Relevance: mains: G.S Paper I: Social Issues
Context
- According to a study published in American Psychologist, for the first time in history, 86% of US adults have admitted that men and women are equally intelligent.
- The researchers had tracked the responses of more than 30,000 US adults since 1946 to 2018.
- In 1946, only 35% of those surveyed thought both men and women are equally intelligent. It is heartening to know that there has been a huge shift in attitudes towards women.
World Employment and Social Outlook Trends for Women
- According to the World Employment and Social Outlook Trends for Women 2018 report, more women than ever before are both educated and participating in the labour market today.
- Even as opportunities for people without a college education shrink, men’s rates of graduation remain relatively stagnant, while women across socioeconomic classes are increasingly enrolling for and completing post-secondary degrees. In 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, 72.5% of females in the US who had recently graduated high school were enrolled in a two-year or four-year college programme, compared to 65.8% of men.
- However, The Global Gender Gap Report 2018 by the World Economic Forum does not provide much scope for optimism.
- According to this report, it will take 108 years to close the gender gap and 202 years to achieve parity in the workforce.
- Gender parity seems too far a goal to achieve. No doubt, we need a fresh and re-energized approach to solve the issue of gender inequality.
- Many studies have shown that though many admit that women are equal to men at a conscious level, at an implicit level, many tend to harbour many biases towards women. The plague and power of bias are too consequential to let them go unacknowledged and unchecked.
- Merely having more awareness of a bias does not help overcome it. One needs to understand the root causes of it to mitigate its effects.
What are the significant forces that hinder our progress towards gender parity?
- For millions of years, except in few matriarchal societies, the man has always been considered the head of the family.
- The provider-role he played was always seen superior to the nurturer-role that women played in a family.
- The man’s decision was always the final word. Gender parity was not a norm in families across societies.
- It was hoped that with the arrival of the knowledge economy and women earning better salaries, those norms would change.
- Peoples, every religion churns out stories that give shape to the beliefs we live by.
- According to some of those stories, male bodies are created in God’s own image and so are considered better than female bodies, which are somehow deficient and in need of purification.
- All the key functions of organized religion, such as conducting religious ceremonies and heading the religious hierarchy, are reserved for men.
- No organized religion treats women equal to men.
Conclusion
- Achieving gender parity is not about organizing awareness programmes and pasting a few posters in offices.
- It is all about fundamentally altering beliefs upheld by the two strongest institutions of any society: the family and religion.