Pro Bono
Ashwini Rajanikanth, reporting from United Nations Women (UN Women), writes on gender equality and progress with regard to sustainable development goals.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer an exciting opportunity to see real progress on gender equality. From a narrow focus on education and maternal health under the Millennium Development Goals, targets related to gender equality are now included across a range of the goals, including, education and health, clean water and sanitation, sustainable cities and communities, and decent work. The new goal for gender equality itself highlights the previously less visible issue of unpaid care. It is hidden issues such as these, and the underlying gender norms that sustain gender inequality, that need far more attention if positive and sustainable change is to be achieved.
Since 2005, the ESRC-DFID Joint Fund for Poverty Alleviation Research (Joint Fund) has commissioned high quality social science research addressing the international development goal of reducing poverty amongst the poorest in the world. The recent Evidence Synthesis Research Award (ESRA) undertaken by Sarah Bradshaw, Brian Linneker, Charlotte Nussey, and Erin Sanders-McDonagh from Middlesex University, explores how the awards made by the Joint Fund have contributed to the understanding of gender and poverty. The report recommends that future research should include gender as a central overarching question, with studies focusing on how to measure all aspects of gender well-being, and to better understand what initiatives work best to improve women’s positions and situations in the household and community.
The report also highlights new evidence produced by the Joint Fund regarding women’s experiences of poverty. For example, research by Williams focusing on self-improvement neighbourhood groups for women in India shows how, because the groups are based on a microfinance programme, the cost is too high for the traditional poor to participate in.
Despite the Joint Fund not having a specific gender focus, 60% per cent of its awards included some level of gender analysis. Insights from the research touched upon some issues that are gaining increasing importance following their inclusion within the SDGs. For instance, unpaid care, as mentioned above was once a side-lined topic but is now starting to become more prominent within debates. Research by Noble and others under the Joint Fund on lone mothers receiving the Child Support Grant in South Africa underlined the need for unpaid care to be recognised and valued as work. Research participants expressed their pride in their role as caregiver. The Child Support Grant was founded to be helpful for the women in contributing to the cost of raising children, yet the way it was administered was detrimental to the women’s dignity—with queues for applying and negative attitudes directed towards lone mother applicants. Thus, in not addressing less obvious issues like dignity, social protection schemes like the Child Support Grant become less effective in that they can deter women from applying. Public services and state support are essential for addressing the issue of unpaid care but they need to take a comprehensive view of the issue to succeed.
Awards also uncovered issues new to development research such as gossip and shame that impact on their well-being, and beneath which, the issues of social norms lay. Research by Newell and others in South Asia, for instance, found that women suffering from the symptoms of TB were particularly likely to be gossiped about. The social consequences for unmarried women having TB were particularly negative, as this may decrease their marriage prospects due to concerns about their childbearing abilities. Social norms that dictate that women cannot travel unaccompanied to the doctor also risk delaying their treatment.
Much of the new evidence from the Joint Fund research has the issue of restrictive social norms at its heart. These unwritten rules of society that govern women’s and men’s behaviour based on gender rules need to be tackled if long-lasting progress on gender equality is to be achieved. Social norms, in particular, restrict the mobility of both women and girls. Research by Porter and others in South Africa revealed the restrictions girls face in accessing mobile phone technology due to mobility concerns. Where boys could roam freely to try to get a signal in areas with low coverage, girls were curbed due to fears of their vulnerability to sexual attack. The girls were also subjected to far greater parental surveillance than boys. Girls’ access to mobile phones, in their parents’ eyes, equated to connection to the outside world which meant sexual temptation.
Looking to the future and work on the SDGs, the report highlighted a number of areas that need further study. Including unpaid and paid care work, these areas include, gendered mobility, transport and technology, the barriers to women’s entrepreneurship, the rise of the new poor as crises such as forced migration affect an increasing number of countries, and the effectiveness of international policy to improve women’s well-being.
