A Big Step Forward: Women’s Empowerment Finds Pride Of Place In Economic Survey

The chapter on “Gender and Son Meta-Preference: Is Development an Antidote?” of the Economic Survey 2017-18 has on its front cover two small verses, each a depiction of women by two poets: an empowered woman portrayed by Subramania Bharati, and a helpless woman described by Maithilisharan Gupt. Below these is the hashtag #Metoo, prominently, which somehow seems to complete the perspective.

That the discourse on gender and women’s empowerment now prominently occupies centre-stage in policymakers’ consciousness is evident by its finding pride of place in a document such as the Economic Survey. This is the annual survey of the government, which takes stock of the economy and guides policy-making in the following year.

This inclusion appears to be a statement, as also a reinforcement of the government’s determination to go ahead with the women’s empowerment agenda. In the words of the survey: “there is growing evidence that there can also be significant gains in economic growth if women acquire greater personal agency, assume political power and attain public status, and participate equally in the labor force.”

There’s good news for India.

As per the survey’s analysis, India’s women are moving towards Bharati’s perception of the woman, rather than Gupt’s. Over the last 10-15 years, India’s performance has improved on 14 out of 17 indicators of women’s status, which includes decision-making and the experience of physical and sexual violence; also education levels of women have improved dramatically. On seven of these indicators, it fares even better than a cohort of countries.

These conclusions were reached by first setting the hypothesis that there is a relationship between women’s status – as reflected in, and adjudged by, the ills of patriarchy and gender-discrimination – and parameters of development like wealth and education; this, the survey does over time and across nations. A series of charts and graphs indicate a positive correlation between development and an elevated status and role of women in society and economy.

It finds that gender outcomes – such as education, employment, not experiencing violence, and age at marriage and childbirth –reveal a direct relationship with wealth and, in fact, improved at a higher rate in India compared with other countries. This holds out hope – that as wealth of households further increases, so will these outcomes change for the better.

However, unsatisfactory progress came on counts of employment, the use of reversible contraception, and son preference, and there is still scope for improvement. This, obviously, also means that these specific issues have little to do with overall development. This is further confirmed by the fact that the more developed southern states lag unexpectedly in these areas. Further, the north eastern states – though not as developed or wealthier – are far progressive on this social indicator. One can conclude, therefore, that though development is a panacea, we need to go deeper into cultural norms to address this malaise.

The one feature that stands out is the preference for a son, which is the root cause of the evil of female infanticide; this apparently is resistant to development, and even families of Indian origin in Canada exhibit skewed sex (adverse sex ratios of females to males) ratios according to recent studies. Then there is something called a “meta preference” – a phenomenon that involves parents adopting fertility “stopping rules”; having children until the desired number of sons are born. This notionally creates “unwanted” girls, estimated at about 21 million.

This meta-preference points more towards wanting at least one male child rather than a total aversion to female children. Of course, the reason for this desire for male children is mired in cultural norms, including patri-locality (women having to move to husbands’ houses after marriage), patri-lineality (property passing on to sons rather than daughters), old-age support from sons and rituals performed by sons. “In this somewhat unequal contest between the irresistible forces of development and the immovable objects that are cultural norms, the former will need all the support it can get – and then some,” the survey reflects – with full certainty, albeit philosophically.

Hence, the survey exhorts society as a whole – civil society, communities, households – to reflect on this. Since development and education have demonstratedly played a role, these seem to be the arrows in the right direction for women’s emancipation, and all stakeholders – not just the government – have an important role to play in increasing opportunities available for women in education and employment.

The survey lauds the supportive steps of the government in this direction – namely, the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao and Sukanya Samridhi Yojana schemes, as also the mandatory 26-week maternity leave for women employed in the public and private sectors, and the requirement of every establishment that has more than 50 employees to offer creche facilities – as being much required steps in this direction. It presses on the government to commit to moving ahead on these gender outcomes with the same tenacity that it pursues moving up the ranks in the ease of doing business indicators.