Vol 7. Gender Equality and Democracy in South Asia + Women & India's 2021 Budget
What is the relationship between democracy and gender equality? Where does South Asia fare? Is India's 2021 Budget gender-responsive?
This issue includes news from the region, a quick review on India’s 2021 Budget and its impact on women, an article by Women for Politics Advocate and World Bank Consultant Sakshi Hallan on democracy and gender equality in South Asia, and some reading recommendation ranging from feminist activism in Asia to inequality in sustainable fashion aesthetics and moral posturing.
We are looking for more writers and editors who are interested in covering gender and South Asia. If interested, send us an email to feministnewspaperwali@gmail.com.
Best,
Bansari Kamdar
P.S. If you enjoy reading about South Asia from a gendered lens, you can subscribe below to our bi-monthly newsletter. (Yes, it is free!)
News from South Asia
The Sri Lankan government has said it will provide free, locally made sanitary pads to about 800,000 schoolgirls. The project will prioritize children in poorer rural areas and also aims to build toilet facilities in 2,500 schools. Period poverty remains a major deterrent to female education in the region. According to one UNICEF study, more than half of the adolescents in 2015 did not want or weren’t allowed to go to school during their periods, while 37% miss one or two school days each month.
Research by M Niaz Asadullah, Nazia Mansoor, Teresa Randazzo, and Zaki Wahhaj, has demonstrated a decline in 'son preference' by women of childbearing age in Bangladesh. Nonetheless, the study also shows that fertility decisions continue to be influenced according to son preference. The paper, "Is son preference disappearing from Bangladesh?" surveyed a nationally representative sample of Bangladeshi women of childbearing age, born between 1975 and 1994, to assess how son preference is evolving.
“It isn’t just men who drive tractors,” said Sunita Malik in an interview with Los Angeles Times on India’s historical farmer’s protests. Women continue to play a major role both in the farmer’s protests and in India’s agriculture. Three-quarters of rural Indian women work in agriculture, a sector engulfed by agrarian distress due to climate change and increasing privatization. (Read my article on how the Modi government’s three new farm laws will disproportionately impact women)
When former American President Donald J. Trump scrapped aid to women’s health care providers around the world four years ago, the Family Planning Association of Nepal was forced to dismiss more than 200 people and close clinics in at least four parts of the country, reports New York Times. Satyajit Pradhan, who works for the women’s health organization MSI Reproductive Choices, spoke to Sarah Wildman on the impact of America’s gag rule on women’s access to reproductive services in Nepal. “The chilling effect resulted in partners failing to refer women to MSI for abortion care, even in the case of rape or incest or if the life of the woman was at risk,” he said.
Quick Take: Women and India’s 2021 Budget
The impact of COVID-19 on India and the world was undoubtedly gendered and disproportionate. In India, as the pandemic hit domestic violence faced by women recorded a 10-year high between March and May 2020. India already has one of the lowest female labor force participation rates globally and female employment and participation fell further. Economist Ashwini Deshpande finds that women’s employment declined by 2.7 million between November and December, compared to a decline of 2 million for men.
On February 1, 2021, India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman released the budget for the upcoming year. While women were disproportionately affected by the COVID-19, the budget remained largely blind to their concerns. Rather than increase the gender budget, the Narendra Modi government reduced India’s gender budget to just 4.3% of the total outlay, lesser than last year.
The “Mission for Protection and Empowerment of Women” was cutback to Rs 48 crore, as compared to Rs 901 crore in 2019-20 and Rs 1,163 crore in 2020-21. This umbrella scheme includes One Stop Centres, the government program to address violence against women, the Ujjwala Scheme, and Narendra Modi’s flagship Beti Bachao Beti Padhao Scheme to encourage female education.
The Modi government cut spending on education by Rs 6,000 crore at a time when the pandemic has exacerbated school dropout rates, particularly for girls. Young girls are being pressured out of education due to economic and social pressures brought on by the pandemic. No announcements were made by the Finance Minister about recovering learning loss, re-enrollment campaigns, or support for girls at risk of not returning to school.
