implementation of programmes for women; active women entrepreneurs associations and NGOs in implementing income-generating schemes; initiation of vocational courses; proactive role of apex institutions such as SIDBI and Nabard; simplification of rules, regulations, procedures; adequate insurance coverage and consideration of the scheme of providing 100 per cent loan without any collateral.

Micro credit alone however, cannot bring about a metamorphosis in the given socio-economic situation since development of women requires a multi-dimensional approach. But micro credit, by different agencies, helps in developing women's sense of autonomy over their own life-choices.

Contrary to popular impression, the experience of countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh, Bolivia and India demonstrates that women do not constitute high-risk clients but are a good banking risk.

Policy implications

Denial of rightful place to women in political power-sharing and economic decision-making would render the entire development process ineffective in checking perpetuation of aggravated gender inequities.

The current focus on micro credit and harnessing information and communication technology (ICTs) in education, science and commerce for emancipation of women has highlighted enormous possibilities for promotion of new, more ecologically sustainable and socially just approaches to development in significantly altering the life of rural women, in general, and of village artisans in particular.

This is a tall order. But concerted efforts by society at large, government, educational institutions, premier technological institutions, voluntary agencies, policy matters and women themselves, in particular, could make it achievable.

(The author is Chief Economist, Canara Bank, Bangalore.)