Sources:
1.http://www.esrc.ac.uk/research/international-research/international-development/esrc-dfid-joint-fund-for-poverty-alleviation-research/
2. http://www.esrc.ac.uk/files/research/international/gender-esra-2015/
3.http://www.theimpactinitiative.net/project/embedding-poor-peoples-voices-local-governance-participation-and-political-empowerment-india
4. http://www.theimpactinitiative.net/project/lone-mothers-south-africa-role-social-security-respecting-and-protecting-dignity
5. http://www.theimpactinitiative.net/project/stigma-and-discrimination-associated-tb-asia
(Edited by Keerthisree Raghu.)
Systems of Social Neglect
Kaavya Ganesh, reporting from United Nations Women (UN Women), ponders over the abominable status of women in the agricultural sector in India.
Perhaps the only thing more difficult than life as a poor farmer in India is life as a woman from a poor agricultural family. Although a large number of rural women are engaged in agricultural work, mostly as agricultural labourers, 87% of these women do not own the land they work on, as per an Oxfam report released in 2013. This is primarily because of the patriarchal mindset prevalent in the society, which has kept women deprived of land ownership for generations. The consequences of this are far-reaching.
According to the Census of 2011, anyone who operates on a piece of agricultural land is called a ‘cultivator’. Since land is a state subject, state governments only consider those who hold the land title of a ‘farmer’. Thus, 3,600,000 women are not recognised by the government as farmers as they hold the title of ‘cultivators’. In 2012, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, the then Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, gave compensation to the families of those people who had committed suicide only if they fit the definition of a ‘farmer’. This, as can be expected, left all women cultivators and labourers out. The state recognised 90 farmer suicides, while the numbers reported by surveys and other media outlets were at least three to four times greater than what was recognised. It is glaringly obvious that none of the social protection programs geared towards alleviating the farmers’ crises even include women due to the aforementioned ambiguity in terminology used.
Farmer suicides are mostly attributed to an inability to escape from debt traps owing to loans taken to cultivate commercial crops. It can be said without a shred of doubt that the new neo-liberal economic policy paradigm of the state from the 1990s—withdrawal from positive state intervention, deflationary policies, and market-driven prices for essential produce—has indeed brought great misery upon the people engaged in agriculture. The brunt of such policies is borne by marginalised farmers; particularly, the women.
In the 1960s, amidst a severe food crisis, the ‘Green Revolution’ was introduced in India. This led to a spectacular early increase in productivity and quality of food crops with the country experiencing a rise in rural incomes and employment potential. However, by the 1980s, this steady rise in productivity had stagnated. This, combined with the aforementioned change in economic policies, led the agricultural sector to stare at the onset of a deep crisis from which the country has not yet recovered. The weaknesses in the new policies manifested within the first decade, plunging Punjab and other states into economic and social distress. Caste and class tensions were heightening as the privileges of a small number of rich upper caste farmers were being challenged by the oppressed landless lower castes. The brunt of all of this was borne by the women of the families, who, apart from being barred from owning land, also had to deal with the oppression of the patriarchal paradigm. The manner in which they deal with these issues is often determined by their caste and class. For most of these women, their options to earn a livelihood are limited to wage labour. Even the few women who own land are usually not allowed to make any independent decisions pertaining to their land. Women also carry the additional burden of unpaid domestic labour which is not considered productive work by their families and society. The invisibility of their work further marginalises these women.
The effects of combined technological advancement and capitalistic economic policies have been disastrous indeed. The environmental cost (in the form of land degradation, ground water exploitation, and damage on the environment caused by the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides) has increased the rate of landlessness in an alarming manner. Apart from this, lack of nutrition, the double responsibility of managing both their homes and their farms as well as earning enough to sustain their families in scenarios where the male members have committed suicide, result in severe psychological stress for the working-class women of our country. Their mental conditions are extremely fragile, they barely have any social support, and they have absolutely no support from the state.
