No space for women

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, June 24, 2012

Big hit: A ladies-only bus. Photo: Vipin Chandran

Looks, they say, can be deceptive. At first glance, Kerala’s capital city, Thiruvanananthapuram, is not just incredibly green and beautiful but also clean. The latter, in particular, seems a singular achievement given the monuments of uncleared garbage that mark practically all cities, big and small, in India. Yet, open a local newspaper and you read about malaria and dengue, hospitals spilling over with cases and politicians almost coming to blows over the garbage crisis. “So where is the garbage?” I ask the taxi driver. “It is dumped on the inside roads”, he informs me, so that casual visitors like me will not see the ugly sight.

The garbage crisis in Thiruvananthapuram has reached epic proportions. In a state where there is little uninhabited space, creating dumpsites for urban waste has become a challenge. People living in villages such as Vilappinshala near the state capital are refusing to allow dumps or waste processing plants to come up in their vicinity. Not in my backyard, they are saying. So whose backyard will handle the increasing tonnage of urban waste? That is a question that all cities will need to ask — and resolve.

But just as Thiruvananthapuram’s surface cleanliness hides the true story of uncleared garbage and the spread of disease, the experience of women in Kerala also stands out in marked contrast to the popular myth about their status.

We all know that there are more women in Kerala than men — an exception in a country where girls are being eliminated before they are born. We also know that women in Kerala are more educated, have longer life expectancy, and get married later than women in the rest of India. Yet, ask them whether they feel safe, and they will tell you a story that speaks of disempowerment, of helplessness, of anger.

 

Revelatory

Sakhi, a women’s resource centre, and several other women’s groups set out to survey women’s perception of safety in public spaces in four cities in the state — Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode, Kochi and Thrissur. Their findings blow the lid off the myth about the power of women in Kerala.

The overwhelming majority of women surveyed in these four cities said that sexual harassment was their main safety concern. They routinely experienced verbal and physical harassment. Buses that the majority of working women are forced to use were a primary site for such harassment. Women passengers were groped, pinched, leaned upon. Apart from male passengers, even the conductors took their chances.

Girl students in particular had a torrid time. One student reported how someone who stood behind her sliced her dress from top to bottom with a sharp instrument. Another spoke of the abusive language used by bus conductors. Other women talked of being leaned upon, about men “accidentally” falling on them when the bus took a turn, of men using every opportunity to touch parts of their bodies.

Auto-rickshaws were not a particularly happy alternative as auto drivers would refuse women a ride much of the time and especially in the evenings when they most needed it. In any case, most women said they did not feel safe venturing out after dark.

While women in many cities have to suffer this kind of daily assault, what was striking was how most women felt unsafe in public parks, beaches, theatres and even standing at ticket counters. Cities like Thiruvananthapuram have beautiful parks that would be the envy of people in cities like Mumbai where we are starved for open spaces. Yet, in the verdant surroundings of Kanakakunnu Palace in the state capital, you rarely see women, or even groups of women. Men accompany the few that come there. My friends tell me that if a group of women decide to break the norm, they will be stared at as if they are entering forbidden territory.

 

Absence of infrastructure

Apart from the sexual harassment, for women the question of safety was also linked to the infrastructure in these cities. For instance, the majority of women complained about the complete absence of clean and safe public toilets. The few toilets available were filthy and almost routinely used by men. The approach to such public toilets was such that women would feel afraid to go anywhere near them.

Poorly lit roads, uneven pavements, open drain covers — everything that makes the public space difficult for the elderly, for children, for the disabled also impacts women’s sense of safety. Here is an important lesson for urban planners. Make cities safe for women and the most vulnerable and they will be safe for everyone.

Ironically, even the women conducting this safety audit were harassed, stared at, touched, hit and followed. They also found it difficult to persuade women to speak about being harassed because of the dominant perception that only “bad women” get sexually harassed. Hence, the women being surveyed felt that if they admitted to being harassed, they would be considered “bad women”!

How women are treated in the public space provides a true reflection of women’s status and how they are valued by society. You can educate women, give them health care and give them jobs. But if they cannot step out of their homes and offices without the fear of being assaulted for no other reason than their gender, then clearly there is something very wrong. 

(To read the original, click http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/Kalpana_Sharma/article3562199.ece)

Taking the stink out of city sanitation

The Hindu, Op-Ed page, June 7, 2012

In South Mumbai's upscale Malabar Hill, a neighbourhood of 6,000 people share 52 toilets, 26 for men and 26 for women. That works out to around 115 people per toilet. Nearby live some of the oldest and richest families of the city with homes where one person may have a choice of many toilets.

