The world met under UNESCO to discuss gender equality in the year 1913 and came forward to declare 8th March as Women’s Day. Since then, the world has been celebrating International Women’s Day on 8th March. On this day, the world comes together to honour women’s achievements and marks a call to accelerating gender parity. The campaign theme for International Women’s Day-2021 was ‘Choose to Challenge’. All of us had made serious efforts to translate the actions into sincere on-ground implementation.
An official statement from the United Nations introducing 2021’s International Women’s Day theme said that a challenging world is an alert world and from challenge comes change. This year’s theme involved highlighting the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Women in leadership are paving the way towards achieving an equal future for women worldwide in the post COVID world. The theme celebrated the role women have played at the forefront of the global health crisis as health workers and caregivers, community organizers and innovators. It signifies and reiterates that the role of women in society is of paramount importance.
More than a hundred years of ‘celebrating women’ have passed, but women continue receiving unequal access to education, jobs, pay, and political representation. On one hand, 21 countries had a female head of national governments at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak in May 2020; on the other hand, the pandemic disproportionately impacted women. McKinsey had estimated that women’s jobs were 1.8 times more vulnerable due to COVID-19 than their male counterparts. While women make up for 70 per cent of healthcare workers across the globe, as stated by UN Women, they remain highly underrepresented politically. Only 21.3 per cent of ministers were women as of January 2020. When looked at India’s situation individually, women representation is far worse than the world’s average. Only 78 (approximately 14 per cent) of the 545 Lok Sabha members and 25 (just over 10 per cent) of the 245 Rajya Sabha members were women.
Shockingly, even if every woman who was ever a member of the Rajya Sabha, including her multiple terms from 1952 to 2020, counted, the cumulative count would come to a measly 208, not even equaling the Rajya Sabha’s strength of 245. Among these gloomy figures, there is a reason to celebrate. This is the first time in the history of Indian politics, the number of women in the upper and lower houses of the Parliament has crossed 100; a total of 103. Rajya Sabha members were women. Shockingly, even if every woman who was ever a member of the Rajya Sabha, including her multiple terms from 1952 to 2020, counted, the cumulative count would come to a measly 208, not even equaling the Rajya Sabha’s strength of 245. Among these gloomy figures, there is a reason to celebrate. This is the first time in the history of Indian politics, the number of women in the upper and lower houses of the Parliament has crossed 100; a total of 103. In many democracies like South Africa, England, Australia, Sweden, and Germany, political parties self-enforce with voluntary quotas or minimum limits of 33 per cent or 50 per cent women in their candidate lists and party leadership roles.
Many of our neighbouring countries have also reserved parliamentary seats for women. PhumzileMlambo-Ngcuka, Director, UN Women, said that gender-balanced cabinets made better decisions not just for women but for society as a whole. Last year, when the COVID-19 was sweeping the whole world off its feet, countries that stood tall and gave a good fight mostly had female heads of state. Germany, led by Angela Merkel, had a far lower death rate than Britain, France, Italy or Spain during May 2020. Finland, where Prime Minister Sanna Marin, 34, governs with a coalition of four female-led parties, has had fewer than 10 per cent as many deaths as neighbouring Sweden was experiencing. Tsai Ing-wen, the president of Taiwan, had presided over one of the world’s most successful efforts at containing the virus, using testing, contact tracing, and isolation measures to control infections without a complete national lockdown. Under the leadership of its Prime Minister, Jacinda Arden, New Zealand completely eradicated rather than only containing the COVID-19 outbreak in the peak month of virus spread-May. While the whole world was quarantined in homes, New Zealand had lifted all the restrictions by June first week by opening schools, offices and colleges, making social distancing not necessary, and allowing public gatherings without any limit on numbers. Back at home, KK Shailaja, Health Minister of Kerala, made notable efforts to curb the transmission of COVID-19 in her state. She became the only woman from India to be honoured by the United Nations to tackle the coronavirus pandemic. Under her leadership, Kerala became the first state in India to flatten the COVID-19 curve while simultaneously maintaining low mortality rates due to early and appropriate interventions, conveying proof of efficient female leadership.
Women’s active participation and their significant contribution to society is a reason to cheer and celebrate. The nation has initiated many programs to bridge the gender gap and make an equitable world. In the last few years, a considerable improvement in the gender population gap and the closing higher education gap in terms of gender has been recorded. A report released by Catalyst Inc stated that among graduates in 2018-19, 53 per cent were women. Despite this growth, the data established that less than one-quarter of women aged 15 and older participate in the labour force as of 2020 as women account for only 19.9 per cent of the total labour force in India. Several social and cultural issues require the immediate attention of our social scientists and policymakers. Restrictive cultural norms, the gender wage gap, an increase in women’s time in continuing their education, lack of safety policies and inflexible work offerings, and gender equality in sharing the household workload are critical issues.
Unequal pay is one of the biggest challenges in not only India but across the globe. A study conducted by the International Labour Organisation in 2018 covered 70 countries. About 80 per cent of women employees worldwide continue to be paid approximately 20 per cent less than men. The report established that in high-income countries, unequal pay is at the high end of the pay scale, that the gender pay gap is more comprehensive, while in low- and middle-income countries, the gender pay gap is wider amongst the lower-paid workers. Rosalia Vazquez-Alvarez, econometrician and wage specialist at the ILO and one of the authors of the report, said that women are more highly educated in many countries than men. Even then, they earn lower wages. This gender pay gap, visibly prevalent in all economies, reflects the 21st century’s greatest social injustice.
There is a silver lining. Gender sensitization is being introduced academic curriculum in educational institutions and workplaces; many programs in India are being launched to empower women financially, like Economic Empowerment of Women Entrepreneurs and Start-ups and Women Entrepreneurship Platform; women leadership skills are being highly recognized in the political and business sphere, thereby shattering the patriarchal stereotypes like women belong at homes or at reception desks. With every 8th March, the world comes closer to giving women their rights and representation, but the pace of movement towards an equal world for all genders is slow and requires urgent attention of all.