Make Women’s Day 2009 meaningful

Select more women candidates for Lok Sabha elections

HOW will we as a nation mark International Women's Day? As in the past with political leaders of all hues paying homage to women, cultural events being held all over the country, foundation stones being laid for women's educational institutions and hostels, government announcing a host of new initiatives and so on.
    And then 'when the hurly-burly's done', it will be back to business as usual. Women will once again be relegated to the back-burner in our gender-insensitive society. That's how it has been for the past many years and there is no reason to expect this year to be any different.
    Unless we decide, yes we can! We can make it different this year. Along with the celebration, and there is much to celebrate, we must introspect on why is it that despite more than 60 years of independence and some of the most successful women leaders, the average Indian woman still ranks among the most deprived sections of society.
    This is no exaggeration. Much has been written about declining sex-ratios and the inexplicable worsening of this ratio in more prosperous regions of the country, violence against women, disparities in wages for male and female labour in rural areas and so on.
    But what is harder to accept is the appalling position of Indian women vis-à-vis their counterparts in South Asia in matters such as access to basic healthcare. Look no further than to the World Bank Report, Sparing Lives: Better Reproductive Health for Poor Women in South Asia released on the eve of this year's Women's Day for corroboration.
    It is a truly damning indictment of the status of women in India. Clearly for all the economic prosperity ushered in by close to 9% GDP growth during the past four years, the life of the average Indian woman is as disadvantaged as before.
    Worse, in many areas such as institutional delivery, coverage and equity in immunisation, Indian women are worse off than women in neighbouring countries; countries, that in terms of per capita income are not only poorer than India but also cannot boast of so many women at the helm of affairs: a woman president, a woman chief minister and a powerful woman political leader at the centre.
    Despite this, the facts read like something out of Ripley's Believe It Or Not. Thus while almost all births take place in institutions in Sri Lanka, in India this number is less than 40%. Again, while there is virtually no difference in the coverage of poor and rich women in Sri Lanka, there are substantial differences in India even when it comes to simple interventions such as tetanus immunisation of mothers. For all the tom-tomming we do of our achievements, the poorest women in Bangladesh have 72% the coverage of the richest; the comparable figure for Pakistan is 63%, but in India the number falls to 55% in urban India and just 37% in rural India.
    Yet it is not as though we cannot do better. Kerala and, more recently Tamil Nadu, show that better and more equitable reproductive health outcomes are possible. All it requires are leaders at the top who genuinely want better outcomes for women. Unfortunately, in a maledominated society like ours, women and their concerns are unlikely to ever be on the frontburner – our experience during the past 60 years is ample proof of that.
    Research suggests that having more women lawmakers does make a difference. Further that quota laws that reserve a certain number of seats in the legislature for women could be a solution in poor countries.
    Today, less than one in ten
legislators in parliament or
state assemblies in India is a
woman. According to PRS Legislative research, women accounted for less than 7% of the
total MLAs in 28 states and two union territories and little over 9% of the total number of MPs in the last Lok Sabha. However, given the opposition from male members of parliament, a quota for women in legislatures is unlikely to become a reality in India.
    But there is a way out. By a strange coincidence, International Women's Day this year coincides with the time of the year when political parties are selecting candidates for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections. Parties that claim to back the quota bill can select 33% women candidates, something parties in countries like Britain and Germany do voluntarily. It is only then that we will have more to celebrate this day next year.
    mythili.bhusnurmath@timesgroup.com