But this is Simla Nagar, where 720 households are precariously perched on a not so wealthy slope of Malabar Hill. The path to the two-storey toilet block in the slum is like an obstacle race that only the able can undertake. Depending on which part of the slum you live in, it can take you anything from five to 20 minutes to reach the toilets. On the way you climb steep, uneven steps, walk uphill through narrow lanes barely four feet wide that are slippery with soapy water as scores of women wash clothes and utensils, then downhill through equally treacherous lanes to finally reach the destination.

If you get there before 10 a.m., you are lucky. There is water in the taps; hence the toilets are reasonably clean. If you wait longer, the water stops; you carry your own mug of water, just enough for your personal needs but not enough to flush the toilet. By mid-afternoon, all 52 toilets are rendered unusable. People wait in resignation till the evening when the toilets are cleaned. At night, although the toilets are lit, the path leading to them is not.

Some enterprising people have built their own toilets inside their tiny homes. But there is no sewerage. So the waste pipe dumps the human waste in the open drain outside. If you are the unfortunate neighbour of one of these inventive souls, you live with the stench and the flies and mosquitoes. No one complains. You just curse your luck that you do not have the resources, or the space, to copy your neighbour.

For old people, especially old women, getting to the toilet is virtually impossible unless your jhopdi is next door. And children? Mothers say they use the open drain. Who has the time to drop everything and run with the child to the toilet?

So Bill Gates' idea to launch a global quest to “reinvent the toilet” is certainly timely. India has been given the singular honour of hosting the “Reinventing the toilet” summit in 2013. Very appropriate given over 60 per cent of Indians are forced to defecate in the open because they have no access to toilets. If nothing else, the conference will draw necessary global attention to a problem that is often relegated to the bottom of the endless list of challenges poor countries face.

Innovations needed

Technological innovations are needed as in rural areas, and even in some towns, where capital-intensive underground sewerage systems might not be feasible. Also flush toilets waste too much water and are unsustainable given the growing scarcity of water. But coming up with new ideas for toilets should not be rocket science. As Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh stated recently, “We can launch missiles like Agni and satellites but we cannot provide sanitation to our women.”

The real challenge for India is dealing with the sanitation needs of cities and towns, particularly the areas where the urban poor live. Having failed spectacularly all these years to provide affordable housing in cities — Mumbai is now constantly referred to as “Slumbai” — the least governments can do is to put the sanitation challenge within slum settlements top of their list of priorities.

 

In cities like Mumbai, the problem is partly compounded by the carrot of redevelopment that is dangled before many notified or regularised slums such as Simla Nagar. Because they are designated for redevelopment at some future date, not much attention is paid to their immediate needs. As a result, you have toilets that are nowhere near enough for the colony, yet new toilets will not be built. And you have a water supply that comes for just four hours every evening thereby making the hand-flush toilets unusable for a significant part of the day. 

 

Appeals to augment the supply fall on deaf ears. In the end, not out of choice but out of compulsion, many residents of such slums are compelled to defecate in the open at the cost of their own sense of dignity.

There have been efforts, often half-hearted. Funds are allocated but lie unused for years because no one really cares. And the majority of toilet schemes in slums fail for precisely the same reasons: not enough water, zero maintenance and an unresponsive administration.

Even if people come up with innovative ideas, there is little encouragement. Many people from outside government who have tried to intervene in the sanitation sector end up hitting their heads against a brick wall: the unwillingness of much of the bureaucracy to be flexible and open to new ideas, to design adaptations and to the beneficiary community's views. To meet the toilet challenge, it is this mindset that has to be reinvented.

(To read the original, click here)

Unequal unions

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, May 27, 2012

Taking the plunge: Wishes fulfilled? AFP PHOTO

Why should women obliterate their personalities, their lives, once they get married?

Last week, a young man, 24 years old and a graduate, introduced me to his new bride. He comes from a tradition-bound Maharashtrian family. The couple had completed their round of temples in the city. And I was told that after a month, the bride, a girl born and brought up in Mumbai like the bridegroom, would be dispatched to a village in the Konkan to help his mother with the housework.

The young man introduced his wife as Tapasya. I asked the young woman her name. She said it was Usha. “But ‘they' have changed my name”, she said. And both seemed to accept this unquestioningly. As if it was the most natural thing to do. So the girl loses not just her last name but also her first name. In other words, she becomes a new person, apparently with no connection with her past.

This name-changing custom, followed only in some parts of India, is at the extreme end of the continuum that ordains that a woman's identity and independence ends the day she takes her marital vows.

The change of name might seem a minor issue. But it is what it represents that needs to be questioned. Why? We need to ask that. Is it essential? Will it make a difference to the quality of the marriage? Will it make a difference to the lives of the young people entering into matrimony? And why only the girl? Perhaps both ought to change their names so that they start their lives on a completely clean slate!