(Read my full article on the impact of COVID-19 on female education in South Asia)
Additionally, there is little provision in the budget for promoting female employment which has been falling for the past few years. There is no increase in MNREGA, a major safety net program that provides employment to rural Indians, the majority of whom are women.
Nirmala Sitharaman’s 2021 budget also cuts wages of ASHA workers, female frontline healthcare workers who played an instrumental role in the testing of COVID-19 cases and will be instrumental to India’s vaccination plans. These workers already earn less than minimum wages, are provided no health insurance or government benefits and are working 14 hours a day since the COVID-19 outbreak in India.
“If India’s top 11 billionaires are taxed at just 1 percent of their wealth, it would pay the average current wage of 9 lakh ASHA workers in the country for five years,” writes the Amita Pitre for The Quint.
The government also reduced the budget for child and maternal nutrition schemes. The budget for the umbrella Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), which provides food, pre-school education, and immunization for children under 6 years, has been slashed by over Rs 5,000 crore from Rs 26,057 crore to just Rs 21,005 crore. Meanwhile, the NHFS survey found that child nutrition levels in India worsened over the last five years, reversing decades on incremental gains. This would affect girls more as women and girls are often the last and least to eat, given the prevalent socio-cultural norms and practices.
Women and girls, at best, remained neglected and ignored in this year’s budget.
Deep Dive: Towards Gender Equality in South Asian Democracies
by Sakshi Hallan, Women for Politics
In 2007, the United Nations marked 15th September as the International Day of Democracy. The idea behind this day is to review the state of democracy in the world, shed light on current issues and direct the focus of governments on improving the democratic processes in their countries. The UN aptly describes democracy as not just a goal, but also a process. While it is not a flawless process in execution, the majority of the countries in the world today have adopted democracy as a system because of the shared belief in values of equality and civil liberties.
Research has shown a positive and reinforcing relationship between democracy and, gender equality and inclusiveness. We at Women for Politics want to focus on South Asia’s journey towards gender equality in politics.
When we talk about women in politics, we often confine the discourse to their representation in electoral politics. We dive into metrics of representation in legislatures, ministerial positions, and heads of states. However, success in electoral politics is more often than not, dependent on financial resources, existing political connections; furthermore, women face barriers of patriarchy and deeply ingrained gender biases. We need to broaden the conventional definition of politics to include social movements, campaigns, political activism, and engagement.
South Asia scores the second-lowest in the Global Gender Gap Index 2020, having closed 66.1% of the gender gap. While this statistic is relevant, it also masks the political complexities and the influence of deeply entrenched socio-cultural norms in the region. There are substantial differences in the political climate across countries, with some stable and old democracies and some newly transitioned ones.
Despite being traditionally conservative societies, South Asia witnessed some of the world’s firsts in democratically held elections. It’s a little known fact that, in 1960, Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka became the world’s first woman Prime Minister, and went on to serve the country for three full terms. While the evidence on the impact of gender quotas is mixed, after decades of struggle, in 2016, the parliament in Sri Lanka amended the local electoral law to reserve 25% of the seats for women candidates. It was first implemented in the local elections of 2018, where as a result of the quotas, a record number of women contested the elections to local offices - 17000 out of more than 56000 candidates for more than 8000 posts.
Bangladesh, a traditionally orthodox and Muslim majority country, holds the world record for the longest time period (30 years) with a woman Head of Government. Since 1991, Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina have been the only two serving as Prime Ministers; one election after the other, which renders the country’s political sphere very unique.
In Pakistan, another Muslim majority country, religion has exerted a strong influence on societal structures with attempts to isolate women from decision-making processes. The country has gone through tumultuous changes since independence with military rules, assassinations, and impeachments. Of course, the landmark event in Pakistan's political history was in 1981 when Benazir Bhutto was elected as the first woman Prime Minister of any Muslim majority country. But decades before that, in the early days of post-liberation, Begum Rana Liaqat Ali Khan, the first lady of Pakistan led the battalion for gender equality. She founded the first feminist organization ‘All Pakistan Women’s Association’ in 1949, to encourage women to participate freely in social, economic, educational, and political spaces. She was also the first woman ambassador of Pakistan to various countries and was also elected Governor of Sindh, once again the first and only Pakistani woman to hold such a post.
