Economic survey presented today shed light upon gender equality and employment issues in India. The survey has questioned whether ‘development was an antidote’ to the prevailing gender problems in society.

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The report revealed India has ranked 14 out of 17 indicators relating to agency, attitude, and outcomes. This was on par with other countries.

Agency relate to women’s ability to make decisions on reproduction, spending on themselves, spending on their households, and their own mobility and health.

Attitudes relate to attitudes about violence against women/wives, and the ideal number of daughters preferred relative to the ideal number of sons.

Outcomes relate to son preference (measured by sex ratio of last child), female employment, choice of contraception, education levels, age at marriage, age at first childbirth, and physical or sexual violence experienced by women.

However in the case of women’s employment and contraception, the country has far to go.

“On 10 of 17 indicators, India has some distance to traverse to catch up with its cohort of countries,” the survey said.

On contraception, the survey said, nearly 47% of women do not use any contraception, and of those who do, less than a third use female controlled reversible contraception.

The percentage of women who were employed has registered a decline over time. Documented responses of women in the age group 15-49 questioned on whether employed in 2005 stood at 36%. In 2015-16, this figure dropped to 24%.

The female workforce registered a decline in the financial year 2015-16, as revealed by Ministry of State for Labour and Employment in a reply to Lok Sabha questions in the winter session of Parliament.

Worker population ration revealed by the Minister showed that male workers in FY16 stood at 73.3%, while females stood at 25.8%.

In the first four months of 2017, while jobs for men increased by 9 lakh, 24 lakh women fell off the employment map, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). 

"On the supply side, increased incomes of men allows Indian women to withdraw from the labour force, thereby avoiding the stigma of working; higher education levels of women also allow them to pursue leisure and other non-work activities all of which reduce female labour force participation,” economic survey suggested.

Love for sons

India always had a great love and preference for sons being born into the family, which the economic survey suggested was a ‘matter for Indian society as a whole to reflect upon’.

"The skewed sex ratio in favor of males led to the identification of 'missing' women. But there may be a meta-preference manifesting itself in fertility stopping rules contingent on the sex of the last child, which notionally creates 'unwanted' girls, estimated at about 21 million," the survey said. 

“India’s sex ratio during this period (1970-2014) also increased substantially even without the one-child policy from 1060 to 1108 whereas if development acted as an antidote, it should have led to improvements in the sex ratio,” the survey pointed out.

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