First in France

A stark contrast is France where the new woman in the Presidential Palace in France, is the first unmarried woman to live there alongside the man elected as President. On May 6, France voted in Francois Hollande of the Socialist Party as President. With him came his “First Lady”, Valerie Trierweiler. The two are not married and as of now have no plans to do so.

Ms. Trierweiler has been married twice, divorced twice and has three children. Mr. Hollande has four children from a previous relationship. And the French do not think this relationship is worth even a comment.

What is interesting about this is not just the non-marital arrangement. Or the ease with which the French seem to accept it, but the fact that Ms. Trierweiler, a 47-year-old political journalist with two decades of experience, has chosen to continue in her profession. She says she has no plans to be financially dependent on her live-in partner. “I haven't been raised to serve a husband. I built my entire life on the idea of independence,” she is quoted as saying in the New York Times.

The idea here is not to advocate an end to the institution of marriage or to debate whether live-in relationships are ideal. But the example of the independent Ms. Trierweiler is interesting not just because she is with the President of France, but because their relationship and her attitude towards it highlights an important question on women and marriage.

Is it essential for a woman to obliterate her personality, her life, once she gets married, or when she enters into a publicly-acknowledged relationship with a man? Does she not have the right to remain her own person?

Is there something sacrosanct about women subsuming their lives in that of the men they marry or live with?

Surely this is one of the reasons girls count for so little in our society.

In India, we are not encouraged to ask such questions. In fact, questioning in general about anything is actively discouraged. Children are firmly told not to be pesky if they question. Girls are put in their place if they do — or called “Maoists” as a Kolkata student was branded by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee during a recent television talk show.

In our educational institutions, “note-taking” is the norm, not argument and questioning. As a result, there are scores of so-called customs that continue unquestioned by most people except a few who are inevitably called “rebels”. But women's status within marriage is most certainly an issue that needs constant questioning.

Expected sacrifices

Some of this is changing as more girls get educated and follow careers. Many customs have been questioned and have been modified. Yet, the expectation that the woman will automatically and willingly “sacrifice” her independence, her career, her personality, and even her given name at the altar of marriage somehow remains sacrosanct.

What is even more perplexing is how, despite a so-called “modern” education, the majority of girls continue to accept without question that their years of freedom, or independence, are limited to the time they get married.

Some edifices are too solid, too difficult to bring down. But perhaps we can begin by training our young people to ask: Why?

(To read the original, click here )

Aamir, listen in

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, May 13, 2012

Photo: N. Sridharan

Everyone is talking about Aamir Khan's Satyamev Jayate programme. The criticism is muted and much of it predictable. Most viewers have been impressed by it. The first episode was suitably engaging and shocking. It focussed on sex-selective abortion (a more precise and correct term rather than the more commonly-used ‘female foeticide') and the consequences of the declining sex ratio. Even the cynics must agree that every attempt to make a dent in the entrenched mindset in this country, where educated people think nothing of making women go through multiple abortions simply because they believe they must have a son, is welcome.

The actor has probably got all his episodes in place. But here is a subject that he should consider, one that requires the same kind of puncturing of middle-class attitudes that he did quite effectively in his maiden episode. Predictably, people interviewed said only the poor, illiterate and rural people resort to practices like sex-selection. Khan established with effective and simple graphics that the exact opposite was the case. I also liked the simple and clear way he stated that it is the male that determines the sex of the foetus. It's frightening how many people refuse to accept this as a fact.

Helping hands

The subject I suggest is a programme on domestic help. All of us have people “working” for us. Yet, we do not grant them the rights of workers. They are invisible, part of the furniture, taken for granted. With increasing urbanisation, and women stepping out of the home for jobs, the middle class is ever more dependent on such help. Yet greater demand has not led to better conditions for these workers.

Despite articles in the media, some campaigns, and notable documentary films like “Laxmi and Me” by Nishtha Jain, we do not see a shift in attitudes towards domestics. Instead, we read stories of violence and abuse. So, Aamir Khan, how about something on the way we treat our domestic help?

The good news is that finally, after years of campaigning for some regulation governing domestic workers, the union cabinet has prepared a note based on a draft national policy on domestic work that was prepared by the Ministry of Labour in 2009. If the policy is accepted, domestic help will come under existing laws that govern all workers such as the Minimum Wages Act, the Trade Union Act, the Payment of Wages Act, Workmen's Compensation Act, Maternity Benefit Act, Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act and the Equal Remuneration Act.

Last year, Indian delegates at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) voted for employment standards for domestic workers. The government has extended the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), the central health insurance scheme, to cover domestic workers and three members of their families.

In the policy, a domestic help is described as “a person who is employed for remuneration whether in cash or kind, in any household through any agency or directly, either on a temporary or permanent, part-time or full-time basis… but does not include any member of the family of an employer.”

