Women's Day: It will take another 100 years to achieve gender equality

It is ironic that even as we celebrate International Women's Day 2020 with a theme to make gender equality a reality, none of us will see gender parity in our lifetimes nor will many of our children.

It will take another 99.5 years to attain gender parity if we continue to progress at the current pace, according to the World Economic Forum's (WEF's) Global Gender Gap Report 2020. To put this in perspective, even a decade from now, nearly 2.1 billion or 56 per cent of the world's female population may not see a glimpse of gender equality. Sixty-seven out of 129 countries won’t achieve any of the five key gender equality targets -- contraception, girls’ education, political leadership, workplace equality laws, and safety -- by the year 2030, according to a report by Equal Measures (EM30).

Current pace

The fight for gender equality has been going on for more than a century. Yet, women earn on average 16 per cent less than men even as they do 4.4 hours per day of unpaid work on average while men do only 1.7 hours.

In terms of women leading a team, globally only 23 per cent of females are in executive leadership roles and 29 per cent in senior manager roles. In cloud computing, just 12 per cent of professionals are women. Similarly, in engineering, the number is 15 per cent and in data and AI, the number is 26 per cent.

Women also receive 30 per cent less pension than men, while 75 per cent of unpaid care and domestic work is done by them.

Gender parity remains low in different aspects such as educational attainment, health and political empowerment with just 25.2 per cent women holding parliamentary (lower house) seats and 21.2 per cent holding ministerial positions.

Where India stands

India ranks 112th among 149 countries in the Gender Gap Index.

In case of education, there is a gender parity of around 20 percentage points between male and female literacy rates. The literacy rate among women stands at 65.60 per cent as against 82.14 per cent in men. Over the years, the gender gap has been narrowing but the rate at which gender difference is reducing remains low.

Only 13.8 per cent of the workforce at companies are women. India has closed two-thirds of its overall gender gap, but the condition of women in large fringes of India's society is precarious and the economic gender gap runs particularly deep, says WEF.

The government has also started women-centric schemes such as Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao to boost literacy among women in India. However, the implementation has been lacklustre. A Comptroller And Auditor General report in 2018 revealed that less than 20 per cent of the funds have been spent by states and union territories (UTs) under the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme.

As per the report, Rs 19,999 lakh allocated by the Centre to the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) for the implementation of the scheme in 100 selected districts till 2016-17. However, only Rs 5,489 lakh was released by the MWCD to the states/UTs to carry out the scheme in the 100 districts. Moreover, the states/UTs spent only Rs 1,865 lakh of the Rs 5,489 lakh to implement the scheme.

The 100-year gap

Going by the pace at which the country is moving towards gender parity, even the 100-year target seems difficult, especially when we take into account aspects such as recognition of the third gender and protection of their rights.

Equal opportunity for men and women across sectors such as education, health and politics will continue to be a long-term battle if we fail to pick up the pace.

It goes without saying that progress will be stymied if women, who constitute nearly 49 per cent of the world's population, are caught in a struggle just to have access to equal opportunities. The policymakers and the governments bear the responsibility of shaping and implementing laws that ensure gender equality and they need to act now so that the century timeline is shortened and women can experience the change in their lifetimes.