"In a culture that idolises sons and dreads the birth of a daughter, to be born female comes perilously close to being born less than human…. The girl child is caught in a web of practices and prejudices that divest her of her individuality and mould her into a submissive, self-sacrificing daughter and wife".

The Lesser Child: The Girl in India
[Ministry of Human Resource Development, GOI,1991]

The Indian Constitution says women and men are equal. Its Directive Principles of State Policy recommend assertive action in favour of women.

India is party to the Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women [CEDAW - see www.unifem.undp.org/hrights.htm], under which a state shall ensure that women enjoy

• The same employment opportunities as men
  
• Free choice of profession and employment
  
• Free choice of a spouse
  
• The same rights as men when a marriage breaks up

To deal with family violence, CEDAW recommendations include

• Criminal penalties where necessary
  
• Prohibiting the honour defence by someone who has killed a family member
  
• Public information and education
  
• That media respect and promote respect for women
  
• Providing safe refuges and support for family violence victims
  
• Preventive and punitive action against sexual exploitation of and trafficking in women
  
• Protecting women from sexual exploitation in the workplace

There are in all some 50 provisions of International Humanitarian Law which provide special protection for women

The Supreme Court of India set out guidelines in August 1997 for dealing with sexual harassment at the workplace. The guidelines identify unwelcome sexually defined behaviour and outline the responsibilities of both employers and employees in this area.

Yet, in all of these areas, women suffer discrimination in India.

It starts early - the female foetus is subjected to neglect and worse. The girl child is neglected in every area of need: food, healthcare, education. The female literacy rate is 39.9 per cent to 64.20 per cent male [1991 census figures.] The school dropout rate in the year 1994-95 was 35.2 males to 37.8 females in primary school, 50.0 males to 56.5 females in middle school, and 67.2 males to 73.8 females in high school.

Here are a few more figures:

Gender breakdown of Judges

Number of family planning acceptors:

[Figures compiled by Initiatives: Women in Development, Chennai.]

India has improved its score in education, employment and per capita income of women, Chandni Joshi said, but has done less well in other areas.

There is still gender inequality in wages, but no reduction in the debt burden borne by women. And the representation of women in Parliament has actually deteriorated.

As the 21st century began, only 8.9% of the total number of MPs in India were women, which means they play only a small role in determining laws and policies which regulate women's progress.

Women in the lower income groups are forced to take up poor quality, low-paying jobs to shore up falling family income, Joshi's report adds. It lists violence against women (40 per cent of women in India have experienced violence by an intimate partner), the burden of HIV/AIDS and the unequal sharing of unpaid care work, as some of the obstacles to women enjoying a greater share in the job market.

In Salem and Namakkal districts of Tamil Nadu, as in many other parts of the country, baby girls are still an unwanted liability because of the huge dowries expected to be provided for them. So they are removed.

Parents themselves are estimated to have killed nearly 3,000 babies. Fearing legal complications, they avoid the traditional methods of choking or poisoning the newborn girl and either resort to termination of pregnancy or simply dump their babies in rubbish bins.

The average infant mortality rate in Tamil Nadu is 43 per 1,000. In Salem the figure is 81 per 1,000, the highest in the state, and Dharmapuri is not far behind with 74 per 1000. The rate of baby girls stillborn is 30 per 1000 cases in Salem.

The Indian Express,17.8.00

Here are more stories taken from the Indian press which illustrate the range of discrimination against women.

The Indian Medical Association and the Medical Council of India are taking steps to curb abuses of ultrasound technology for selective abortion, the destruction of female embryos at fertility clinics and the performance of unnecessary tests for profit.

The Times of India, 11.8.99

A Reuters report claimed that India's female to male ratio, which was 972:1000 in 1901 had fallen to 927 :1000 by 1991 but that in poorer states like Bihar and Rajasthan it has fallen to approximately 600:1000.

The Times of India reported Karnataka Government plans to set up Women's Welfare Centres for victims of sexual harassment, exploitation and violence. The story said a meeting between the state Minister for Women and academics agreed that men's attitudes needed changing to help women fight for their rights. Girls had to be educated, trained and equipped to face challenges, the meeting concluded.

The Times of India,1.7.00

Women's groups have raised questions about the safety of the controversial injectible contraceptive Depo-Provera, according to another story in the Times. The paper said women's groups claimed that studies put out by the manufacturers were biased, and they rejected a Supreme Court ruling that the drug could be given to a closely-monitored group. They said the healthcare system in the country is inadequate to monitor the group.
The Times of India, 17.10.00

The burden of contraception is borne by women rather than men (see figures above on tubectomies and vasectomies).

A survey carried out for the United Nations Population Fund showed that despite having better access to education and information, men generally lack interest in learning about reproductive health issues. They believe "real men" do not bother about such matters. They assume that contraception, pregnancy, childbirth and prevention of sexually-transmitted diseases are exclusively female concerns and do not involve themselves in safeguarding their own or their wives' reproductive health.

