How to reduce the gender gap in States?

Raising the presence of women in education, employment and the political process must be accorded priority

In NITI Aayog’s first report on Sustainable Development Goals, all States, barring Kerala and Sikkim, are in the red on gender equality (SDG-5). There are several reasons why freeing women from all forms of discrimination seems like a lofty goal.
First, as highlighted in ‘Economic Survey 2018’, India’s continued obsession with boy child and selective abortion have resulted in over 63 million “missing” women while also creating a category of 21 million “unwanted” girls. Second, the drop-out rate for girls continues to be higher, especially at the secondary and higher education levels. Third, despite education and employment, Indian women spend ten times more hours on unpaid household chores than men.
And, fourth, an improvement in the income of male workers, coupled with the shortage of flexible work opportunities and inadequate infrastructure, have discouraged the participation of women in productive economic activities.
The government is implementing several initiatives to address these challenges, including ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’, ‘Pradhan Mantri Matritva Vandana Yojana’ and the Maternity Benefit Act. So what needs to be done to make SDG-5 achievable for all States by 2030?
Given the multi-dimensional nature of issues facing women, it is critical that we develop a set of indicators on which progress is measured on a regular basis. As suggested by NITI Aayog in its ‘Strategy for New India @ 75’ document, a dedicated unit should be established within the Women and Child Development Ministry and its State-level counterparts for monitoring progress on gender-related targets across ministries.

Sex ratio at birth

States need to strengthen the monitoring of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994 for ensuring its stringent implementation. Investments in locally customised information, education and communication campaigns also need to be enhanced, including offering rewards for districts that achieve the desired sex ratio. Of course, such campaigns should not focus on families ‘Below the Poverty Line’ alone but also engage families from higher wealth quintiles.
Identifying girls who are at risk of dropping out of school and those who have already dropped out is crucial. An electronic national educational registry for tracking every child could be a possible avenue for doing this. Relatively higher financial incentives also need to be provided for delaying child marriage.
Conditional cash transfer schemes like the ‘Kanyashree Prakalpa’, which has been successful in promoting girls’ education in West Bengal, need to be replicated. The Post Graduate Indira Gandhi Scholarship for Single Girl Child scheme could also be extended to families with two girl children. Of course, investments in safe transport options such as Bihar’s bicycle distribution scheme and school infrastructure, especially provision of separate toilets and sanitary napkins, need to be stepped up considerably.

Employment

Defining time-bound targets for reversing the decline in the female labour force participation is a must. The implementation of legal frameworks like the Maternity Benefit Amendment Act needs to be monitored and incentivised if necessary, especially to catalyse the initial adoption of such progressive legislation by the private sector.
NITI’s ‘Strategy for New India @ 75’ suggests providing tax benefits to sectors or companies that employ over 30 per cent of women workers. Skill training programmes also need to be reoriented to focus on training women in non-traditional areas like construction and taxi-driving. Further, the progressive integration of women who work in the informal sector with the formal economy needs to be achieved through effective implementation of legal and social protection measures. The private sector, too, must play its part. Barely 5 per cent of companies on the Bombay Stock Exchange currently have women CEOs. Bringing about transparency in recruitment and promotion policies and correcting any gender biases that creep into wages are vital as is ensuring strict implementation of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act.
While increasing women’s participation in politics has been one of the most intractable challenges, it remains absolutely critical for achieving gender equity. The 33.3 per cent reservation in Panchayati Raj Institutions (now 50 per cent in some States) has enabled over one million women to participate in local governance every five years. This needs to be replicated at all levels of the governance system.
Thus, while there is no magic bullet for bridging the gender gap, concerted policy actions along with the efforts of the private sector and citizens can make the achievement of SDG-5 by 2030 a reality.
The writers are Public Policy Specialist and Young Professional, respectively, at NITI Aayog. The views expressed are personal

Why the gender gap persists in Indian workplaces?

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that equal participation of women in the workforce will increase India’s GDP manifold. A McKinsey Global Institute study calculated that the economic impact of achieving gender equality in India is estimated to be US $700 billion of added GDP by the year 2025.

Yet the participation of women in India’s workforce has been abysmal and is one of the lowest in the world.  Women’s participation in India’s workforce stands at under 28%. According to the Global Gender Gap report released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2017, which ranks countries on parameters of gender equality in health, education, economics, and politics, India finished 139 out of 144 countries on economic participation and opportunity. Despite managing to bridge the gender gap in enrolment in primary and tertiary education, India ranked 112 on the education attainment metric. Overall, India ranked 108 out of 144 countries.

Why is India leaving its women behind? Do Indian women self-select themselves into unfavourable career choices as adults, given their primary responsibility of caring for children and running the household? Is it that women who focus on pursuing professional careers cannot maintain a work-family balance as costs of child care increase and there are few alternative part-time employment options? Do women opt out of formal employment?

