Investigating India’s Missing Women

No country can ever truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women and deprives itself of the contributions of half of its citizens.

Michelle Obama

Investigating India’s Missing Women

A 2003 Indian movie called, Matrubhoomi : a nation without women presented a story which could easily become a reality. It showed ‘fraternal polyandry’ i.e. a single female getting married to all the brothers in the family (a present century Draupadi) and practice of bride buying. The movie examined the impact of female foeticide and female infanticide and resulted skewed sex ratio. It reflected on the gender imbalance and how it affected the attitude of the men and society in the absence of women. We Indian worships our goddesses and celebrate their festivals. We associate them with wealth (Lakshmi), power (Shakti) and knowledge (Saraswati) and we also name out daughters after them but sadly, we don’t give our daughters the same respect and affection they deserve.

Body content

On her arrival in India, the words of Gloria Steinem, American feminist and leader of the women’s libration movement, sounded like bells tolling for all women in today’s modern Indian society. “I came to India and what was here a half-a-century ago is still here….. and yet there is something else.’‘ Studying data on sex ratio in India over 70 years supports her grim observation. The persistence of gender imbalance is embodied in the term ‘missing women’, a concept developed by economist Amartya Sen. Basically, it’s about how sex ratio pointing towards less number of female per 1000 males, translate into absolute numbers of missing women. This concept has become a common concept in India. According to State of World Population 2020, the United Nation Population Fund (UNFPA) around 46 million girls missing in India which indicates a shortfall in the number of women relative to the expected number of women.

It is the result of societal and parental preference borne out of myriad complex factors like conservative socio-cultural mindset based on religious rituals, son preference based on gender-specific costs and the non-warning importance of sorry payments. It also stems from modern technological methods which gives parents opportunity of choosing a particular sex that leads to widespread practice of sex selective abortions. The unwanted infant if born suffers from female infanticide and if survives that too, get inadequate healthcare and nutrition. The cycle of suffering never ends but also finds itself in adolescent or adulthood through trafficking forced prostitution, domestic violence, forced marriage, child labour, sexual exploitation and widowhood leading to seclusion and confinement. They are not provided equal opportunities, undergo discrimination in property rights and have to bear through low-paid or unpaid jobs.

Women belong in all places where decisions are being made, it shouldn’t be that women are the exception.

Ruth Bade Ginsberg

Historically, the sex ratio in India has always been skewed against girls. In 2011, the child sex ratio in India had reached an all-time low of 914 girls to 1000 boys compared to 940 t o 1000 a decade earlier. One might expect the ratio to improve to improve with modernisation of India society ans liberal socio-economic policies but the gender disparity seems to have gotten even worse. The daughter deficit, is observed across all caste, classes, races, regions, and people of different education statuses and religions. The skewed sex ratio translates into long-term shifts in the proportions of women and men in the population. It also results in a marriage squeeze as prospective grooms far outnumber available brides, which further results in child marriage, women trafficking as well as practice of ‘bride buying‘ as was seen in the state of Haryana where female were brought from state like Bihar.

In a patriarchy and male dominated society, women are perceived as economical burden. During their childhood, they are tasked with taking care of younger siblings and post marriage, their housework of cooking, cleaning and caring is treated as non-work and it makes them further financially dependent on their spouse and in-laws. The system of dowery perceives the birth of a son as an opportunity for upward mobility while the birth of a daughter id believed to result in downward economic mobility.

It is not gender which is destroying our culture, it is our interpretation of culture which has destroyed gender equality.

A Cambodian civil society group

The number of ‘missing women’ has more than doubled over the past 50 years from 61 million in 1970 to a cumulative 142.6 million in 2020. India along with China accounts for around 90% of estimated 1.2 million girls lost annually to female foeticide. According to one analysis, gender-based sex selection accounts for about two-third of the total missing girl, and post-birth female mortality accounts for about one-third. The Pre-conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex selection) Act in 1994 that prohibits sex selection and regulates prenatal diagnostic techniques hasn’t been able to effectively regulate as around 460k girls went missing at birth due to sex-selection, each year between 2013 and 2017.

The Economic Survey 2018 mentions about Son-meta preference wherein the desire for make child has created 21 millions “unwanted girls” in India between 0 and 25 years pushing further into gender inequality and negligence. The male child preference is highest in Punjab and Haryana and lowest in Meghalaya. More than 2 million women go missing across age group every year either due to disease neglect or inadequate nutrition, according to National Family Health Survey (NFHS).

Are women just missing in numbers or also in decision making ?

While more women are educated, employed and earning than 10 years ago, they still do not have control over their earning and childbirth. Quoting the NFHS, the survey pointed out that more tend to quit their job after marriage or childbirth. Amartaya Sen, in one of his speeches expressed that he found it hard to accept that the biological reproduction role should deprived women of the freedom to do other things with their lives. He observed that men and women both have ‘congruent and conflicting interest’ within the family. As there are extensive areas of congruence, family typically arrive at a compromise by seeking the cooperation of both men and women.