The survey focused on persisting gender inequalities, especially where male dominance extends to all aspects of family life, and showed how gender inequalities affect both human rights and development priorities.

The Times of India, 24.9.00

Dissatisfied with his present wife, Madanlal Lakhara of Sihana village asked a local marriage broker to find him another woman through the practice of Nata Pratha. The broker found a poor abandoned woman, Sita Bai, for the price of Rs. 80,000, a third to go to the fixer and the rest to Sita Bai's parents, who had to look after her five-year-old son, who cannot move in with her.

Sita Bai had no voice in this sequence of events. She was merely an object of trade, her poverty and illiteracy to be exploited time and again by the corrupt, the inconsiderate and the powerful, with tradition according social sanction to a manifestly unfair practice.

Madanlal wanted her to produce a son. This desire for a male child, getting rid of a wife no longer desired - sometimes labelling her a witch to make it simpler, but by the same token making the wife's now single, abandoned state worse - are aspects of a male dominated culture made easier by traditional practices like Nata, which is sanctioned by the Jati Panch.

The Jati Panch is a widely-recognised village institution made up of village elders and high caste men of nearby villages with whom the police collude. A woman sold in Nata never receives the dignity of a wife. But the threat of being sold off again at the local bazaar becomes a form of rigid control and she continues to meet all demands for fear of being abandoned. If she dares report it to the police, she is taunted and insulted.

Cases of Nata Prata are rampant in Rajasthan and it is also practised in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.

Towards Oblivion-The Hindu, 18.6.00

The National Human Rights Commission takes a serious view of the increasing incidence of sexual harassment of women lawyers. Sangeetha Sharma, a member of the Bar Council of Andhra Pradesh, committed suicide after prolonged harassment by fellow lawyers and senior advocates.

Revelations by Asmita Resource Centre for Women - an NGO working for women's rights in Hyderabad - after her death were shocking. The Centre demanded action based on Supreme Court guidelines laid down in the case of Vishaka and others versus the State of Rajasthan. The court guidelines state that gender equality includes protection from sexual harassment and the right to work with dignity, which is a universally recognised human right.

The Hindu, 3.7.00 (More details of the guidelines at: www.careerindia.com/workplacewatch/ingoodco/sex-harass-law.html )

Sharma's plight demonstrates that even an educated woman can become helpless in the face of continued harassment. Legal mechanisms and Supreme Court guidelines are futile in the absence of strict enforcement.

A woman member of Boregaon village panchayat in Madhya Pradesh was reportedly raped by a rich young member of the OBC caste of Kunabis. But when she returned to her village and lodged a complaint, she was stripped and paraded with a garland of shoes round her neck by members of her own community for 'getting herself raped' and 'tarnishing the honour of the family'. Police tried to hush up the case.

The New Indian Express, 10.6.00

The victim, bore the brunt of the punishment while the criminal went scot-free - a not uncommon outcome. That she had a position of authority in the village did not save her from castigation by her own family and community, but may even have made her more vulnerable because she had dared to invade the public sphere, hitherto a male preserve.

According to a UN Human Rights report, more and more women and girls are being slain in honour killings around the world. The killers are mostly male family members claiming to defend family honour.

Two men hacked their teenaged cousin to death while her maternal uncle stood guard outside. They said she had eloped with a boy, and this was unacceptable to the family.

The Hindustan Times, 3.10.00

A woman was tied to a tree and tortured for 14 hours because her husband suspected her fidelity, despite her repeated denials. With bricks placed on her shoulders and head, she was tied to a tree and repeatedly questioned. When she was finally freed from her bonds, she committed suicide, unable to bear the humiliation.

The New Indian Express, 5.9.00

"Why must women always be at the receiving end?" asks a woman branded a witch by her village. She had offered prayers at a temple when her son fell ill. This had somehow annoyed the villagers, who beat her up and expelled her from the village. Illiteracy and superstition led to other women also being accused of causing deaths through witchcraft.

The Hindustan Times, 25.9.00

Women-oriented projects do not get priority says the woman mayor of an Andhra Pradesh town. She says that if men in power were more aware - and more supportive - of gender issues there would be no need for reservation for women.

The Hindu, 6.10.00

Traditional attitudes and practices continue to hold back the development of women in the public sphere, setting up barriers to female political empowerment and restricting their visibility at decision-making levels. It was precisely this situation that led to the launch in December 1999 of the UNIFEM (www.unifem.undp.org/hrights.htm) Fund for developing countries, designed to encourage investment in companies that have 'socially responsible policies towards women'.

Judy El Bushra and Eugenia Piza-Lopez, writing in "Women and Human Rights'', conclude that despite the UDHR and CEDAW, the four freedoms - freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of speech and freedom of belief - have never been fully extended to women.

Georgina Ashworth maintains that women have only an indirect relationship with the state, one channelled through fathers or husbands. Thus the issue of women's civil rights, she says, must not be confined to their political freedoms or to abuses by agents of the state, but must also include the influence of state institutions on gender relations in the personal domain.