Researchers Amit Jain Chauradia, Chandrasekhar Sripada and Glory George investigated the career choices of women, within the context of the short-term skill development training activities of Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY).  These researchers conducted an ethnographic study to understand the PMKVY ecosystem and the importance of key constructs such as gender and placement. To understand the nuances behind the ‘skills-to-jobs conundrum’ in India, they further analysed a large dataset with over a million observations.

Impact with skill development?
Inadequate training infrastructure, outdated curricula and stigma towards the vocational education system have long jinxed the skill development ecosystem in India. Long-term training programmes for teaching industrial trades are unpopular. They have high dropout rates and diminishing enrolment. To remedy this state of affairs, the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship was created to provide skill development and entrepreneurship programmes through a streamlined institutional mechanism.

Often in developing economies, government-sponsored training programmes act as tools for integrating the unemployed and economically disadvantaged into the mainstream workforce. These programmes allow beneficiaries sufficient time to move through basic education and job training to obtain occupational certificates. On the other end of the institutional spectrum, they offer incentives to entities that provide support to such programmes

S. Korea to create posts for gender equality in gov't offices

South Korea will set up new departments dedicated to handling gender equality policies in eight government offices to better deal with sexual discrimination and abuse in the cultural and educational sectors, the gender ministry said Tuesday.

Under a plan endorsed by the Cabinet , the new posts will be established at eight government offices, including the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and the National Police Agency, according to the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.

(Yonhap)

The move came after MeToo revelations in art, movie, sports and educational circles swept the country last year, with renowned poet Ko Un and other actors embroiled.

The new departments will be assigned to oversee policies on gender discrimination and sexual violence in their organizations, and help them consider gender equality in the policymaking process.

The gender equality ministry said it will run a consultation body of the gender equality departments on a regular basis. (Yonhap)

Make Gender Equality a Value, Not a Priority

Inside our organizations, what’s the difference between a “priority” and a “value”?
It may seem like a semantic question. It isn’t. The difference is critical and key to making big changes happen. To make gender equality a reality — from the boardroom and C-suite to front-line employees — organizations need to shift their thinking around values.
Priorities can change at any time. Values do not. Values and beliefs drive culture and behaviors.
I’ve seen this cultural shift happen with another crucial workplace issue: safety. For 10 years, I worked as a safety executive in oil and gas companies. After years of devastating accidents and injuries, rapid improvements followed. An analyst said the industry was becoming one of the safest. Annual accident records show the turnaround continuing.
This happened over time because the industry changed its approach, making safety a value and not a priority. Total, a multinational energy conglomerate, puts it this way: “Safety is more than just a priority. It’s a core value and the basis of our strategy.” The American Petroleum Institute similarly described safety as a core value for the natural gas and oil industry. In making this shift, the industry began to ensure that safety was baked into every decision, at every level.
It’s time to do the same for gender equality across numerous industries, including oil and gas, where women make up only 15% of the workforce (and even less among higher-paid technical jobs).
I left my former work in energy safety culture to focus full time on rectifying this problem. The business incentives are clear. As McKinsey notes: “Research supports that diverse and inclusive teams tend to be more creative and innovative than homogenous groups.” Gender equality leads to greater psychological safety. And boosting women in the energy industry will also help advance efforts to protect the climate. Women on average place greater importance on the environment.
A few years ago, a group of oil and gas companies at the World Economic Forum issued a call to action to close the gender gap. My organization Pink Petro gathered stakeholders from across the sector to offer recommendations on how to achieve this, and I recently testified in Congress on this subject.
Here are some of the steps organizations within any industry can take to make gender equality a strategic value.

Gender Equality: Women’s Economic Empowerment

The Challenge

Women in India represent 29 percent of the labour force, down from 35 percent in 2004. More than half of the work done by women in India is unpaid, and almost all of it is informal and unprotected. Women are not well represented in most sectors, including business leaders. Though they comprise almost 40 percent of agricultural labour, they control only 9 percent of land in India. Women are also shut out of the formal financial system. Nearly half of India’s women do not have a bank or savings accounts for their own use, and 60 percent of women have no valuable assets to their name. It is unsurprising then that at 17 percent, India has a lower share of women’s contribution to the GDP than the global average of 37 percent. In addition, women face great physical insecurity. The rate of crimes against women in India stands at 53.9 percent in India. In Delhi, the capital city, 92 percent of women reported having experienced sexual or physical violence in public spaces.

The Opportunity
The economic impact of achieving gender equality in India is estimated to be US$700 billion of added GDP by 2025. The IMF estimates that equal participation of women in the workforce will increase India’s GDP by 27 percent. More than half of India’s women don’t have cellphones, and 80 percent don’t use them to connect them to the internet. If as many women as men had phones, it could create US$17 billion in revenue for phone companies in the next 5 years. Globally, women make or influence 80 percent of buying decisions and control US$20 trillion in spending. There are also social benefits to empowering women. Women spend 90 percent of their income on their families, and economically empowered women boost demand, have healthier and better-educated children, and raise human development levels. One in three private sector leaders reported that profits increased as a result of efforts to empower women in emerging markets.

