Gender Disparity: Its Manifestations, Causes and Implications

Changes in Sex Ratio in Rural and Urban Areas between 1991 and 2001
We have considered here decadal movement as well as rural urban differences for 127 districts in 2001 and 84 districts in 1991. As evident from Table 1, sex ratio for all ages has increased in rural areas of most of the 84 districts except Gujarat. But the urban areas of the districts have recorded disperse picture. For example, most of the districts in urban Gujarat and Haryana have failed to improve SR, whereas performance of Kerala, Orissa and Assam is praiseworthy. So except Kerala, the richer states have failed to nullify the ‘theory of missing women’ particularly in urban areas. Secondly, rural urban comparison of all age SR makes it clear that in most of the districts, rural sex ratio is substantially higher than the urban ratio. Performance of Haryana has worsened in post-1991 decade (44% districts had higher rural ratio as against 74% in 2001). On the other hand, urban Orissa has improved in 2001.

What is the picture in infant sex ratio in 2001? In large majority of districts in all the states, infant sex ratio in rural areas was higher than that in urban areas. In the two extreme states, Gujarat (100%) and Chhatisgarh (94%), urban demographic scene has certainly gone against the girl child. It is thus clear that purchasing power and female education do not matter much in a simple way in sex selection at the household level. It may be that cultural orientation and other less prominent phenomena play crucial catalytic role in Indian regions. Popular gender analysts hardly pay any heed to the complex interaction among social, economic and demographic processes. Moreover, even with district level dis-aggregation, gender disparity is not uniform between rural and urban areas.

It is argued that more enlightened regions have higher FMR values than those of less developed regions. Thus FMR value is regarded as an indicator of development, among others, primarily because it is a natural outcome in any region where there is no discrimination against women. The details of the trend and composition of sex ratios for 1991 and 2001 Censuses in Indian states with rural urban divisions are given in Table 6. It is obvious that there is a tendency of total sex ratio towards deterioration against females across the states in both rural and urban areas. The scientific literature suggests that unless man made intervention changes the natural tendency of female to male selection, the FMR should tend to be at least equal. Therefore, one can not ignore the pre-natal selection and death of female fetus in urban areas of the better off states. This is borne out by Census data given in Table 6. Questions are very often raised about the ‘apparent innocence’ of rural areas; but this should be judged very cautiously as rural people have hardly had facilities for fetus selection and subsequent action, and where these are available, the poorer people may not afford to bear the cost. Therefore, there is hardly any doubt that crime against girl is committed at birth by people living in higher ladder of the society and that too in so-called urbanized India.

Table 6 is decomposed in two parts: the left block shows SR for infants, while the right shows the same for all age groups. The relevant Spearman Rank Correlations coefficients (SRC) are given below the table. Let us note the major trends here.
(i)The rankings of the states are completely different between infants and all age groups. The values of SRC for rural and urban areas in 1991 were respectively 0.258 and 0.442. The same was true in rural areas in 2001 (SRC = 0.347).

(ii) A significant change is noticed in 2001 urban. The rank correlation among the states between infants and all ages was as high as 0.783 with t = 5.63. This is apparently an encouraging outcome partly, one may think, because of widespread state intervention during last one decade including notification to private nursing homes and health centres. But a deeper scrutiny in both age groups in urban areas speaks of a completely different story. For example, widespread reduction in FMR for infants has occurred during this period from 1991 to 2001 for all the states except Kerala, Meghalaya and TN. The rate of decline in Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Delhi and HP is really a cause of concern from the viewpoint of fulfilling the deadline of MDGs. The issue is not that sex ratio is the end of analysis. The point is rather that it reflects much deeper gender inequality which is ingrained within the family itself and in society at large. It ultimately reflects women as a group or agency.

(iii) As is well-known, sex ratio does not change for the permanent in the short run. The longer run may well point towards the place of women in the society. It also represents the efficacy of social and legal institution favouring women freedom for all practical purposes. As obvious from Table 6, the mean SR for total population has remained fixed at 937 from 1961 to 2001; it has marginally fallen in rural areas from 956 to 943; increased substantially in urban areas from 834 to 905. Interestingly, the coefficient of variation across the states has not changed much, although it has moved around a very low level of 0.10. This means that there are no major state level differences in sex ratio for total population during last 40 years.

Literacy alone can not explain the whole myth underlying the composition and trend of SR, though it plays a crucial role under certain socio-economic conditionality. Whereas Kerala and Goa have high literacy and more females than males, Punjab and Haryana do share the former but not the latter (Dasgupta, 1987). According to Sen, women’s gainful employment and literacy play a significant role in improving FMR. Kerala is one example, which stands for literacy. Female life expectancy of Kerala is also very high. Kerala has other features also which may influence FMR values. There are some customs among some communities in Kerala, which confer ownership of property to females. High proportion of Missionary population (20%) may have also contributed in a significant way in this part of the country particularly Kerala and Goa (and in the North East India too). History and cross-cultural social intercourse play hugely positive role for gender equality in Kerala (Parayil, 2000)¹¹.