India’s independence movement also had fierce women leaders who actively contributed to our rich debates on drafting the constitution and ensured that equality of human beings irrespective of gender was enshrined in the constitution from birth. Many of these freedom fighters also represented India on the international platform. In 1953, Vijay Laxmi Pandit became the first woman to head the United Nations General Assembly; she was a fierce diplomat and politician who took on many roles in domestic politics as well. In recent years, women politicians have emerged at the grassroots levels, especially in rural areas despite weaker social agency and tougher gender biases. In 2013, 30-year-old Chhavi Rajawat became the youngest and the first woman to be elected Sarpanch (Head of the village level constitutional body) in the state of Rajasthan, a position mostly held by a male village elder.
South Asia’s nascent democracies have a lot to learn from their neighbours as they decide their course. The story of Bhutan and Nepal underscores the fact that even small steps matter and that gender equality is a long-drawn fight.
When Bhutan converted to parliamentary democracy in 2008, there were no women ministers in the government. Five years later, in 2013, came the landmark moment when Dorji Choden was appointed the Minister of Human Works and Settlement. Through a painstakingly slow process, more women have ventured into politics at all levels of government, although the average is still quite low. To encourage more women towards politics, in 2012, elected women representatives organized and formed the Bhutanese Network for Empowering Women (BNEW) with the aim of mentoring, training, and providing a platform for networking to women interested in joining active politics.
While Bhutan’s transition to democracy was a largely peaceful process, Nepal has had a rocky journey from constitutional monarchy to parliamentary democracy, riddled with civil unrest and Maoist struggle. In 2007-2008, around the same time as Bhutan, Nepal abolished the monarchy and transitioned to a republic. The 2007 interim constitution officially enshrined provisions for gender equality, including the right against discrimination, the right against violence, and the right to equal property, and created a quota of 33 percent women in representation at the national and local levels.
While women were excluded from the formal peace negotiation process in Nepal, they played an active role in informal peacebuilding initiatives. On the other hand, in Afghanistan, one of the most conflict-ridden states in the world, a few women are also actively participating in the latest peace negotiation talks with the Taliban. In 2005, when the first democratic parliament was established after 33 years of conflict, Fawzia Koofi, a young politician became the first woman to be elected the Vice President of the Parliament. Koofi, like other women politicians in the country, has faced assassination attempts just by virtue of being a woman in the male-dominated political sphere and yet continues to be as active and fierce as one could imagine.
In 2018, 26-year-old Zarifa Ghafari was appointed the Mayor of Maidan Shar in Wardak province, a particularly conservative region, becoming the youngest in the country’s history to hold this position. While Maldives became a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination (CEDAW) in 1993, there has been very little increase in the representation of women in leadership roles. It was very recently, in 2008, that the national legislative body amended the constitution to grant equal rights to men and women to run for Head of State. Recognising that political parties must also actively push for greater representation of women, Maldives Development Alliance (MDA), a party formed in 2012 was the first political party to adopt a gender quota for Deputy Leaders in its party charter.
South Asia has a rich and vibrant history of fearless women emerging from diverse backgrounds and the toughest of circumstances in societies traditionally dominated by men. Despite the society discouraging them and sometimes even the laws banning them from engaging outside the four walls of the household, there are women defying those social norms everyday and fighting for what they believe in.
However, as we look back at the journey of these South Asian economies, we realize that equal rights on paper do not necessarily translate into greater representation and participation. Neither does a commitment to international conventions and charters. Effective change calls for proactive measures by governments, political parties, elected officials, voters, and the civil society at large towards reducing the barriers to free and fair socio-economic and political participation and deepening democracy. We have a long arduous journey ahead of us, and the fight must go on.
