Where China is Only a Notch Above India

Context: India is not alone in the misery women face, and based on the current rate of progress, it will take another 100 years to achieve gender equality globally.

Key Challenges in Achieving Gender Equality

• Economic gender gap: India is at 149^th place (as per gender gap report) with the lowest women labour force participation in the world and low earned income, i.e. 20% of male’s.
• Low sex ratios at birth: It is 91 girls for every 100 boys in India, 92: 100 in Pakistan and even worse in China at 90:100. Bangladesh is 60 places ahead of India, with 50th on the overall index.
• Political disempowerment: India is miles ahead of China (95th rank) on political empowerment.
• Patriarchy and unequal rights: it forces parents in both China and India not to have daughters.
• Unstated Glass ceiling across companies: (in senior positions) India has highest drop in representation of women from junior to middle-level positions, unlike other Asian countries.
  • Just about 8% of all directors in India are women (even lower in China) despite a mandatory requirement in Companies Act.
  • Rarely is the label “leader” attached to women: despite the fact that companies with the top quartile of gender diversity are 28% more likely than their peers to outperform financially - as per McKinsey report.
• Poor financial exclusion: disadvantage in accessing credit, land or financial products, prevents them to start a company or make a living by managing assets.
• Lack of basic sexual and reproductive rights: 90 million women of reproductive age live in countries that prohibit abortion and require their husband’s permission to travel abroad in Iran.
• Violence against women: Six women are killed every hour by men around the world, and as many as 137 women are killed every day by a partner or family member.
  • In Nigeria, a man is legally allowed to hit his wife.
• Unpaid domestic work: Women perform 2.6 times more unpaid domestic work than men and are less likely to get promotion in jobs (18%).
• Unequal legal rights: Only six countries give equal legal rights, but marital rape is legal in 36 countries, including India.