{"id":2235,"date":"2013-03-08T14:39:22","date_gmt":"2013-03-08T09:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.studyhallfoundation.org\/studyhall-blogs\/?p=2235"},"modified":"2014-01-07T15:46:29","modified_gmt":"2014-01-07T10:16:29","slug":"international-womens-day-around-the-world-and-in-india-progress-and-strategies-for-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.studyhallfoundation.org\/studyhall-blogs\/?p=2235","title":{"rendered":"International Women\u2019s Day around the World and in India: Progress and Strategies for Action"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr. Urvashi Sahni<\/strong>
\nFounder and Chief Executive Officer<\/td>\n		Co-Authored by
\n<\/strong>Xanthe Ackerman<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

International Women\u2019s Day, March 8th<\/sup>, is here again, and it is time to take stock of women\u2019s lives in the world today. \u00a0Great progress has been made in education and for women more broadly. Still, so much work remains to ensure that women are empowered, educated, safe, healthy and free to be fully participating members of equal societies. \u00a0In India, the recent groundswell of support for women and girls speaks to the potential to overturn harmful gender norms.\u00a0 We need approaches, such as self-organizing and campaigning for women\u2019s rights, gender-sensitive education, and including men in the fight for equality, that go beyond business as usual. \u00a0At the global level, it is critical that the next set of development goals hold actors to better account for progress for women and girls.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In many countries, the situation for women is improving at the highest levels of leadership and among the poor, even if slowly.\u00a0 There are now 17 female heads of state around the world\u2014almost twice as many as in 1990. \u00a0According to UNESCO\u2019s Global Monitoring Report<\/a>, the number of countries where girls face severe gender disparity \u2013 defined as having less than nine girls in primary school for every ten boys \u2013 has dropped from 33 countries in 1999 to 17 in 2010. \u00a0Gender parity at the secondary level has improved and, when girls make it to the secondary level in most countries, their retention and progression is the same or better than boys.\u00a0 More women are receiving antenatal care<\/a> and skilled assistance during delivery\u2014one of the most critical times in the prevention of maternal mortality.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

While the international community welcomes and celebrates the gains for women and girls, much more needs to be done to ensure women and girl\u2019s equality, and to meet the goals set out by the first set of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). \u00a0Women are still largely unsafe, unwanted and unequal in the developing world. \u00a0There are 4 million missing<\/a> women and girls each year in developing countries.\u00a0 They are killed in the womb, soon after birth or during their child-bearing years. \u00a0Most countries will miss the Education For All goal of a 50 percent improvement in adult literacy<\/a>\u2014a challenge that disproportionately affects women, who make up about two-thirds of the 775 million adults who cannot read. \u00a0In addition to addressing lagging progress in female mortality reduction and access to education and economic opportunity, the World Development Report 2012<\/a> calls for renewed efforts to increase women\u2019s voice and agency in the home and society, and to limit the reproduction of gender inequality across generations. Gender-based violence also continues to plague women around the world.\u00a0 According to CARE\u2019s Women and Empowerment<\/a> report, at least one in three females has been physically or sexually abused, often repeatedly and by a relative or acquaintance.\u00a0 Violence rivals cancer as a cause of morbidity and mortality for women of child-bearing age.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In India, the case for renewed commitment to women and girls is clear. \u00a0The government has made significant efforts to improve conditions for women and girls, including creating a large-scale girls\u2019 education program that provides schools and support for girls in rural areas and has already helped to narrow the gender gap.\u00a0 Still, much remains to be done by the government and all other stakeholders.\u00a0 The child mortality<\/a> rate in India is the highest in the world and some estimate that in India 1 million girls are killed in the womb<\/a> each year, and.\u00a0 In terms of education, gender overlaps with other causes of marginalization, including poverty, location (rural vs. urban) and social factors, such caste and tribe to worsen access and outcomes.\u00a0 For instance, according to the World Inequality Database on Education<\/a>, in 2005, 31 percent of women age 17-22 years had less than four years of school, compared to 16 percent of men.\u00a0 Among the poor in the poorer regions of India, the numbers were as high as 91 percent of women compared to 55 percent of men.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Of all the challenges that women and girls face, to some, having no voice is among the most intolerable. \u00a0Heroines the world over who struggle to be free and to make their voices heard, even when confronting lethal consequences. \u00a0Malala was shot because she voiced the right to education for women in Pakistan, and Nirbhaya in India was brutally raped and murdered because she expressed her right to travel freely.\u00a0 For any known story, there are millions of lesser known cases such as Khusboo.\u00a0 This young woman in Uttar Pradesh, India received an education\u2014a gender-based education that made empowerment the central goal\u2014and she thereby found the courage to voice her right to complete high school.\u00a0 She resisted her father\u2019s attempt to marry her off at 16 and for that she was beaten mercilessly and cast out of his house. \u00a0To share her story and her voice, she recently made an award-winning autobiographical video<\/a> that showed the abuse she faced and the triumph of holding up the diploma she earned.<\/p>\n

