Gender Disparity: Its Manifestations, Causes and Implications

The Indian Scene
The best example of this complexity thereby making generalization difficult can be found in Nussbaum (1999).³ According to Dreze and Sen (2002), female discrimination is sharper among the disadvantaged castes compared to other castes in India. But as revealed from the present study, it is difficult to draw such conclusion uniformly in rural and urban parts of the districts in India. As rightly pointed out by Ghosh and Guha-Khasnobis (2006), unless income generating capabilities of the women are created, ‘growth’ alone can not assure food and other securities among women in the diverse Indian regions, and while the state conducted welfare measures can only work as short term relief.

Needless to say that gender disparity has many dimensions, none of which is less serious. Technology aided pre-birth sex selection and killing of female fetus in urban areas have indeed reached menacing proportions particularly in the relatively better off regions of India (Sen, 1992). Differential occupational demand for men and women has raised this semi-feudal practice into the status of ritual.⁴ Nationwide experiences coupled with existing literature lends enough support to the fact that some dimensions are severest in rural areas and others in urban areas. This is a natural outcome of many factors, which have been in operation for a few Millennia in this sub-continent. The most important of them is that freedom of women as a development goal at the local and individual level in the families themselves has not been integrated into the process of man made development. Absence of any effective functioning of media and lack of professional aspiration and participation of women in well to do families are likely to defer solution in most parts of this region including the Middle East compared to Africa and other regions (Boserup, 1970; Kynch and Sen, 1983; Bardhan, 1988; Sen, 1989 and 2005).⁵

When looked at over a long period of time, there is no doubt that women have gained far more access to the job market including political rights in the second half of the 20^th century, but the picture is not at all uniform and rosy across a large heterogeneous country like India. Among all the indicators, sex ratio appears to be the most consistent and widespread symptom of subjugation of women’s natural evolution in male dominated society. India’s overall FMR declined from 972 in 1901 to 946 in 1951 to 926 in 1991 and finally to 933 in 2001. This average picture gets upset at the state and more so at district level. Among the districts studied here, the lowest value for 2001 was 798 in rural areas of Haryana (relatively rich and developed state) and 766 in urban areas of Gujarat (rich and rising state). The corresponding highest values for 2001 were 1096 in a rural district and 1112 in an urban district of Kerala (a state with highest levels of living and literacy). Prevailing literature and experience unequivocally show that urban districts are more retrogressive in this matter across India except those in Kerala and some other tribal states, which are essentially agricultural.

A look at newspaper and other media reports across the nation at any time point manifests the insecurity of females in India irrespective of caste, creed, age, education and levels of living. Crime against women, girls and handicapped minors are the most common form of ‘chivalry’ of men in India. Rape is only one of the extreme forms and that too is often related to political chaos, communal violence and lack of morality of police forces. Dowry death and torture are still widespread in many regions in India and among higher economic levels in both rural and urban areas. Taking all crimes against women together, at least one woman is harassed in India per 4.45 minutes, out of which a rape occurs in every 30 minutes. This account of India appears shocking to a general audience outside India. But Interpol data converted into per 100000 population, reveals that India is a country with one of the lowest recorded crime of sexual offences including rape against women: in Northern Ireland 104.55 women were harassed in 2001, in France 68.1, in Germany 66.2, in Denmark 51.10, in Austria 46.9, whereas in India 5.7, in Indonesia 1.6 and in Armenia 1.7 (National Crime Record Bureau, 2003).

Forced prostitution including women trafficking is yet another heinous crime committed by society on women.⁶ The control over women as commodity is ingrained into the society through ritualistic religion, culture and social norms. Violence is only one form of legitimized control over women to subjugate them. But crime records in general and against women in particular are highly lopsided here. Family violence is often invisible. In order to maintain family prestige even in a lawless neighbourhood and for fear of reprisal or discrimination, violence beyond the family is also frequently not reported. It is also quite common to find that such cases are not registered by the police owning to political or economic bias, or pressure from the perpetrator of crime. Violence against women usually gets better reported where women’s movement is strong enough and the concerned populace is literate enough to support the victims and their family. That too substantially hinges on the level of education of women and women agency in the form of their sheer weight in the region under question. For example, one of the lowest overhead crimes is reported in Bihar, while the highest is reported in Kerala (National Crime Records Bureau, GOI). The reason is simple: if the family of a victim truthfully reports a rape case in a backward region, nobody would guarantee the life of the earning member, or police would thrust upon further injury onto the victim or other member.

