India fails its Women as the Pandemic makes the Things Worse

By: WE Staff | Monday, 5 April 2021

According to the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report, India has ranked 140 among 156 countries. The report not only highlights 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. The score has lowered from 0.668 in 2020 to 0.625 in 2021 (Lower the score, higher the gap) making India's position deteriorate on the index. This puts India in the same category as West Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

The issue is that over the long term India has shown improvement only on two of the four parameters used for measurement, those are Educational attainment and political empowerment.

Indian women stand to be worse off today compared to 15 years ago on the other two parameters: Economic participation & opportunity and Health outcomes. The Gender Gap in Health & Survival parameter has declined from 0.962 to 0.937 and the score of Economic Participation & Opportunity parameter has dropped down from 0.397 to 0.326.

India's economic participation and opportunity index was rising till 2012, but the women's share in economic progress has dwindled in the last decade.

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. The report says that women earn a fifth of what men earn in India.

Though women are far better on enrolment in tertiary education, women proportion in tech is smaller comparatively. Factors responsible for poor performance on the index include lower income, lower literacy rate, and lower STEMS attainment compared to men.

Women's share in key decision-making in political and boardroom positions is poor in India. Men's proportion in Legilstors, managerial roles,  parliament, ministerial positions, and corporate board positions is way higher than women's.

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 spheres, 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.