The Government of India’s MUDRA scheme to support micro and small enterprises and direct benefit transfers under the Jan Dhan Yojana seeks to empower women. Women entrepreneurs account for about 78 percent of the total number of borrowers under MUDRA.

Potential Areas of Focus

The private sector and business community will be crucial in helping bridge the gap between skills and jobs and enable access to decent work for women. Vocational and technical training, life skills and financial literacy programmes for women to help them develop marketable skills and better decision-making abilities cannot be undertaken in a meaningful way without the involvement of industry. Companies can also invest in women entrepreneurs through microfinance, and bring their goods and services into supply chains. Enhancing women’s access to the internet and ICT can create a merging market of connected women who can be linked to business opportunities. In addition, as employers, the private sector can invest in women’s security against violence at home and in public spaces, and take steps to ensure their mobility through inclusive transport.

UNIBF Activities

• At its second meeting, participants agreed that increasing women’s participation in the workforce would have a direct, positive impact on productivity and profitability. A consensus developed that gender equality in the workforce is now a business imperative.
• UN Women highlighted the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs). Among these was the Gaps Analysis Tool, an easy way to benchmark where an organisation stands in terms of gender equality and take corrective steps.
• Best practices within the industry were shared to leverage existing platforms to educate the industry on the benefits of gender equality in the workforce and identify role models to “grow the tribe”.
• The group agreed on the following next steps:
  • Encourage more CEOs to pledge their support towards gender equality.
  • Identify mentors who can lead other organisations in their sector to adopt gender equal policies
  • Create ways to increase brand/ PR value for organisations that encourage women in their workforce
  • Enable cross pollination of best practices by:
    • Leveraging existing platforms and content
    • Identifying role models
    • Storytelling
    • Sharing success stories and policies

Ministry:Latvia has accomplished a lot in ensuring gender equality

Latvia is among six countries in the world with the highest index for gender equality on the labour market. This is shown as much in World Bank’s published study that analysed legislation on gender equality in 187 countries.
The study Women, Business and the Law 2019: A Decade of Reform includes an index on the most important developments for women’s careers, from the moment they start working to the point when they retire, as well as protection of rights in each of those phases. Data covers a decade-long period during which 187 countries were studied based on eight indexes, Latvian Finance Ministry explains.
A global look shows that reforms implemented in the past ten years have improved women’s economic inclusion. Nevertheless, a gap remains between men and women. Results of the study show that women, when compared to men, are generally provided with only three-quarters of all rights guaranteed by international law.
Latvia, together with Belgium, Denmark, France, Luxembourg and Sweden, received the highest possible number of points. This means state regulations in areas surveyed provide men and women with equal opportunities. Ten years ago there wasn’t a single country capable of reaching this index, the ministry notes.
‘Latvia has something to be proud of. Our children live in a society where anyone, regardless of gender, is given equal freedom to move, work, marry and raise children, as well as manage a business, real estate property and receive pension. This is one of the main objectives to ensure growth-focused economy, as well as an important corner stone for wealthy and successful society,’ says Finance Minister Jānis Reirs.
The World Bamk notes that ensuring gender equality is a long process that requires a great deal of political will and coordination between the government and civil society.

Qatar has made significant progress in gender equality

Qatar stressed Friday that the country has made significant progress in terms of gender equality, empowering all women and girls as well as working towards gender equality and the realisation and empowerment of women's human rights through all elements of the sustainable development agenda.
This came in the speech given by Assistant Undersecretary at the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labor and Social Affairs Ghanem Mubarak Al Kuwari during the dialogue held as part of the 63rd session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
Al Kuwari said that gender equality is one of the main goals of sustainable development. He added that the State of Qatar adopted a clear policy of empowering women in all arenas, something that was referenced as part of Qatar National Vision 2030. He also said that the State of Qatar has made great progress in that regard, highlighting the announcement of HH the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani that the State of Qatar pledges to provide high-quality education to one million girls by 2021, in support of the Charlevoix declaration of the G7 summit of June 2017.
He noted that Qatar, and based on constitutional foundations of promoting gender equality, provided access to education for women, as well as access to health services, employment opportunities, as well as participation in various fields of work in addition to political participation.
He pointed out that these efforts resulted in an improvement in the status of women in labour, health, education and training market indicators. He also pointed out that Qatar is ranked first among Arab countries in the quality of health services and fifth overall.
He highlighted that Qatar had worked to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of women by giving priority to development programs and initiatives to promote the economic and social empowerment of women and to promote and empower the family. He said that Qatar has taken great strides towards achieving these goals, especially in the field of universal education and health care and improving the standard of living of the individual. This was reflected in Qatar's position on the international human development report of 2016 issued by the United Nations Development Program. The country was top among Arab countries and 32nd in the world.