What this means is that you cannot get away with paying your domestic help the pittance that most people do. As the National Floor Level for Minimum Wage is currently Rs.115 per day, a full-time domestic should be paid at least Rs.3,450 a month. She would be entitled to maternity leave, annual leave, sick leave and paid for overtime. The sexual harassment law has finally included domestic workers in its ambit. So she would be protected against sexual abuse and violence.

Syndrome of sorts

A policy like this comes not a day too soon. We shed tears about women who are forced to abort female foetuses or other victims of violence. But are we aware of the daily exploitation under our very noses? We refuse to accept that paying a woman less than the minimum wage, for work that is back-breaking and certainly something we don't want to do, is exploitative. Yet in this day and age, there is simply no justification for the “servant” syndrome to continue.

Of course, in India, rules and laws alone rarely bring about real change. It is the attitude of the people, those who employ domestics, that needs to undergo a revolutionary change. Just as in the case of sex selection, simply having a law, even with strong implementation, is not enough to make people think differently. One hopes that media interventions, like Aamir Khan's show, will begin to make a difference. At least, the issue will be discussed. It will be in the open. And those who continue with the old view will be exposed.

Similarly, domestic work needs to be talked about, the reality constantly exposed, the law implemented. The rules governing domestic work are particularly difficult to implement because contracts are individually negotiated, the exploitation takes place behind closed doors, inside people's homes. How can any government agency monitor this or insist on compliance? A change is only possible if the “employers”, people like you and me, accept that these invisible hands that make our lives so comfortable need respect, acknowledgement and above all a fair wage. 

(To read the original click here)

All work, no play

 

How many times have you come across a scene like this? Photo: Arunangsu Roy Chowdhury .

What a way to begin the week after the long Easter weekend. First, we got the news about baby Afreen in Bengaluru, whose father has allegedly beaten her to death. He did this apparently because he wanted a son and was mad at this wife for producing a girl. Then in a village near Jalgaon, Maharashtra, a 19-year-old girl was strangled to death. The chief suspects are her father, uncle and grandmother. The reason: she was in love with a boy from another caste. And in Mumbai, the police arrested a 20-year-old man who was trying to abduct two minor girls.

But distressing as these reports are, the news from Delhi the previous week of the 13-year-old domestic left locked in a flat by her employers who went off to Bangkok is even more chilling. The facts of that case are now well known and even the international media has reported them. The couple, both medical doctors, have been arrested and charged under various provisions of the Juvenile Justice Act, the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, the Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Act and the Indian Penal Code. The girl, rescued by the fire brigade when neighbours reported seeing her on the balcony crying, has now been taken to a shelter. And the man who brought her to Delhi from Jharkhand has also been arrested. 

Subterranean cities

This story, however, does not end here. It is the beginning of another story, one that gives us a glimpse into a nether-world, one where children are kidnapped, stolen or sold into servitude from some of the poorest parts of India; a world where these children have no choice, no voice. When we think of trafficking, we usually think of the sex trade. In fact, many children are trafficked into domestic and other forms of labour and are never detected.

The story of the 13-year-old girl in Delhi is not an exception. Every now and then similar stories are reported in the media. In Mumbai, we still remember the horrific tale of 10-year-old Sonu who was tortured by her employers and eventually died from the injuries.

But there are two aspects of this story that are particularly worrying: indifference and impunity. Let us take the latter first. In October 2006, the government included domestic work in the Child Labour Act. Earlier, children under 14 years were prohibited from working in a number of hazardous industries that were identified. After 2006, the law banned children from being employed as domestics or to work in dhabas and restaurants. Yet, many like the educated professional couple in this case, think nothing of breaking this law.

Usually, when people like them are asked why they employ children, they come out with a set of standard excuses: “We were looking after the child as if she was our own”. “We were feeding and clothing her, something she would not get in her village”. “She is like a member of our family”, etc. But the point is that they are breaking the law. And with impunity. The fact that so many affluent and middle class people do this is because they are confident that the law applies to others, not to people like them. In fact, they firmly believe that most laws apply to others, not to them.

Unacceptable numbers

Data is not easily available on this issue but roughly 20 per cent of the 12.6 million child workers in India (these are official figures and therefore a gross underestimation) are domestic workers. Of these, the majority are boys. But girls too work as domestics and are particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse. Both boys and girls suffer various levels of physical abuse.

The other side of impunity is indifference. How many of us turn our faces away when we see a woman being harassed, a child being beaten, a law being flouted? No one wants to be involved. I wonder how many people in the housing colony where this couple lived were aware that a child was working in that house? What stopped any of these people from reporting this to Childline, which has a well-advertised number (1098) that anyone can call and an email address where a complaint can be sent?

