Gender Disparity: Its Manifestations, Causes and Implications

Sex Ratio: State-wise Variation
Note that India’s female population is larger than the combined total population of Canada, USA and the Russian federation. One legitimate question may be to ask how they are doing. The most commonly used long run indicator of neglect of girl child in Indian society is captured by under-six sex ratio. Inter-state CV of sex ratios for both (0-6) age groups and all ages do not vary much either in 1991 or in 2001 (less than 10%). That is, the picture in terms of sex ratio, even though it is alarmingly retrogressive across the states except Kerala and some other tribal regions, is quite common at the state level. But the maximum and minimum values vary widely in 2001: 799 to 982 in rural areas, and 796 to 980 in urban areas for (0-6) age groups. The extreme values for all age groups range from 810 to 1059 in rural areas and 795 to 1058 in urban areas. The mean FMR for all ages has significantly fallen from 937 in 1991 to 895 in 2001 in rural areas, whereas it has marginally increased in urban areas from 882 to 895. It is, therefore, quite obvious that ‘women’s freedom as an agency’ in the sense of a mass of population has recorded widespread retrogression in Indian states even under democratic governance, legislative support towards female and free press. This failure to get equalized in terms of sheer number has many negative repercussions in coming years. Questions raised about the role of ‘economic’ and ‘non-economic’ factors leading to declining sex ratios are not easy to answer with state level aggregate analysis. Neither is it always possible to quantitatively separate out the specific roles played by economic, demographic, cultural and historical factors with state level aggregate data.

Third, if we assume that economic forces dictate the terms of child selection between women and men members at the household, emphasis must be placed on the status of women in terms of work participation rate for female (WPRF) and literacy (LRF). Note that WPRF varies widely across the rural and urban areas of the states in 2001: the value of CV was as high as 53.30% in urban areas as compared to 33% in rural areas. Coupled with this, the fact that rural sex ratio is always higher than urban sex ratio, urban India poses much stronger threat toward gender equality. What is more, while about 55% of rural women participate in the work force in north-eastern and tribal states, the corresponding share for richer states is only 10%. On the other hand, in urban areas work participation rate for women is only 6.5% in richer states as against 41% in hilly, tribal and poorer states. Sadly enough, the picture was almost the same in 1991 with no major change in inter-state coefficient of variation especially for urban areas, which stands at 53.30% in 2001. Yet the variance of gross gender inequality (GGI) across the states has recorded a tendency towards decline in both rural and urban areas between 1991 and 2001. State-wise variation in female literacy has fallen to a tolerable level in both rural and urban areas. These broad features are reported in Table 2.

Contrary to the general tendencies in Western societies, women’s work participation rate is invariably higher in poorer states and that too in rural areas. Women in richer families in Indian societies do hardly take part in the organized or unorganized employment process. Even if they enjoy higher standard of living, lack of formal economic freedom or economic dependence on family makes them more vulnerable in their choice of sex selection or education of the child. This has long run negative impact on gender equality, which will be clear from the detailed parametric tests undertaken in later section for detecting the factors responsible for worsening sex ratio and work participation rate. The intricacies between culture and economic urge, abundance and futility of education or skill, rural or urban, occupational compulsion and sex preference are so compelling and ingrained in Indian societal fabric that inner analytical dynamics of gender inequalities are not always transparent uniformly in Indian states.