On International Women\u2019s Day, let us celebrate women\u2019s triumphs, but let us also consider what more can be done to confront the reality that so many women face.\u00a0 The following are strategies that show promise in India and can be replicated and scaled.<\/p>\n

Strategy #1: Self-Organize and Challenge the Status Quo\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Advocacy campaigns that demand gender equality, examine gender norms and address the inconsistency of patriarchal structures in democratic societies are critical and can be highly effective. \u00a0On February 14, 2013, Valentine\u2019s Day, millions of women and many men rose up against gender-based violence across the globe. \u00a0In India, thousands of people of all ages and gender took to the streets with banners, slogans, songs, street plays and dances, celebrating women and supporting their right to control their lives, their right to a safe world, their right to a voice. \u00a0The India\u2019s Daughters Campaign<\/a> represents a civil society effort along these lines and has used mobile technology to engage and organize youth in the most rural areas, including the students at 28 girls\u2019 schools.<\/p>\n

Campaigning as a part of the ongoing public outcry following the rape and death of Nirbhaya has resulted in the constitution of a high-level committee to review laws related to sexual crimes. \u00a0The committee produced The Justice Verma<\/a> report in record-breaking time. \u00a0The report makes several recommendations to the government including judicial, political, police and military reforms. \u00a0The committee also recommended that the Parliament promulgate a special bill of rights for women to ensure a life of safety and dignity, including in marriage.\u00a0 For the first time there is mention of \u201csexual autonomy\u201d for women, and there is some recognition of marital rape as a crime. \u00a0Severe punishments for rape and for all sexual offences are recommended, including stalking and sexual harassment in the work place. \u00a0The committee writes that all marriages should be registered, which will make it possible to identify and prevent child marriages, which are widely prevalent in India. \u00a0In addition, police should be subject to punitive action for not registering cases of rape and other sexual crimes. \u00a0Jody Williams, civil rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner for her work on the Campaign to Ban Landmines, states \u201cimpunity\u201d as the single biggest reason that violence against women continues to exist in such large numbers.\u00a0 Accordingly, the Justice Verma Report tries to make the law more responsive.<\/p>\n

People in India are demanding that the issue of women\u2019s safety be taken seriously by the government, and the state has, in this instance, responded.\u00a0 Their actions pave the way for further progress.\u00a0 For instance, a recent budget declaration allocates 200 million USD for the \u201csafety of women\u201d and civil society organizations are now organizing to understand how the Ministry of Women and Children will spend this money. The fact that the elections are only a year away could be a factor in government\u2019s responsiveness to civil society demands. \u00a0Even so, women are being taken seriously as a political constituency to be recognized and considered.<\/p>\n

The movement that led to the Justice Verma Report has been hugely successful, but there is more work to be done.\u00a0 Advocacy efforts should focus not only on these issues and judicial responses, but also the administrative environment and ability for crimes to be redressed quickly. The Indian government passed an ordinance recognizing 90 percent of the recommendations, but left out two important ones. \u00a0Marital rape has still been denied legal recognition, leaving women unsafe in the domestic space, and the armed forces have been left out of the punitive net. \u00a0Both are grave omissions, and women\u2019s organizations are contesting them strongly.<\/p>\n

Strategy #2: Include Gender Education in the Curriculum<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since critical dialogues can lead to real change in society with positive outcomes for women and men, we must note that the education system can support these dialogues by introducing gender education in the curriculum to sensitize and empower both girls and boys.\u00a0 What is most significant in the recent events in India is that we have seen that girls and women (at least in urban areas) are finding their \u201cvoice\u201d and are raising it.\u00a0 Critical dialogues and discussions around gender are taking place all over, in the media, universities, government, policymaking halls of power, schools, cafes, homes, and on the streets. \u00a0Gender has become, at least for the now, an important issue.\u00a0 This transformation can and should happen in every school for every girl and boy. \u00a0Even now, policymakers and civil society are considering the convening of a national-level working group in India to examine how education can promote positive gender norms.<\/p>\n