We are not helping any children, including our own, if we justify employing children to work in our homes. We are flouting not just the child labour laws but also the constitutional provision that gives every child the right to compulsory and free education. Sadly, in India, being educated and part of the better-off class does not necessarily add up to enlightened attitudes. As with dowry, the more we learn, the more we earn, the more we slip back in our attitudes. 

(To read the original, click here:All work, no play)

Money and marriage

  

Will changes in laws make a difference... Illustration: Keshav

Why the recent Marriage Laws (Amendment) Bill may not make much difference to a majority of rural women.

Should women cheer now that the Union Cabinet has approved the Marriage Laws (Amendment) Bill 2010? If it becomes law, women will have the right to an equal share of property acquired after marriage and divorce will become easier. The additional ground of “irretrievable breakdown of marriage” has been added and there is a shorter waiting period when both parties want to end a marriage.

Most television talk shows have focused only on the urban, educated, middle class women. There is an assumption that divorce and partition of marital property affects only them. There are also crazy scenarios being created about a “divorce epidemic”.

Exercising rights

In fact, we have to ask whether such a change in law will make any difference to the majority of women, especially those living in villages. Most women do not know that under law they are granted many rights. Even if they do know — such as the right of daughters to inherit a share of their parents' property — they are forced or persuaded to sign away their right. A recent study by the Rural Development Institute (RDI) of women's land rights in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar noted that more than half the Hindu women surveyed had signed away their right to land they would have inherited.

Inheriting property or land is crucial for many women seeking some form of economic security. Yet, this is precisely where their lack of knowledge or ability to exercise the right forces them to continue living in abusive and violent marriages. To walk out of such a marriage means walking into destitution. But if they fight for their right and succeed in getting their share, they are ostracised by their own community. Nothing has changed the entrenched belief that a woman, once she leaves her natal home, has no right to anything there and that the dowry she carries with her is adequate compensation.

The other side of ignorance about rights is the absence of supportive structures to help women claim their right. According to the RDI study, 61 per cent of women said they had never gone to a revenue office and of these 99 per cent said this was because men handled such matters. Of course, it did not help that the majority of the lower level revenue officials were also men. A simple step like appointing more women to such posts might begin to make a difference.

Several studies have shown that women who have the ability to stand on their own feet are less likely to tolerate an abusive marriage. Of course, there are always exceptions to this rule as is evident from the searing essay written by the young poet and writer Meena Kandasamy, “I Singe The Body Electric” (http://www.outlookindia.com/ article.aspx?280179) where she speaks about the abuse she suffered within the first four months of getting married. Economic independence did not protect Meena from domestic violence but it gave her the courage to walk out.

Double-edged

What about women living in villages, in highly patriarchal societies, where the majority of women accept that beatings and abuse are part of what marriage is all about. In such societies, inheriting property can become a double-edged sword.

A fascinating study on the link between economic independence and domestic violence is by feminist scholar Prem Chowdhry for UNWomen (http://www.unwomensouthasia.org/ economic_security.html). She could not have picked a more appropriate state for such a study. Haryana has one of the lowest female sex ratios in the country. It has become known for the horrendous incidence of so-called “honour” killings where young men and women are murdered merely for marrying a person of their own choice. According to the National Family Health Survey-3, 27 per cent of married women in Haryana have seen physical, emotional and sexual violence and 46 per cent of women and 33 per cent of men felt that a husband beating a wife was justified in certain circumstances. In such a State, where girls are not allowed to be born, can women escape such violence if they assert their right to a share of property?

As in the States surveyed by RDI, in Haryana too women tend to sign away their right to parental property. But now this has begun to change. With the spread of urbanisation, property prices are hitting the roof. Girls are now demanding their share, often egged on by their in-laws. Of course, there is no guarantee that they will have control over the money if they manage to get it. But the study cites many instances where the situation of women, and even of their daughters, has changed dramatically once they have money or property in their own name.

Studies like the one by Prem Chowdhry and many others firmly establish the link between women's economic independence — either by way of property or an assured income — and a reduction in domestic violence. Even as laws are changed in the name of empowering women, we have to take the first steps — of informing women of their rights and creating the supportive structures that will guarantee that they can exercise these rights.

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

Gendered economics

  

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, March 18, 2012

No bed of roses. Photo: Paul Noronha

Economic downturns impact women in more ways than they do men. Here's why.

If you stand at a fixed spot on the road leading from Mantralaya, seat of the Maharashtra government, to Churchgate station in south Mumbai at around 5.30 p.m., you are likely to be mowed down by the phalanx of government employees moving out of their offices. If you survive this onslaught, you will notice that the majority are women. They are all rushing to catch the “Ladies special” that transports thousands of women like them to their homes in distant suburbs. This scene also reminds us of the importance of the public sector and government jobs for millions of ordinary women.