There has been a very rapid rise in crimes against women during the last decade. Cultural globalization and rising consumerism have led to commoditization of women body for competitive advertisement for specific economic classes. Popular as they are in the sub-continent, contemporary films in India exploit rape and atrocities on women in such a motivated way that uncultured people are instigated to replicate the filmy scenes at the slightest opportunity. The popular films rather than serving as a conduit of corrective measures corrupt the immoral public mind by passionately displaying sensualism by the skilled heroines of the silver screen. And in a cheap celebrity driven and fast changing society of India, women and girls from the middle and poorer classes become the prey of indiscipline mass. Nussbaum (1999)’s attempt at defending the doctrine of wage for bodily skill for all of us (“Professors, factory workers, lawyers, opera singers, prostitutes, doctors, legislators---“ (p.276)) works as a dual source- for the motivators as well as the criminals. And the law keepers extract high rent to perpetuate the system. Pervert use of the most popular media from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and faulty punishment system are occasionally upheld by illegal police torture of innocent victims while the rich, the powerful and the players are let loose thereby maintaining the status quo.

Does education play any major role in such semi-feudal setting? Recent research shows that even a few years of education empowers women to have smaller families in order to enjoy better standard of living. The higher the education of the mother, the better is the chance that the children are sent to school thereby strengthening the linkage between education and poverty reduction (Hill and King, 1995; DFID, 2000). The gap between human capital investment in men and women is the highest in low-income regions (Schultz, 1994). The Indian scene is really very complex in this regard, and there is dearth of disaggregated empirical research as opposed to stray case studies. Popular misconception that gender inequalities are high among lower economic societies and vice versa may not be tenable in Indian regions. Contemporary research shows that education plays a pivotal role in these societies in determining the prospect of level of living of women members in many varied forms (Marjit and Ghosh, 2005; NSSO Reports; Ghosh, 2006). Pal, Ghosh and Bharati (2005) have shown that gender disparity has not diminished in most Indian states in the post-reform period. What is more, the nature of linkage between gender disparity, education, health care and levels of living is not uniform across the sub-regions within the states in India which accommodates many nations within under extremely varied forms and quality of governance (Clark, 1993; Krishnaraj et al. 1998; Papola and Sharma, 1999; Ghosh and De, 2005a).

It is believed that empowerment through access to income and other resources strengthen the voice of women not only in the household but also in the neighbourhood and in greater society. In a recently organized nationwide survey canvassed in extreme districts of the states, Ghosh et al. (2007-09) have found that issues like education, nutrition, child health and food security within family typically hinge primarily on women’s decision making power from the crop field to the capital in the districts of India. So the important question is how to link it with purchasing power, access to resources, education and work participation, cultural background on the one hand, and prevailing gender inequality on the other. Education and work participation of women becomes all too important in mitigating disparity against women.

India’s official data on gender issues lend adequate support to the fact that rural urban differences even within a district are not only intense but also opposing in some situations depending on the strength of cultural weight of the populace. As will be clear from the empirical exercises in subsequent sections, occupational priority of a given community coupled with cultural orientation substantially influences sex selection and work participation rate. So poverty or purchasing power alone, or education or work participation alone may not necessarily matter much in equalizing the number. Every small region has different occupational priorities depending on overall resource endowment and historically determined cultural compulsions and role of women agency. We have tried to unearth this complexity over different time spans at the district level with the help of both parametric and non-parametric tests. Male female wage inequality is dealt with only at the state level due to lack of disaggregated data. Essentially, therefore, our main thrust would be to identify the factors determining sex ratio and work participation. We also intend to check the nature and direction of the impact of gender inequality on regional purchasing power.