How Do India’s 622 Million Women Fare? Insights From The 2022 Global Gender Gap Index
The pandemic has only widened the gender gap. Women were often forced to exit the labour force to stay back at home.
In what ways are Indian women disadvantaged in comparison to men? The Global Gender Gap Index 2022, recently released by The World Economic Forum, provides some insight as nations around the world frame sectoral recovery policies to mitigate the devastations of the pandemic.
In the 2022 report, India ranks 135 out of 146 countries. It may seem like an improvement from 2021 when India ranked 140, but one must note that in 2021 the report encompassed a broader base of 156 countries. Bahamas, Cuba, Croatia, Iraq, Mauritania, Papua New Guinea, the Russian Federation, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela and Yemen are not covered in the 2022 index, presumably on account of lack of data; the report remains silent on the reasons for exclusion.
First published in 2006, the Global Gender Gap Index measures gender parity across four key dimensions – Economic Participation and Opportunity; Educational Attainment; Health and Survival; and Political Empowerment. The index measures gaps rather than levels, i.e, gaps between men and women in access to resources and opportunities. The ranks are based on gaps between men and women and not developmental levels themselves. For example, if the literacy rate for women is lower than for men, it would penalise those countries with a larger gap between the genders. The latest report states that globally, “if progress towards gender parity proceeds at the same pace observed between the 2006 and 2022 editions, the overall global gender gap is projected to close in 132 years.”
Of all the dimensions, India’s performance on the Health and Survival metric is the most alarming. The dimension measures sex ratio at birth and life expectancy. India’s sex ratio at birth (0-6 years; that measures the number of girl children per 1000 boy children) has been vastly disturbing. According to census data over the last three decades, there has been a decline from 945 (girls/1000 boys) in 1991 to 927 in 2001 and further to 918 in 2011.
A strong socio-cultural preference for sons has led to sex-selective abortions persisting despite the prevalence of legislative protections in the form of the Pre-Conception & Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994 which makes it illegal to discern the sex of unborn foetuses through diagnostic testing.
The Covid-19 pandemic revealed the dirty underbelly of society for health care access for women was vastly disrupted. India’s health expenditure as a percentage of GDP increased from 1.3% to 2.1% during the pandemic. Yet, state spending on health continues to be low, leading to huge out-of-pocket expenses estimated to be around 65% of total household health expenditure. Owing to extreme intra-household inequalities, women’s low labour force participation and gender wage gaps, women’s abilities to pay for and access healthcare suffered disproportionately.
With household incomes plummeting, female-headed households suffered excessively.
Further, the pandemic revealed a vast increase in violence against women globally. In India, the National Commission of Women received over 23,000 complaints in 2020 alone, one of the highest recorded numbers in six years. Such consequences of the nationwide lockdowns have had severe implications for women’s health and survival.
What Ails India’s Working Women?
The Economic Participation and Opportunity dimension captures gaps in labour force participation rate, wage equality, earned income, and gaps in women’s accessing formal labour channels such as professional work, technical work and work in senior and managerial roles. Over 90% of Indian women in paid jobs are concentrated in the informal sector, one that is characterised by a lack of labour protection in the form of social security, job security, health benefits, paid leaves, sick leaves, or any form of income regularity. Women work as domestic help, street vendors, home-based workers, or in textile and manufacturing industries on a daily wage or a piece-rate basis. Such workers are unable to access institutional credit as their appointment is not protected by contract.
Other Dimensions: Education And Presence In Public Sphere
The pandemic-induced economic stresses at a household level, combined with school closures, meant that girl children were most likely to drop out of school. Such instances adversely impact educational attainment, thus widening the gaps between men and women in literacy rate, and enrolments in primary, secondary and tertiary education. As education reinvented itself online, a stark digital divide became evident. Access to internet-enabled devices was higher in men and boys, which was an expected trend, given the gender divide in internet access. Women account for only 35% of internet users in India.
Gaps between men and women in public decision-making positions are indicators of political empowerment. The 17th Lok Sabha, elected in May 2019, has a total of 78 women parliamentarians—14% of all Lok Sabha MPs —the highest since Indian Independence. Globally, women account for only 26% of national parliaments.
Could We Learn More?
As a measure of gaps between men and women, the Global Gender Gap Index does a fair job. Yet, it is limited in scope given its inability to capture the experiences of identities across the gender spectrum, differential experiences of LGBTQ communities as well as the gendered dimensions of race, caste, ethnicity and other socially limiting identities. Comparatively, the Sustainable Development Goals under the custodianship of the United Nations measure a range of socio-economic and demographic indicators that can give a more holistic picture of the nature of socio-economic and socio-cultural barriers to gender equality. SGG Goal No. 5 specifically targets Gender Equality.
However, the Global Gender Gap Index is unique in the way it measures gaps and the distance toward closure of that gap. It should not, however, be seen as an all-encompassing commentary on different dimensions of gender parity.
Lavanya Shanbhogue Arvind teaches at the Centre of Disasters and Development at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She is an author, TEDx Speaker and a feminist research scholar.
The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of BQ Prime or its editorial team.