(Originally published in Women for Politics on September 15, 2020)
Feminist Recommendations List
READ: Atlantic Council’s Dr. Rudabeh Shahid, Kaveri Sarkar, and Azeem Khan write on “rape culture” in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. The article looks at trends in cases of violence against women on the subcontinent and recommends policies. Their policy recommendations include:
Education about rape as a violent crime
Amendment in the legal definition of rape
Building witness protection systems
Creation of “safe spaces” online for women
Reevaluation of priorities of Censorship Institutions
International and corporate funding for “women empowerment” projects
LISTEN: Dr. Alice Evans, Lecturer at King's College London and a Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Center for International Development, has a podcast that we cannot stop obsessing over. Check out the erudite and entertaining professor discuss everything from growth and governance to gender inequalities and patriarchy. Also, follow her on Twitter for her reading suggestions, extensive threads on gender policy, and more.
READ: The Swaddle’s Aditi Murti speaks with cultural anthropologist Meher Varma about sustainable fashion aesthetics, moral posturing in fashion, and the role of caste in how we see designers versus karigars (craftsmen).
“You could set up a factory and make 50,000 khadi dresses and call it sustainable, but I’m yet to see a sustainable fashion practice that’s large scale and ethical. When I mean truly ethical, I mean actually splitting our profits with the craftsmen, actually empowering them, and taking their idea of fairness, and long term skilling into account.”
Postcards of Courage: Usha Mehta
At the age of 22, while India's freedom struggle against colonial Britain was in full swing, Usha Mehta started a clandestine radio station along with other freedom fighters on August 14, 1942. These were the years when censorship of the press by the British was at its peak. There was fear that after the arrest of Gandhi and other national leaders the Quit India Movement would die down. Instead, civilians and the underground press, like Usha Mehta, stepped in to galvanize people across the country.
For three months, her secret Congress Radio helped disseminate information and speeches from Gandhi and other freedom fighters to the subcontinent, motivate people to join the resistance, and give an account of the underground activities each morning and evening. Usha and her group would cart their radio equipment all over Bombay to avoid detection, never transmitting from a place more than once. After being arrested, Mehta was sentenced to four years in jail and released in April 1946.
She pursued a Ph.D. and went on to teach at Wilson College in Bombay University for 30 years. Over time, she grew disenchanted with Indian politics. Once, in an interview with India Today, she said: "Certainly this is not the freedom we fought for." She added that the freedom fighters of her generation felt that "once people were ensconced in positions of power, the rot would set in." However, in her words, "we didn’t know the rot would sink in so soon." Mehta passed away peacefully at 80.
For more about Usha Mehta’s life, listen to her brief interview here:
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Bansari Kamdar is the founder and managing editor of Newspaperwali. Kamdar is an independent journalist and researcher who works at the Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy and Harvard University’s Center for International Development. She reports on gender, immigration, security, and political economy in South Asia. Her work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Diplomat, Huffington Post, CNN-News18, and more.
Our "Towards Gender Equality in South Asian Democracies” was written by Sakshi Hallan from Women for Politics (WfP).
Sakshi Hallan is a consultant working on global financial inclusion at The World Bank headquarters in Washington DC. She has a Masters in International and Development Economics from Yale University and a Bachelors in Economics from Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi. She is an aspiring Development Economist, passionate about public policy, politics, and international development.
Women for Politics (WfP) is an initiative to improve the political representation and participation of women in South Asia. Through its research and campaigns, WfP advocates for gender-inclusive politics and policy-making across South Asia. Read more at www.womenforpolitics.com.
Lastly, I am thrilled to welcome two brilliant editors to the Newspaperwali team.
Don’t forget to subscribe to read their upcoming articles tackling everything from gendered public spaces and land inheritance to abortion rights and political representation.
Anmol Irfan is a Muslim Pakistani feminist writer and journalist. She’s the founder of Perspective Magazine, an online Pakistani community platform, and writes about intersectional feminism, social equality, and South Asian society. Anmol has written for VICE, HUCK, Harpy Mag, and more.
Sathya Karunarathne is a researcher at a leading think tank in Sri Lanka. She holds a B.Sc. in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a degree in English Literature from the University of Sri Jayawardenapura. Her research is based on public policy concerns and enhancing freedom and welfare at large. She has a keen interest in female empowerment and contributes to the sphere of feminist research advocating for equality and female political and economic empowerment.