This adds a vicious angle to the already precarious crisis. These mentally fragile women are not in any position to access the healthcare options which are extremely limited to begin with. Healthcare options in the deeper pockets of rural India are usually limited to occasional camps set up by Non-Governmental Organisations, nearby medical colleges, or isolated general hospitals with only one or two licensed doctors. This means that only common illnesses and minor injuries are treatable. In particular, pregnant women are often faced with two very unattractive choices: they can either choose to stay in the village during labour and hope that the pregnancy does not have too many complications, or they can choose to travel hundreds of kilometres to the nearest city to avail advanced treatment options while carrying. It goes without saying, that a lot of pregnancy-related mishaps which, regardless of all the medical options available to us, are avoidable and end up taking lives unnecessarily.
There is undoubtedly a whole section of the society that has not been fully considered in current debates about social protection policies for the underprivileged. Women, who form 65% of the workforce in agricultural sectors, are also ironically the ones who are the most oppressed and silenced. These are very important issues that need to be further researched and talked about to develop fully equitable and just solutions. The empowerment of Indian women will not be complete without empowering those who are living in India's last periphery.
(Edited by Keerthisree Raghu.)
Catch-22
Kaavya Ganesh, reporting from the United Nations Women (UN Women), writes about how legislations can enforce gender stereotypes.
Women, over the past few decades, have strived to achieve the gender equality goals of exercising the rights to vote, to own property, to work outside their home, and to run for office, among others. However, state institutions have been much less proactive about the cause. Gender stereotyping is the practice of ascribing specific attributes, characteristics, or roles to an individual by means of only their membership in the social group of either women or men. Gender stereotypes frequently and persistently acquire legal status, with the laws and judgements that uphold these stereotypes having the effect of a seal of approval. This leads to discrimination against women who do not conform to these stereotypes.
In general society, women are seen as the natural care-givers for children. Their primary role is seen as being mothers at home. In fact, this usually follows the narrative that their role as a mother is the most important role a woman plays in her life. While this may seem to be benevolent and celebratory of the female sex, all it manages to do is demonise the women who choose alternate roles to play. From a legal point of view, in their attempt to uplift women, countries and legislations speak about motherhood as a common end goal that all women aspire towards. Her contribution towards raising her children (even though she might be married) is, according to these laws, the greatest contribution a woman can make. For instance, the Constitution of Ireland, “recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved” and provides that “the State shall… endeavour to ensure that mothers are not obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.” Not only does this demonise working women who do not have children, it also serves to reduce the roles of women and men in society to a strict binary. This is the root cause of the huge gender disparity that can be observed in court rulings regarding the granting of custody of children in divorce cases. There is blatant stereotyping done in these cases as many judges assumes that the children would be better off if they stay with the mother, even if in particular cases, the father would clearly be the wiser choice, indicated by past behavioural records.
Another common stereotype that women are subjected to is that a “good” woman must be modest, chaste, and feminine. This has led to generations of women’s voices being subdued and arrested. Legislations that are built on these stereotypes are those that see women as weak and in need of protection. This compounds the idea that women are the weaker sex and would be better off under the legal protection of a man. It is for this very same reason that a woman’s clothing and actions are tied to her modesty and her modesty is in turn tied to the honour of her family. In some Muslim countries, adult women are benevolently put under the care of another adult man. This is seen by lawmakers and society in general as positive and a woman’s autonomy and her human rights to freedom and privacy are not considered to be above her duties as a woman in society. It is almost ironic that these countries also have laws that decree that for every male testimony, there needs to be at least two opposing female testimonies for the women’s side to even be considered.
More often than not, these gender stereotypes are intersected with racial, religious, or ethnic stereotypes. When this occurs, the women are doubly disadvantaged. Legislations on the whole, fail to take into account the interactions between multiple minority groups within a region. This leads to accounts of these women never seeing the light of day as they are oppressed and subdued even more.
Thus, legislations contribute to furthering pre-existing stereotypes in society, instead of working towards freeing women of them. This puts women in a Catch-22 situation, where their only way out of difficult situations are the very laws that have trapped them in there. In conclusion, the reporter would like to opine that the only way legislations can uphold women’s rights and promote women empowerment is by actively identifying gender stereotypes and prescribing measures to address them at the most basic level instead of trying to protect women by reiterating prevalent gender stereotypes.
(Edited by Keerthisree Raghu.)