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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Learning to be equal by Kanika Datta


The fourth edition of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) Gender Gap Report, released on October 27, makes for somewhat depressing reading if you are Indian. The country has slipped four places in 2009 to rank 114 out of 134 countries.

If there is slight consolation, it is that our biggest global economic competitor, China, fared slightly better, slipping two places over its 2008 ranking. Beyond that, comparisons appear meaningless. At rank 60, the Middle Kingdom is more than 50 rungs above India.

For the record, the Nordic countries — Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden — continue to battle it out for the top four slots with Norway (at 4 this year) giving way to Iceland. But it is worth noting that South Africa, which is roughly comparable to India on the development ladder, has jumped into the top-10 rankings at number 6 from 22 last year.

The reason India should be worried is that since 2007, at a time when the economy was mostly growing at 9 per cent, the country’s rankings moved within the narrow band of 113 and 114. This suggests that economic growth may have accelerated but it is not translating into significant gains for women, who account for almost half of India’s population. At the same time, China saw its position improve from 73 to 60.

Now, China can by no means be considered a model of gender equality — like India, it has historically had a societal bias against women, accentuated by the one-child policy. Indeed, considering the economic and political power it wields globally, it would not be too much to expect it to be higher up the gender equality stakes. Even so, WEF’s gender gap sub-indices suggest that Chinese women are, on the whole, better off than their Indian counterparts.

And, though it would be too simplistic to draw a direct link between growth and gender equality, it is also true that (a) China is on a higher growth trajectory than India; and (b) developed countries report the smallest gender gaps (on a 0 to 1 scale, where 0 is inequality and 1 equality, Iceland, for instance, scores 0.828 to India’s 0.615 and China’s 0.691).

If policy-makers wanted to draw a lesson from the study, the answers lie in the sub-indices under “economic participation and opportunity” and “educational attainments”.

As the bar chart shows, China scores significantly better on all parameters, a fact that is well established even anecdotally. What is striking, though, is the difference in equality ratios at the level of “legislators, senior office managers and so on”, and “professional and technical workers”. On the first parameter, China is leagues ahead. On the second, the country crosses the equality threshold (suggesting that more women are employed in these positions than men) whereas India does not even figure.

At first glance, this would appear to be a terrible mistake. What about our Chanda Kochhars and Kiran Mazumdar Shaws and Vinita Balis, all of whom head mega-corporations and of whom India is so proud? Consider, however, that such studies represent the mother of all averages, suggesting that having women in senior positions in Indian organisations is still a rarity. Indeed, the reason we recall and fete senior women in the corporate world is precisely because they are such notable exceptions. Of course, we outstrip almost everyone on the parameter “Years with female head of state in the last 50 years”, but since one was the daughter of a prime minister and another chosen for her gender rather than ability, this is not worth trumpeting.

The answer to why there are fewer women in senior managerial positions in India’s workforce is not solely because of male biases, but also because fewer women are sufficiently educated to take up these positions — note India’s falling equality ratios up the education chain and compare it with China’s. If those numbers tell us anything at all, it is the direction that gender-based affirmative action must take.