Gender equality still a distant dream in Kerala: Expert

Kerala government's Gender Advisor Gita Gopal today said though the state was lauded the world over for its high literacy and health related issues, notions of gender equality continues to be weak.
"Women's voice is weak in decision making in all areas including legislature, executive and judiciary," she said.
Gita was speaking on the topic "Equal Laws but Unequal Protection" at the ongoing three-day first International Conference of Gender Equality, a state and UN sponsored gender summit, at nearby Kovalam.
While the language of development in the state has been one of women empowerment, the formal and informal legal frameworks within which issues have been addressed is one of protection.

The issue of protection had exacerbated gender inequalities, generated certain backlash and made more women vulnerable in economic and political dimensions, she said.
However, the state government had taken the right step in shifting from a focus on women to one of gender equality and women's empowerment, the expert added.

Quoting a recent survey by state police, she said violence against women was increasing in Kerala.
"The survey figures show that religion has no role in these violence," she said adding that there is equal amount of violence or incidents of violence against women belonging to all religions.
She, however, said only one third of women in the state were reporting the incidents of violence against them or approaching authorities seeking action against the guilty.

Though the laws have by and large aimed at protecting women, and have brought relief to some, who are able to deal with complexities and costs of legal disputes, they have exacerbated or reinforced gender inequalities for the majority of socially or economically disadvantaged women, she said.
The expert also suggested the necessity of some changes to the overall governance framework for addressing gender issues.
Bindulakshmi Pattadath, faculty of Mumbai-based TISS, who addressed the issues of migratory women, said laws related to transnational migration overlook women's active participation in the blurred boundaries of legal-illegal migratory flows.
She also said normative general perception about women who leave their families and children back home evoke a sense of "illicitness" around their work.

"I call this production of illicitness as moral panic," the expert added.