Mumkin analyses the Global Gender Gap Report, 2022
By Tara Awasthi
(TW: Mention of Gender-based violence/Rape)
On 13th July, 2022, The World Economic Forum released the 17th edition of its Global Gender Gap Report, and feminist organisations, collectives, and concerns across the country were quick to take notice. India’s position had dropped further, standing at 135 out of the 146 countries evaluated in the highly research-driven report.
Every year, the report takes into account four key dimensions:
► Economic Participation and Opportunity
► Educational Attainment
► Health and Survival, and
► Political Empowerment
We analysed three criteria to understand where India stands at 75 years of independence.
Political Empowerment
It is important to note that India stood tall at rank 48 (out of 146 countries). India has often preached itself as an example to the West concerning women in Politics, having had both women prime ministers and a current women President, while the U.S. is still struggling to vote for its first female President unanimously. What the rank fails to show us clearly, however, is that only 14.39% of India's Lok Sabha is women — a concerning statistic. The report reflects this only in a small subheading, wherein India holds the 118th rank in the percentage of Women in Parliament. However, the rank also does not show us that Indian female politicians need to adopt loving, family-oriented nicknames to avoid being sexualised by the general public. Our women leaders are our didis, ammas, and behenjis, and they demand that respect through their positions as our elder sisters and mothers.
Health and Survival
As for Health and Survival, India is the absolute worst and last country on the ranking, standing at 146th. Indian women, of course, don't need to read the report to know this. After all, this is their everyday life — a little more than half of all Indian women in the reproductive age (15–49) are anaemic, and so are 46% of Indian girls under the age of 15. This means that likely one in every two girls is anaemic. If you're a woman reading this and you're not anaemic — the next woman you come across likely is. This article is written by a woman who gets up every morning and pops a thyroid pill to regulate her fluctuating (hyper/hypo)thyroidism.
Moreover, women in India are at the constant threat of gender-based violence. The Global Gender Gap Report explains that 28.7% of all women in India are likely to experience some form of gender-based violence in their lifetime. The actual number, however, is much more. Most women in India lie at the intersection of disadvantage — being female is not the only way to upset social hierarchies. Women from marginalised communities and lower socio-economic backgrounds face a significantly higher threat of gender-based violence than women from well-off families. Per the 2019 National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report, there was an average of 88 cases of rape per day in the country — that makes almost four rapes an hour and one rape every 15 minutes. This, however, only considers reported cases of crime — nearly all cases of sexual assault in the country go unreported.
Economic Participation and Opportunity
India holds the 143rd rank when it comes to Economic Participation and Opportunity, and its calculation includes wage equality, estimated earned income, and labour force participation, amongst other things. India's Female Labour Force Participation (FLFP) is at its lowest — close to 19% as of 2021. This means that only 19% of all women in India are involved in the labour force. While this sounds incredibly concerning, this statistic fails to recognise women in the unorganised sector, and dismisses the already unpaid, undocumented work of home-makers as inconsequential, simply because the FLFP only takes into account labour with an economic remuneration. Feminist scholars in this space argue that women's unpaid, undocumented work forms the basis of our GDP — it's why men can work longer hours in the corporate world (because they can come home to a clean house and food on the table). Katrine Marçal makes this point in her book "Who cooked Adam Smith's dinner? A Story About Women and Economics", pointing out that Economics, as a field, is not gender-inclusive.
Adam Smith, the “Father of Economics”, is accredited to putting together the basis of the very subject matter of economics. To quote Marçal herself, “Smith coined the term “the invisible hand” that has become so widespread in economics. But, it turns out the real invisible hand may have been the one that put the dinner on his table every night for his entire life — his mother’s, whose efforts and labor were uncounted in his equations and went uncompensated”. The Economist further confirmed this in their article titled “Economics is uncovering its a gender problem”, and have since often put out articles exposing the outright sexism women in academia have had to face in the field of Economics.
As expected, the pandemic has worsened the gender gap, expanding it instead of bridging it. As per the report, it will now take 132 years to reach full parity, compared to the 100 years expected to take in 2020, before the pandemic. COVID-19 has, quite literally, set women back decades. A glimmer of hope to look towards, however, is that India ranks first on the list regarding the percentage of women and girls enrolled in primary education and the percentage of women and girls enrolled in tertiary education.
An accurate measure of whether India is on the way to genuine progress regarding women's rights will be next year's report — if India can rise from the ashes under a female President after the devastating impact of the pandemic, then perhaps all hope is not lost. The next year will be very telling.