Indeed, gender norms should receive special official focus in education systems, curricula and teacher training. \u00a0Students must know the laws and recognize that women are entitled to an equal voice in the home and in society. \u00a0Education helps girls and women develop their voice and the capacity to aspire to equality, based on the recognition of themselves as equal persons. \u00a0We must include gender education in our core curriculum along with or as part of human rights education. \u00a0This inclusion will help reduce one more gender gap\u2014that of limiting the reproduction of inequality across generations\u2014by enabling both boys and girls to examine gendered construction of identities and social norms, the underlying structures that perpetuate inequality and how to unlearn negative and harmful ideas about gender.<\/p>\n

In order for gender education to be included in national curricula, it is necessary for ministries of education to approve and initiate a process whereby academics, gender experts, practitioners and educationists can work collaboratively to develop a graded curriculum for gender education, along with related teacher training courses.\u00a0 Schools provide an opportunity for intellectual discussions about gender roles, responsibilities and resulting power relations, which could help students gain a clearer perspective about what \u201cequality\u201d means in democratic societies. \u00a0Making gender education a curricular subject will make the issue \u201cofficial\u201d and legitimate and create a generation of more egalitarian gender norms.\u00a0 A concerted effort is required by the international education and development community to influence policy at the country level in this direction.<\/p>\n

Strategy #3: Include Men in the Conversation<\/strong><\/p>\n

If there is anything to rejoice and feel hopeful about for women on International Women\u2019s Day, it is the support by men for the movement to better ensure women\u2019s safety and opportunity in India. \u00a0Men\u2019s participation is something that all of us, men and women everywhere, should tenaciously hold on to in the fight for gender equality. \u00a0We need male champions in every sphere: national politics, business, civil society, in homes and in schools. \u00a0We all stand to gain from a society where everyone has a voice. Boys are open and willing to think about the issue seriously: The protests in India were led equally by young men and women.<\/p>\n

The inclusion of boys and men in the struggle for gender equality is critical, and women and girls need them as allies. \u00a0Women\u2019s education, health, and safety are not \u201cwomen\u2019s problems\u201d to be dealt with for and by women alone. \u00a0Boys must be engaged in serious discussions about the social construction of masculinity and feminity in their contexts with the resulting implications for gender equality.<\/p>\n

Strategy #4: Ensure the Next Set of Global Goals Focus on Gender Equality<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the global level, we must all work to ensure that gender continues to play a prominent role in the next set of global development goals.\u00a0 Whether gender is a cross-cutting issue that runs through all goals, or whether there are one or more goals that deal specifically with gender, the commitment to measuring progress for women and girls and funding policies and programs that improve conditions for women is critical and must be increased.\u00a0 Goals, metrics and policies should recognize that progress for girls and women over all often masks the lack of progress for large swaths of the female population.\u00a0 Even when average conditions for women and girls are improving, the situation for those affected by multiple forms of disadvantage, such as extreme poverty, remote location, conflict, disability, domestic abuse, negative gender norms, often remain unchanged.<\/p>\n

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Dr. Urvashi Sahni Founder and Chief Executive Officer Co-Authored by Xanthe Ackerman International Women\u2019s Day, March 8th, is here again, and it is time to take stock of women\u2019s lives in the world today. \u00a0Great progress has been made in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4366,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-foundation-blog","category-indiasdaughters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studyhallfoundation.org\/studyhall-blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studyhallfoundation.org\/studyhall-blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studyhallfoundation.org\/studyhall-blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studyhallfoundation.org\/studyhall-blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studyhallfoundation.org\/studyhall-blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2235"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.studyhallfoundation.org\/studyhall-blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4367,"href":"https:\/\/www.studyhallfoundation.org\/studyhall-blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2235\/revisions\/4367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studyhallfoundation.org\/studyhall-blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studyhallfoundation.org\/studyhall-blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studyhallfoundation.org\/studyhall-blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studyhallfoundation.org\/studyhall-blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}