India, we are told repeatedly, is not going to experience the kind of economic downturn so much of the Western world has witnessed in recent years. That is small comfort for most people whose fixed and limited incomes are disappearing under the onslaught of rising costs. High growth does not benefit everyone equally. That is self-evident. But the costs of economic decline are born disproportionately by the poor, and also by women.

Hard hit

This is already evident in the UK where the Conservative Party government has started the process of pruning public services in the face of the economic downturn. According to The Independent, London, 80 per cent of the 710,000 workers in Britain's public sector who will lose their jobs in the next five years are women. In the local government, where 75 per cent of those employed are women, an estimated one in every 10 employee is going to receive marching orders. The rate at which women are being rendered unemployed is almost double that of men.

In addition to this, the British government has been cutting down on services, such as childcare that women could use in the past. Now they have to pay more. As a result, many women are choosing to stay back rather than resume work after childbirth. By creating redundancies in sectors where women employees are the majority and cutting back services that benefit women, the British government has delivered a crippling blow to thousands of women.

In India, the majority of women are employed in the informal sector with no job security. They do not know from one day to the next whether they will earn enough to eat. So if there is a problem with economic growth, not only will more women be pushed into the informal sector as they lose secure jobs, but even those already there will have to struggle harder to remain where they are. This is the silent, unrecorded calamity that occurs in the lives of millions of poor women when there is an economic slowdown.

What of the small percentage of women who do find permanent jobs in the formal sector? How much job security do they have? How much of a risk do they face of being laid off or made redundant when there are cutbacks?

Politically, few governments in India can take the unpopular decision of laying off people. In fact, the government is the largest employer in every state and women have benefitted from this. A growing and diverse private sector is also giving many women opportunities. But how secure is the future of women in this sector?

Family pressures

According to the Gender Diversity Benchmark for Asia 2011 report, many women drop off due to social and family pressures even when they have permanent jobs in the private sector. The report looked at women in China, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and India employed in technology, consulting, financial services and consumer goods companies. It found that while in the first five countries, the majority of women dropped out between the middle and senior levels, in India they left between the junior and middle levels. Clearly, family pressure played a much larger role in the lives of Indian women. Few young married women in India have the autonomy to choose to work in a city of their own choice. They must give priority to the husband. And once children come along, then career growth plans come to a screeching halt, or are so badly ruptured that they cannot be resurrected. In any case, few Indian companies have pro-active policies in place to encourage young women to resume their careers. Also, as those in junior positions are more likely than others to be axed if companies prune their workforce, once again women are disproportionately affected.

Economic independence is an important step in enhancing women's status. It does not provide all the answers. For, even when women contribute substantially to family income through paid and unpaid labour, there is no guarantee that they will either be respected or spared violence and abuse within the family. But it does make a difference to the lives of many women. Unfortunately, governments and employers fail to recognise this gender dimension of economics.

Selling nirvana

·

What's there to celebrate Photo: Ritu Raj Konwar

RELATED

TOPICS

social issuesocial issues (general)

Come March 8, another Women's Day will get buried under marketing buzz. But it's a good time to introspect on what empowerment really means.

March 8, International Women's Day approaches. And the marketing gurus are hard at work. Selling. Selling. Selling us women the idea that we are empowered if we buy. Empowered if we spend. Empowered if we get a facial, a manicure, a pedicure, even a botox job. Empowered if we dress right, look right, are the right shape, have the right hair, of the right colour. The origins of March 8 have now been well and truly buried under the lavender hues of the marketing buzz that surrounds us through an ever-obliging media.

Time to take stock

A Women's Day, however, should be a time to assess, to introspect, and certainly to celebrate. We need to make an honest assessment of where we are, introspect about what still needs to be done and celebrate what has been achieved.

So while we, who live in cities, are being told that nirvana lies in spending more, there are millions of Indian women who cannot afford to buy enough food to feed their families, let alone themselves. While we are told how to exhaust the country's energy sources by buying energy-intensive gadgets that will reduce our “drudgery” (although most women who can afford such gadgets pass on the “drudgery” to other women who they employ), the other half, or more than half of Indian women spend hours each day collecting the fuel wood that will light their inefficient stoves. What remains of the day will be spent collecting water. In their case, for the fraction of energy they need to cook, they drain a great deal more of their physical energy. And no energy planner takes into account how to reduce this very real “drudgery” that the majority of Indian women are never spared.

I choke each time I listen to an advertisement on a popular radio station in Mumbai where a domestic help complains to her employer about the amount of work she is forced to do and threatens to quit. The response of the woman employer is to tell her about a new liquid that magically removes stains and cleans tiles without any effort! The domestic responds (you can almost ‘ hear' her beaming) that now she has no problems! If only new cleaning agents would remove the drudgery of cleaning.

