Ravikumar Pillai
Female Workforce Participation is Key to Progress
For a long time, I have been thinking about the deep-rooted hypocrisy in the Indian psyche about gender equity. I am getting more and more convinced that the root problem is the inherent bias, the cultural skewness, about the idea of women and womanhood.
I spent close to two decades in the Arabian Gulf. I saw first-hand the tribalism in society and the desperate but bold attempts made by women to fight back and preserve their identity, dignity and self-respect. Aided by a progressive bunch of rulers, the later generations educated in the West and powered by ambition and drive to progress, the women in many GCC countries not only took employment and engagement in social service organizations, but some have even started becoming entrepreneurs. UAE and Bahrain today have a vibrant ecosystem for women to work, do business and assert their individuality. Saudi, the biggest of the GCC societies is now shaking off the gender bias in policy and governance with a serious commitment by the current rulers.
Contrast it with India. Sadly, in many parts of India, religiosity, conservativism and clannish hierarchies are playing havoc on the subterranean social ecosystem. And no one seems bothered. The ruling class and the Opposition are both engaged in surreptitiously fanning and even seemingly relishing, the slide in terms of intolerance, aggression and inward-looking tendencies of the disparate social groupings.
Women are still treated as possessions of the male-dominated power structure in society, largely.
A look at the female labour participation rate shows that India is still at the lowest rung of the ten most populous countries in terms of the proportion of working women. We are in the company of Pakistan and Bangladesh, all three seemingly enjoying the dubious distinction in ranking!
If you look within India, we find that the North East has the best female labour participation ratio. Even in Kerala, supposedly an educated and equitable society, overall female labour participation is much below the halfway mark.
In areas populated significantly by traditionalist and puritanical societies, of any hue, the female confidence and competence to partake in meaningful employment are low.
We have a long way to reach a respectable female inclusiveness in the economic and social streams. Caste, communal, gender and financial biases and prejudices are still dominant and play a key role in dividing, suppressing and discouraging women from taking their rightful place as employees and assertive citizens.
Both the right and the left are merely sloganeering and paying lip service. Entrapped in political jingoism and held back by conservative prejudices and traditions, Indian women may have to wait much longer for the dawn of equity in the workplace. A serious unleashing of affirmative action to shore up female labour participation can only take the nation and our economy to decent levels of global competitiveness.
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