Some family arrangements are usually grounded in what is termed as ‘cooperative conflict’ and some of them are particularly unfavourable to women, leading to tremendous gender inequality. The child-bearing woman becomes more dependent on harmony of the family and less demanding of her fair shares of the family’s joint benefit. She ends up getting the worst end of the bargain. This manifests as invisibilisation of her efforts ans issue plaguing her. She is missing in the number and she is ‘missing from decision making‘.

In the research paper by Anderson and Ray, they argue that excess female mortality in India persists beyond childhood and that the majority of missing Indian women die in adulthood. Close to half of missing women in India are post-reproductive ages, i.e. 45 and above. Unlike the missing girls phenomenon, excess female mortality at older ages in India has not received much attention and remain a puzzle.

One possible explanation, is the decline in women’s intra-household bargaining power during post-reproductive ages that can account for a substantial fraction of the missing women in the 45-79 age group. The decrease in women’s bargaining power is reflected in their diminishing ability to access household resources. As a result, at older ages poverty rates are significantly higher among women than men which negatively affects women’s health and increase their mortality risk.

I raise up my voice – not so that I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard…. we can not all succeed when half of us are held back.

Malala Yousafzai

As per the Economic Survey, factors such as domestic responsibilities, prevailing cultural attitudes regarding roles of women in society and lack of support from family were among main reasons that prevented women from entering politics. 65 millions women that is around 20% of eligible female voters are missing from India’s electorate, raising a question on how well their concerns are represented in democracy.

It is a vicious cycle where socio-economic disadvantages lead to reduced opportunities for women to participate in the political process, leading to weakened representation which in turn, retarded the process of addressing those socio-economic disadvantages. This cycle has been perpetuated for years altogether and needs to be broken to ensure preferences of women get significant attention.

What is the cost of missing women ?

In a country like India with around 49% of the women in the population, there has never been a women chief justice of India. Only 3 out of the 33 justice at Supreme Court are women and only 14% of the parliamentarians are women. Our dream of New India is India where women are empowered and strengthened, where they become equal partners in the all-round development of the country.

Evidence has shown that female leaders yields improved provisions of public goods in India and greater number addressal of women’s issues, such as health and education etc. These also align with the larger discourse on female leadership, in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. Countries with female headed governments – German, New Zealand, Taiwan have managed pandemic better.

The present century has definitely seen a phenomenal rise in the women employment, however a high difference of employment rate still exists between women as compared to men at 52% making India home to maximum number of educated unemployed women in the world. Besides in many occupations there is discrepancy in the remunerations and perks leading to gender pay gap.

In addition, for any woman to rise to a position requires her to prove herself more than men for the same position. Also, they are vulnerable to risks of losing occupations both due to personal and professional reasons. Going deeper into it, one finds patriarchy and limited choices available to women as key reasons.

Raising women”s participation in labour force to the same level as men can boost India’s GDP by 27%.

International Monetary Fund (IMF)

Women should be trained to analyse and understand their role and responsibilities. Empowering women as social, political and economic actors can change policy choices and make institutions more representatives of a range of voices. Increased women participation will ensure increased rate in overall productivity of country, faster growing economy and reduced rates of poverty along with better nutrition supply for women, delayed marriages and lower fertility rates among girls.

Conclusion

The problem of missing women should be tackled by eliminating the root cause, especially gender-based norms. The need of the hour is to reform the institutions and cultural practices that perpetuate gender biases such as the dowery system, stigma against women styling and working, domestic violence and sexual harassment.

Targeted community-based interventions to sensitise and mobilise significant stakeholders such as religious leaders, village elders, district and local administration, civil society, school and the public are the need of the hour. Through government schemes such as Beti Bachao and Beto Padhao, Sukanya Samridhi Yojana, Janani Suraksha Yojna, enhanced maternity leaves and mandatory creches in workplaces are steps in the right direction.

Cash transfer initiatives such as Apni Beto Anna Khan should be widened in its reach and capacity. There should be focus on keeping girls in school longer, teaching them life skills and to engage men and boys in social change. The Khoya Maya portal has been launched to report missing girls cases. Prevention of Sexual Harassment at Workplace law will ensure a safety working environment for women. Social empowerment of women by reducing gender stereotype through approaches like ‘Daughter are precious’ campaign of Rajasthan government wherein every mother who delivers a girl-baby receives a congratulatory message signed by the chief minister.

Change cannot happen overnight. It needs to be tackled at all levels of our society, involving information and education (IEC), positive reinforcement through media, and incentives for adequate care for female child. As is rightly said,

“When we empower the women in a family, we empower the entire household. When we help with a women’s education, we ensure that the entire family is educated. When we secure her future, we secure the future of the entire home and the country.”