Statsguru: India continues to fail its women as Covid-19 made things worse

The World Economic Forum in its Global Gender Gap report of 2021 has not just highlighted the sad state of unequal progress of women among the two major genders, but also found evidence that the Covid-19 pandemic affected women more than men.
 
India remains a country with a higher gender gap (GG), shows chart 1. This puts India in the same category as West Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Scandinavian and American countries have bridged the GG the most. But what is more concerning is that India’s position has deteriorated on the index. From 0.668 in the 2020 report, India’s GG index has slipped to 0.625 in the 2021 report.

 
Assume that men are at the position 1.000. The number denotes the distance to 1.000 as the GG.
 
The real problem is that over the longer term India has shown improvement only on two of the four parameters used for measurement: Educational attainment and political empowerment. Indian women stand to be worse off today compared to 15 years ago on two parameters: Health outcomes and economic opportunity and participation, shows chart 2.




 
In fact, India’s economic participation and opportunity index was rising till 2012, chart 3 illustrates. It has largely declined since, reflecting women’s relatively more vulnerable position in the job market.

 
There are several reasons for India’s poor performance on the index, apart from the obvious bottlenecks to progress such as sociocultural norms, including patriarchy. For instance, the report finds that women earn a fifth of what men earn in India (calculation includes multiple parameters including wages, social security etc).
 
In some cases, apparent progress eludes reality. Women fare better on enrolment in tertiary education (post Class 12), but a smaller proportion of women are in tech, shows chart 4A. Women’s share in key decision-making political and boardroom positions is poor in India, reveals chart 4B.

 
If India’s situation was bad till now, the pandemic has made things worse. There are fewer women in top positions now than the pre-pandemic times in most economic sectors, especially the ones affected the most. Only in healthcare, IT and financial services, the sectors that are doing relatively well in the pandemic, has the share of women in senior roles improved, chart 5 shows.

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StatsGuru is a weekly feature. Every Monday, Business Standard guides you through the numbers you need to know to make sense of the headlines; Source: World Economic Forum