How confident are we?

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, Feb 19, 2008

THE OTHER HALF


KALPANA SHARMA



When the media claims that the Indian woman has
finally “arrived”, that there is a
noticeable change in her status, and that she
displays a new confidence, how should one react?
Believe? Disbelieve? Applaud? Be cynical? Or conduct
a reality check?

It is virtually impossible to generalise on the
status of women in India. For every plus point
showing an improvement, there are a dozen minus
points indicating the reverse. Therefore, arriving
at a mean between these two extremes becomes
difficult.

Last month, the Centre for Study of Developing
Societies (CSDS) with two media houses, Indian
Express and CNN-IBN, released the results of an
interesting survey on the status of Indian women.
The sample was small — 4,000 women in 20
states and across 160 locations — and the
survey acknowledge that it had a decided urban skew.
Yet, the results indicated some notable trends.
One of the interesting findings was that the
majority of Indian women wanted to
“work” outside the house in paid labour.

Those not engaged in such work at the moment, wanted
the chance to do so. They felt they got more respect
if they worked outside the house. Yet, the majority
also admitted that they were not paid equal wages to
the men nor did they get the position they felt they
deserved at their place of work. And a large number
complained of harassment at work.

(To read the rest, click on the link above)