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Women’s Equality Day is celebrated in the United States on August 26 to commemorate the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment (Amendment XIX) to the United States Constitution, which prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex.
The tardy progress to put both man and woman on the same pedestal makes Women’s Equality Day a globally recognized important milestone, to remind us of the discrimination and the unequal treatment of women in all spheres of life across cultures and countries.
Women historically have had it the hard way. They have fought and are still fighting for their basic human right of being recognized as humans forget representation. It is going to take 99.5 years to bridge the gender gap. More than a century after women’s suffrage the fight for equality isn’t over.
Reams of data supporting the above statement are only an eye-opener, but the battle has to be fought to be won. According to the UN Women calculation:
- Women serve as Heads of State or Government in only 22 countries, and 119 countries have never had a woman leader. At the current rate, gender equality in the highest positions of power will not be reached for another 130 years.
- Only 21 per cent of government ministers were women, with only 14 countries having achieved 50 per cent or more women in cabinets. With an annual increase of just 0.52 percentage points, gender parity in ministerial positions will not be achieved before 2077.
- Only 25 percent of all national parliamentarians are women, up from 11 per cent in 1995.
- Only four countries have 50 percent or more women in parliament in single or lower houses: Rwanda with 61 per cent, Cuba with 53 per cent, Bolivia with 53 per cent, and the United Arab Emirates with 50 per cent.
- At the current rate of progress, gender parity in national legislative bodies will not be achieved before 2063.
This day is a reminder of women’s human rights. Liberation of women goes beyond legislation. It calls for a radical transformation in perspectives that will influence cultural change and collective decision making. More than anything, it is a conscious acceptance of women as an ally to progress and sustainability of an economy. They are the human wealth that has kept the world operating only on 50% potentiality.
In India after Indian independence from Britain, the Indian Constitution in 1950 officially granted women and men’s suffrage, yet it’s a long journey before we see a true equal representation of women. According to the World Economic Forum Gender Gap report 2021 India has closed 62.5% of its gender gap to date, ranking the country 140th globally. This gap is 4.2 percentage points larger than recorded in the previous edition, which explains why India has fallen 28 places in the ranking. Most of the decline has occurred on the Political Empowerment subindex, where India has regressed 13.5 percentage points to reach a level of gap closed to date of just 27.6%. The main change that took place this year is the significant decline in the share of women among ministers, which halved, from 23.1% in 2019 to 9.1% in 2021. In addition, the share of women in parliament remains stagnant at 14.4% and the share of the last 50 years in which a woman has been head of state is 15.5.
Among the drivers of this decline are a decrease in women’s labor force participation rate, which fell from 24.8% to 22.3%. In addition, the share of women in professional and technical roles declined further to 29.2%. The share of women in senior and managerial positions also remains low: only 14.6% of these positions are held by women and there are only 8.9% of firms with female top managers. Further, women’s estimated earned income is only one-fifth of men’s, which puts India among the bottom 10 globally on this indicator. Discrimination against women is also reflected in Health and Survival subindex statistics. With 93.7% of this gap closed to date, India ranks among the bottom five countries in this subindex. Wide sex ratio at birth gaps are due to high incidence of gender based sex-selective practices. In addition, more than one in four women has faced intimate violence in her lifetime. Conversely, 96.2% of the Educational Attainment subindex gender gap has been closed, with parity achieved in primary, secondary and tertiary education. Yet, gender gaps persist in terms of literacy: one third of women are illiterate (34.2%) compared to 17.6% of men.
Liberation is a weak word when freedom is a woman’s birthright, or rather a human right. It calls for an active participation and collective voice for emancipation of women in all aspects of life. The gender problem is well knitted and closely intertwined. It is a product of a chain reaction. Each link in the chain has to be broken to incapacitate it and stop further damage.
Voice it even if yours is the only voice audible. A cultural change starts with a one individual that grows into a collective organization and eventually takes shape as a social shift. Informed decision-making plays a key role in bringing individual level transformation. All it takes is a conscious effort to take small intentional steps towards transformation starting with our homes that will eventually reflect on public life.
