Fem-anger Unfold-014
Introduction
Gender impartiality should be considered as a prime goal. Hence, the key highlights of the Global Gender Gap Report tend to reflect on the performance of the world towards the achievement. There are risks, violations and vulnerabilities women face just because they are women even now. Most of these risks are directly linked to the economic, political, social and cultural disadvantages women deal with in their daily lives. This becomes acute during crisis and disasters. This article brings you the key highlights of the latest WEF Global Gender Gap Report along with the latest Global Gender Gap Index Rankings 2023.
Ranking
The size of a country’s population can impact its power ranking. A outsized population can mean a greater workforce, motivating monetary enlargement. However, the size doesn’t a matter here. But the human education, and skills of the people put in to a country’s supremacy are to be noted. As of 2023, India ranks 14th in the list of most powerful countries. This position is based on diverse factors, plus economic situation, well-built international groupings, and military potency by 2023.
The Ranking factors
- A leader,
- Economical influence,
- Political influence,
- Strong international alliances, and
- A strong military.
Global Gender Gap Index
There are four extents based on which the Global Gender Index evaluates the performance of the countries. They include Economic Participation & Opportunity, Education Attainment, Health and Survival, Political Empowerment.
The Global Gender Gap Report 2023
India has achieved an overall rank of 127 out of the 146 countries in the 2023 edition of the report.
- India has closed 64.3% of the overall gender gap.
- But, the country has reached only 36.7 % parity in economic participation and opportunity.
- India has noticed advancement in wages and income. And the divide up of women in elder positions and technical responsibilities has slumped slightly since the last year’s report.
- The political empowerment of women in India has spotted good improvement. India has attained a parity of 25.3% in the midst of 15.1% of parliamentarians.
- In local governance, India has achieved women’s representation of 44.4%. It is one of 18 countries to have more than 40% women’s representation in local governance out of the 117.
- For India, the 1.9 percentage point improvement in the sex ratio at birth had driven up parity. It is happened after more than a decade of slow progress, as per the report.
- The top nine countries- Iceland, Norway, Finland, New Zealand, Sweden, Germany, Nicaragua, Namibia and Lithuania have closed at least 80% of their gap.
- For the 146 countries covered in the 2023 index, the Health and Survival gender gap has closed by 96%, the Educational Attainment gap by 95.2%, Economic Participation and Opportunity gap by 60.1%, and Political Empowerment gap by 22.1%.
Accelerating progress and opportunities on genders across India
Every kid ought to have to reach her or his full potential, but gender disparity in their lives obstruct this reality. India will not fully develop unless both girls and boys are equally supported to reach their full potential.With the prevalence of gender discrimination, and social customs, women become open to the elements to the leeway of child marriage, teenage pregnancy, domestic works, underprivileged education and health, sexual violence, use and brutality. Many of these manifestations will not change unless women are valued more.Women have an especially difficult time accessing life-saving resources, information and social networks in their daily life. India should improve in platforms for women to voice the challenges they face in everyday life and explore the solutions that work for them so they can build better futures for themselves and their communities.
UNICEF’s communication for development (C4D)
The panel develops social and behaviour change communication to support each result. These prioritize efforts to change off-putting gender models like imbalanced feeding, uneven investment in young girls and boys, and perpetuation of lower value of women than men through wedding dowry. UNICEF’s Communications, Advocacy and Partnerships team works with media, influencers and gamechangers to advocate for UNICEF priorities, which includes Equal Value of Girls and Boys. India has begun work in some states to work on new agenda with new collaborators to improve the ability and liberty of women and girls.
The Equal Remuneration (ER) Act
The Equal Remuneration (ER) Act is the chief legislation on this subject. It is obligatory for employers to make certain equal salaries are paid to men and women doing the same work or work of a similar nature. This Act excludes unfairness against women in matters of employment, training, shifts and endorsement.
The POSH Act
More recently, the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redresses) Act 2013 (the POSH Act) also introduced a requirement for employers to provide women with a workplace that is free from sexual harassment. Obligations include:
- establishing a policy;
- an internal committee to explore objections;
- carrying out regular trainings; and
- Overtly reporting of statistics on the number of sexual stalking complaints raised and also handled every year.
Workplace equality
While India fares reasonably on women are right globally, there is still scope for step up at least after 2023. The government should dynamically consider that introducing parental leave in India, so that men can play an equal role in child-care and women only are not viewed as potential financial liability by employers anymore.
Increased acceptance of remote working has also opened up newer opportunities for greater female and other gender participation in the workforce. Increased adoption of flexible working rules by employers is will improve female participation in the workforce, and then it is easier to achieve a balance between their professional and personal responsibilities. Such changes along with better awareness and reforms in other areas such as property and inheritance rights in favor of women and other genders, will be crucial to achieve better gender equality in India.
Similarly, while the provisions under the MB Act are well intended, coupled with poor enforcement of the ER Act, discrimination against women at the time of hiring often goes unchecked.The apprehension of having to extend six months of fully paid maternity benefit without any financial support from the government can often prove to be an issue. The constitution allows the government to take exceptional measures for the do good to of women. However, the necessities under the constitution do not apply to private limited companies.
Impact of pandemic on women professionals
As per International Labor Organization (ILO); during the pandemic, five percent of all employed women lost their jobs. End user sector, Non-profits, and Media and Communication took a decline of women’s hiring into leadership roles. There is an increase in occupational gender segregation in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic and it became a never ending scenario in India. As per the Global Gender Gap Report; the sectors where women are underrepresented even today would face difficulty in terms of gender parity in jobs in future. These sectors include Cloud computing, Engineering, Data and Artificial Intelligence. And of course its job switching gap is 19-58 % for women in India.India is likely to have a scarring effect on future economic opportunities for women.
Conclusion
In India women and men experience adolescence differently. While men tend to experience greater freedom, women tend to face extensive limitations on their ability to move freely and to make decisions affecting their work, education, marriage and social relationships.Some Indian women are global leaders and powerful voices in diverse fields but most women in India do not fully enjoy many of their rights due to deeply entrenched patriarchal views, norms, traditions and structures.By increasing the value of women we can collectively contribute to the achievement of specific results, on increasing access to education, reducing anaemia, ending child marriage and eliminating gender-biased sex selection. National government should draw policies that seize occupational separation among genders. To attain more gender-equal future of work, nations have to come up with effective mid-career re-skilling policies, combined with managerial practices, unbiased hiring and promotion practices.
Work cited
Global Gender Gap Index
Global Gender Gap Report-2023