Originally published here.
Gender is a socio-cultural construct based on a person's reproductive anatomy and secondary sex characteristics. Gender encompasses physical, mental, and behavioral traits that distinguish masculinity and femininity. Horizontal gender pairings are rare. They're hierarchically vertically stratified. They're assigned superiority and inferiority. So men became superior to women. Gender inequalities reflect societal power differentials. Due to hierarchical relationships, discriminatory attitudes are adopted against people lower down the hierarchy, who in gender-based stratification are women. In India, generations of discrimination against women have affected women's lives. Despite India's constitution guaranteeing women equal rights, gender inequities persist.
Women have limited access to education, healthcare, and jobs. Female infanticide, a sex-selective abortion, demonstrates Indian women's low status. Rich parents' yearning for boys is met by illegal foetal sex-determination and sex-selective abortion. Indian women are undereducated. Female literacy lags below male despite rising rates. Discrimination against women has contributed to gender wage gaps, with Indian women earning 64% of what men earn for the same job and level of education.
Women are disadvantaged at work and sometimes underestimated for their skills. This has hindered Indian women's progress. Women lack autonomy and authority due to discrimination. Women may not acknowledge their equal rights. In rural areas, customary law is used to enforce land and property rights. Women don't possess property and don't inherit parental property. Gender discrimination limits women's autonomy and independence and has societal effects. It slows growth, lowering agricultural and non-agricultural output.
From the beginning of time, women have faced discrimination in every sphere of life, including health and education, at the hands of men. One can approach the problem of discrimination in society on the basis of gender from a number of different angles. In a culture like ours, which is predominately ruled by men, women are the ones who bear the brunt of all of society's ills. In India, gender discrimination can be demonstrated by looking at factors such as the sex ratio, the newborn mortality rate, the level of education work participation of women, and the level of wage.
The government of India has implemented a number of reforms in recent years in an effort to improve the status of women in Indian society and to ensure that men and women are treated on an equal footing. There have been a multitude of programmes, initiatives, and policies that have placed an emphasis on boosting the educational level, economic standing, health status, level of women's empowerment, and level of political involvement of women to match that of males. In addition, international organisations are taking many steps to improve the situation of women in order to realize their goal of achieving gender equality.
The efforts of national and international organisations resulted in the passage of a number of laws as well as the amendment of a large number of existing laws. However, despite advances in legal rights, women continue to face a number of social, economic, and political obstacles. This is due to the fact that attitudes or perspectives have not evolved at the same rate as legal rights. Concerns relating to gender have their origins in the past and are driven by ideology. The only way to achieve gender equality is for both men and women, across all dimensions, to undergo a mental and behavioral shift in the same direction.
The issue of power, which has been zealously guarded by men for millennia, lies at the heart of the debate about gender equality. It is a matter of an abuse of power that is causing harm to our communities, economies, environments, relationships, and health. If we want to ensure that our future and the planet's survival, we have an immediate need to reform and redistribute power. Because of this, every man should stand up for the rights of women and for equality between the sexes.
In practically every area of endeavour, women have caught up to and even surpassed their male counterparts. It is time to stop attempting to reform women and instead start altering the structures that impede them from reaching their full potential. Our hierarchical power systems have been developing slowly over the course of thousands of years. The time has come for yet another evolutionary step. The equality of women is something that should be a priority in the twenty-first century. Let each of us do everything we can to help make it happen.
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