User:Khushipdesai/Gender inequality in India

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Disparities in Education

Education is not equally attained by Indian women. Although literacy rates are increasing, the female literacy rate lags behind the male literacy rate.

Literacy rates over time for men, women, rural, and urban populations.

Literacy for females stands at 65.46%, compared to 82.14% for males. An underlying factor for such low literacy rates are parents' perceptions that education for girls are a waste of resources as their daughters would eventually live with their husbands' families. Thus, there is a strong belief that due to their traditional duty and role as housewives, daughters would not benefit directly from the education investment. Programs like Ashram schools for tribes, programs for low literacy districts, and scholarships to promote higher education like the Pre-Matric and Post-Matric Scholarship, Rajiv Gandhi National Fellowship, etc. have been recently installed to promote education. Traditional beliefs regarding women's education, especially in rural and tribal communities in India prevent women from taking advantage of these resources.

For women in rural or tribal communities the educational disparities are even larger. In 2011, for the state of Jharkhand, male scheduled tribes (STs) had a literacy rate of around 68% whereas female STs had a literacy rate of around 46%. Tribal women lack access to educational institutions and are isolated from urban society, which restrict them from obtaining economic opportunities and mobility. Tribal women in India are often unskilled and are perceived by general society as chaotic and willing to perform sexual intercourse. As a result, tribal women who attempt to integrate within rural or urban societies end up as sexual workers or take up physical manual labor jobs.

Economic inequalities

Women in a tribal village, Umaria district, India, at a meeting regarding land rights for Adivasi people.

Property rights

Women have equal rights under the law to own property and receive equal inheritance rights, but in practice, women are at a disadvantage. This is evidenced in the fact that 70% of rural land is owned by men. Laws, such as the Married Women Property Rights Act of 1974 protect women, but few seek legal redress. Although the Hindu Succession Act of 2005 provides equal inheritance rights to ancestral and jointly owned property, the law is weakly enforced, especially in Northern India.

Tribal women's property rights

Tribal women face both social and legal inequalities with property ownership. Tribal communities in India rely on their land for economic stability since their lifestyle and source of income is tied to the agricultural industry. The International Labour Organization Convention 169 guarantees tribal communities rights to their own land. It enforces policies that requires free, advanced, and informed consent to utilize tribal land for development and ensures that the process is inclusive and accommodating to tribal communities that occupy the land. This includes the option for tribals to reacquire their land after it has been restored. Several other policies have been passed in rural areas of India to protect tribal land, such as the Chota Nagpur Tenancy Act, the Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act, and Wilkinson's Rule. However, contracts signed between tribal communities and private parties or state governments are often violated, leaving families displaced.

Additionally, the aforementioned land protection policies have been identified to exclude tribal women. Tribal women in India hold status primarily due to their acting roles as forest-based gatherers, and are especially impacted by inadequate property protection policies. Due to displacement, tribal women have been found to face rehabilitation, discrimination within caste-based rural communities. One of the major consequences of the marginalization of tribal communities, for women, has been job security. Resettlement policies for tribal families often only offer monetary compensation and job security to male workers, or households supported by women.

Health and survival inequalities

Gender-based violence

Domestic violence

Domestic violence, rape and dowry-related violence are sources of gender violence.Domestic violence has historically been one of the largest social issues in India. One study found that 4 out of 10 women in India have experienced domestic violence in their lifetime and 3 out of 10 women experienced domestic violence in the past year. Victims of domestic violence often continue to stay silent out of shame, fear of retaliation, and possibly social isolation within their communities. In a survey including women of different castes from a rural village in New Delhi, Barwala, it was identified that the most common factor of domestic violence was alcoholism. It was also found that in cases where a husband committed violent acts against his wife, residing members of the joint family would often instigate the abuse.

Rape

According to the National Crime Records Bureau 2013 annual report, 24,923 rape cases were reported across India in 2012; however, this number is likely to be larger due to many cases that go unreported. Out of these, 24,470 were committed by relative or neighbor; in other words, the victim knew the alleged rapist in 98 per cent of the cases. Compared to other developed and developing countries, incidence rates of rape per 100,000 people are quite low in India. India records a rape rate of 2 per 100,000 people, compared to 8.1 rapes per 100,000 people in Western Europe, 14.7 per 100,000 in Latin America, 28.6 in the United States, and 40.2 per 100,000 in Southern African region. However, some rape cases, where there was no bond between the victim and the rapist, have led to big protests in India as well as a lot of international media coverage. One of the most debated cases, known as the 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder, a 23-year-old female was gang-raped, tortured and later died from the fatality of her injuries. Following the news of the case and later the death of the victim, big protests spread across the whole country, where protesters demanded safety for women and legal justice for rape victims.

Dowry-related and honor killings

Other sources of gender violence include those that are incited by family members, like dowry-related killings and honor killings. NCRB report states 8,233 dowry deaths in the country in 2012. Honor killings are violence where the woman's behavior is linked to the honor of her whole family; in extreme cases, family members kill her. Honor killings are difficult to verify, and there is a dispute whether social activists are inflating numbers. In most cases, honor killings are linked to the woman marrying someone that the family strongly disapproves of. Some honor killings are the result of extrajudicial decisions made by traditional community elders such as "khap panchayats," unelected village assemblies that have no legal authority. Estimates place 900 deaths per year (or about 1 per million people). Honor killings are found in the Northern states of Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh.

Witch hunting

More extreme forms of violence are seen within certain areas of rural India. Witch hunting has been a common issue among rural tribal women, especially within the state of Jharkhand. It refers to violence or killings that occur when a woman is suspected or accused of causing diseases, illnesses, insufficient crop yields, etc. The concept of witch hunting stems from the idea of spirits, which represent the good, and witches, which represent the bad, and is a central concept of tribal culture. Due to the lack of educational and healthcare infrastructure in rural areas, especially tribal villages in Jharkhand, residents will often rely on superstitious figures in the village. The misinformation results in family members and neighbors using female figures in their society as scapegoats for these issues. Due to the social and gendered nature of the crime, it is often difficult to file reports and investigate witchcraft-related crimes.

A study found that states with higher levels of gender inequality, measured by female literacy rates, women labor participation, and gaps in education and health services, tend to have higher rates of gender-based crime.