And while young women living in cities are being lured by the marketing brigade into believing that they can let their hair down and party until there is no tomorrow, we have gang rapes in Kolkata and Noida that remind us that no woman, regardless of her age or her class, can assume that she will be safe or that law-enforcers will be sympathetic.

Usual hostility

In Kolkata, when a 37-year-old woman is gang-raped in a car, she is asked by the police to describe in lurid detail how the rape took place and mocked while she tries to lodge an FIR. A Minister in the West Bengal cabinet goes further by asking what a mother of two was doing in a nightclub drinking. And the media does not help by giving details such as the fact that she is an Anglo-Indian or that she is separated from her husband. How is any of this pertinent in a case where the police initially failed to take the basic steps required in a rape case?

In the Noida rape, where a minor was gang-raped by five men, it becomes worse. Not only do the police reveal the identity of the rape victim, the Noida superintendent of police, in full view of television cameras, proceeds to cast aspersions on the victim's character by claiming that she went willingly with the men and that she had consumed alcohol. Are the police anywhere in this country trained at all to deal with rape? Have they not been taught the basics about how to deal with such cases? This was not your havaldar in a small chowki but an SP, someone who should have known better.

Remember them too

So, certainly let's celebrate March 8 as Women's Day and applaud the women who have succeeded. But even as we admire a woman like the boxer Mary Kom, who is preparing hard for the Olympics, let us not forget Irom Sharmila from her home state of Manipur, or ordinary Manipuri women who live daily with violence and the lack of basic infrastructure that could ease their daily burden. Even as we appreciate the women who have clambered up the corporate ladder and made it almost to the top, let us not forget that the majority of women in India work in the informal sector where there is no job security, no increments, no designations.

The glass is not half full. It is three-quarters empty. There is a long way to go before we get to the point where March 8 will be a day only of celebration.

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

When children marry

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, Feb 19, 2012http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/Kalpana_Sharma/article2906570.ece?homepage=true

Count up to three. By then, another young girl would have been forced into marriage somewhere in the world. Yes, forced child marriage is a reality not just in India but also in many countries around the world. In fact, India is one amongst 13 nations worldwide with some of the highest prevalence of child marriage.

Yet, this is a problem that appears almost intractable. It is also an issue that is often forgotten or overlooked even as we discuss women's rights, children's rights or the health and nutrition problems of girls and boys.

Still high

Latest data reveals that although there has been a decline in the prevalence of child marriage in India, seven out of every 100 women getting married are under the legal age of 18. This is happening despite a law banning child marriage dating as far back as 1929 with subsequent amendments in 1949 and 1978. And the passage of a comprehensive Prohibition of Child Marriage Act in 2006. In fact, the National Family Health Survey 2005-06 revealed that 44.5 per cent of women between the ages of 20-24 years had been married before they turned 18.

The prevalence of child marriage is a worry for obvious reasons. First, it results in girls being pulled out of school. Guaranteeing all children the Right to Education has no meaning when these girls are left with no choice.

Second, if girls get married so young, their bodies are not ready to bear children. These underage mothers are most at risk of dying during childbirth, thus contributing to the already unacceptably high maternal mortality rate in this country.

Third, these girls are also at risk of having multiple pregnancies. Most of them are poor, illiterate, and not aware of reproductive health or their right to decide when and how many children to have. Given their young age, they are powerless in their marital homes. This takes a huge toll on their health and that of their children.

According to Plan UK, a non-governmental organisation working on the rights of girls, an estimated 10 million girls are forced into marriage worldwide each year. This, according to their report, “Breaking Vows, Early and Forced Marriage and Girls' Education” works out to a horrifying 27,397 girls a day, 19 every minute and one every three seconds.

In all the countries where this practice occurs, implementing laws, if at all they exist, is difficult because child marriage is wrapped up in tradition. Therefore, people will not question it. It is also entangled in poverty. Families with no hope of overcoming their economic plight feel compelled to send their girls off so that they have one less mouth to feed.

After a natural disaster, that last justification becomes even more acute. In Kenya, for instance, Plan UK noted the prevalence of ‘famine brides' during a time of acute famine and food shortages. After the 2004 Asian tsunami, in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and even India, there were instances of young girls being compelled to marry ‘tsunami widowers'. In Indonesia, people living in camps for the tsunami displaced thought it was safer to marry their young daughters even to older men rather than risk their getting raped.

Another interesting point that emerges from several studies on the prevalence of child marriage is that it is higher where the laws on age of consent are unequal. For instance, in India, where the prevalence is an estimated 47 per cent, the age of consent is lower for women (18) and higher for men (21). Is there any justification for this discrepancy? Why should it not be the same age of consent for men and women? After all, when it comes to other laws, such as child labour for instance, there is no difference between girls and boys with regard to the age at which they can be legally employed.

