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Women- In Numbers

Discussion in 'Snippets of Life (Non-Fiction)' started by PujaInk, Mar 28, 2014.

  1. PujaInk

    PujaInk Bronze IL'ite

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    Not so long ago, a jewellery brand with the tag line “For the Woman of Substance” put out a series of print advertisements which had beaming women adorned with baubles stare at the reader with what were supposedly looks of confidence. The women were strikingly pretty and looked as full of spunk as was possible to appear in a picture. Yet none of those women had been granted the rudimentary honour of a first name. Thus they were referred to as Mrs Sharma/Mrs Khan etc. Apparently, without the appendage of a husband’s name, their worth was not deserving of recognition.

    That the Indian woman is a discriminated against, deprived, dispensable being is no revelation. Yet every time a fresh set of statistics on her status is revealed, the magnitude of the prejudice is laid bare.

    The Inter Parliamentary Union’s data on women in the upper and lower houses of legislatures in various countries reveals that in 2009, only 11.4% of the Lok Sabha seats had women on them. That works out to just 62 in a House of 545. In the Rajya Sabha, 28 women made it to the 245 seats (in 2012) again making it just 11.4%. That gives us a rank of 111 in 145 countries, with even Syria, Afghanistan and UAE doing better. Our troubled neighbour Nepal, just beginning its experiments with democracy, has put 172 women in its 575 member Constituent Assembly, logging 29.9% and standing 36 on the list. Rwanda makes it to the top of the list with an average membership of 51.15%. Even Pakistan does better than us and is ranked 72 with 20.7% women in its lower house and 16.3% in the Upper House.

    The situation is unlikely to be better in the forthcoming elections. Take the example of Bihar which has 40 Lok Sabha seats. The Congress has given tickets to just two women, BJP to three, and RJD and JD(U) to five each. Even these few women have not strictly made it on merit. Thus the BJP’s contestants are Putul Singh- wife of party’s senior leader Digvijaya Singh and Rama Devi- the wife of former MLA Brij Bihari. Similarly JD(U) has not looked any further than the wife and daughter of Lalu Yadav, and the wives of strongmen Sohabuddin and Ranvir Yadav. Similarly the Congress has limited itself to Babu Jagjivan Ram’s daughter Meira Kumar and don Pappu Yadav’s wife Ranjita Ranjan.

    If the rough and tumble of politics makes it a tough choice for women, they do not have it any better at home. According to data put out by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Indian men between the ages of 15 and 74 spend just 52 minutes on unpaid work while for women the time is 352 minutes. The unpaid category includes routine household work, to which our men contribute just 19 minutes against the 298 minutes that women put in. For all of men’s wisecracks on female vanity, Indian women spend just 670 minutes on personal care (includes time spent on sleeping, eating and drinking) as against the 703 minutes clocked by the men.

    For paid work, on which women spend a daily average of 185 minutes as opposed to the 391 minutes spent by men, the glass ceiling remains unbroken. A global survey on ‘Women in Business’ found that while worldwide the proportion of women in senior management positions is 24%, in India the figure is a much lower 14%. There are 42% companies where no woman has made it to a senior management position, while 21% of all women who make it to the top find themselves in human resources. There is a high level of support (64%) for the introduction of quotas for women on executive boards, yet half the companies surveyed had no specific programme to mentor women.

    In addition to slower growth at the work place, women, in a bid to live up to their image of ‘super’ beings, pay with their health. An ASSOCHAM study titled “Multitasking Seriously Affecting Corporate Women’s Health” found out that three of every four women in the 32-58 age group suffer from some life-style, chronic or acute ailment- a list that manifests itself in obesity, depression, chronic backache, diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, heart, kidney disease etc.

    The survey conducted with 2,800 corporate female employees at all levels of the hierarchy from 120 companies/organizations across 11 broad sectors of the economy from 10 cities found that while 42% of these women faced lifestyle diseases, 22% had chronic diseases and 14% reported acute ailments.

    For grimmer statistics look at the World Health Organisation’s latest World Cancer Report according to which 5.37 lakh women were diagnosed with cancer in 2012, against the 4.77 lakh men diagnosed with the disease in India The numbers turn around for mortality rates though with the number of deaths being 3.56 lakh among men and 3.26 lakh among women.
    Of the many reason offered for this status of Indian women, one neglected rationale is women’s own role in it.

    Getting back to the example of women in politics, even at the municipal corporation level women fail to challenge themselves, introducing themselves on their posters as “Patni”. The irony of using the adjective “lokpriya”(popular) to describe oneself and then plastering the name and photo of one’s husband on the same poster is lost to them.

    Thus while women must demand a fairer chance from the world, they must start by believing that they are deserving of it.

     
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