Role of education

No one will argue that the custom of child marriage, in India or elsewhere, is a hugely complex issue and that there are no easy solutions. Clearly, a law banning the practice is not enough. It has to be coupled with efforts to make sure girls enroll in schools and stay there. If the prevalence is declining in India, this could be one of the reasons.

There are many other steps. But I would suggest that at a time when the media has become omnipresent, intruding into areas of our lives that many would prefer to keep private, this is a legitimate area into which it can intrude, investigate and focus. It can also pester lawmakers and law enforcers about the lax implementation of the law, another major reason for the continuing prevalence of child marriage. If you shine a bright light into a dark corner, you might not scare away the problem, but you will at least see that it is there.

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

Burn dowry, not women

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine

OPINION » COLUMNS » KALPANA SHARMA

February 4, 2012

  

The HinduUp for sale?: Activists dressed as grooms campaign against dowry. Photo: Paul Noronha

Dowry has not disappeared, just morphed. And women continue to pay the price.

In a season where every other person seems to be taking offence at something or the other, let me add what offends me. I was deeply offended and hurt when I read the following headline: “One bride burnt every hour”. No, this is not a headline from a newspaper of the 1980s but from Sunday, January 29, 2012. The women the headline writes about are killed for not bringing in enough dowry. Yes, indeed, the giving, taking and killing for dowry is still alive and kicking in “Incredible India”.

According to data of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), there were 8,391 reported cases of dowry deaths in 2010. That is just under double the number of cases registered in 1995 — 4,648 cases. Statistics tell a story, but not the whole story. For every dowry death reported, there must be dozens that go unreported. Of the 8,391 reported cases in 2010, although 93.2 per cent were charge-sheeted, the conviction rate was a miserable 33.6 per cent.

Despite a 1989 amendment to Section 304B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), shifting the burden of proof to the husband and his family, the process of getting a conviction remains fraught because of loopholes in the law and the inability of the victim's family to establish the link between dowry demands and the death. Often, it is impossible to take the dying declaration, as the victim is barely alive. Even when it is taken, the police handling is shoddy and careless, allowing a clever defence to tear it apart during trial.

The official figures of dowry deaths are obviously just the tip of the iceberg. A truer picture would emerge if we added the cases of young married women registered as having committed suicide as well as cases filed under Section 498A of the IPC dealing with harassment from husband and relatives. In the NCRB crime data, there were 94,041 cases filed under 498A in 2010, up from 28,579 in 1995. There has been considerable controversy around 498A with some organisation, comprising apparently aggrieved husbands, claiming that women were misusing it to harass and blackmail their husbands. But even if there are a few cases of this kind, surely over 94,000 cases cannot all be false.

If further proof were needed of the prevalence of dowry, one only has to look at the sex ratio in this country. Why are girls not wanted?

Still bought and sold

The fact remains that despite changes in the law, growing awareness of it, more education, more economic progress, women are bought and sold for a price under the institution of marriage. In the 1980s, at the height of the campaign against dowry, one read of brave young women who rejected proposals when asked for a dowry. Women's group demonstrated outside marriage halls where dowry was given. There was much writing in the media against the custom. Today we don't hear about it. Does that mean it has vanished? Or has it become so entrenched that no one thinks it is worth talking about?

I did a random sampling of one matrimonial page in one Mumbai newspaper last Sunday. Of the 127 advertisements for “brides wanted”, listed neatly in caste categories, I found 16 that stated specifically “Caste no bar” and only four that said “No Dowry”. All the other advertisements went into details of the caste, the height, the looks etc of the bride they were looking for — “tall, beautiful, educated, cultured girl” stated one, for a “Kayastha, handsome, bachelor, doctor and managing director”.

One-way street

Dowry has not disappeared. It has morphed. Seema Sirohi, in her interesting and relevant book Sita's Curse, Stories of Dowry Victims (HarperCollins, 2003), gives this humorous yet apt description of dowry as it has come to be today: Dowry has become a bribe paid to a husband to keep the bride's body and soul together. A woman is a mere conduit to a ‘good' dowry — the definition of good being flexible and expandable. The boys are on sale and there are few discounts in the marriage market. There is no ‘buy one, get one free' here. It is a transaction weighted against the woman. In fact, it is a sale where even after the price is paid, satisfaction is not guaranteed. And ironically, the sale is never complete with marriage — the buyer is expected to keep paying in cash and in kind during festivals, to celebrate childbirth and to mark ritualistic occasions. Any excuse is good enough to keep the one-way street laden and moving with gifts.

Touchy as we Indians are about a whole host of things, the fact that women are still being burned for dowry in modern-day India should enrage us. Why are we accepting of this outrage, this insult to the sensibilities of all women? We should be burning dowry, not women.

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