ET Women's Forum: Why India needs her half a billion women to rise, and conquer
The crescendo for gender parity is gradually and undoubtedly building up, but a lot more action is urgently needed on the ground.
By ET Bureau | Updated:
BCCL
2018 began with the International Monetary Fund urging India to consider the GDP expansion rewards it can reap by ensuring gender parity.
2018 began with the International Monetary Fund urging India to consider the GDP expansion rewards it can reap by ensuring gender parity. The year ended with the World Economic Forum’s annual Gender Gap Index sounding a warning on the many areas India needs to improve on.
The WEF measured Gender gap across four key pillars - economic opportunity, political empowerment, educational attainment, and health and survival and it found India wanting on several counts. It noted that India continues to rank third-lowest in the world on health and survival, remaining the world’s least-improved country on this subindex over the past decade.
On the brighter side, the report has placed India higher (rank 15) than the US (54) and the UK (33) on the parameter of political empowerment. WEF says this is because India has many women leaders in politics.
“It (India) needs to make improvements across the board, from women’s participation to getting more women into senior and professional roles,” WEF said.
"I don't want a penny of the money is going to the film. But I'll not settle for being paid less because they need to compensate for the male actor." - Deepika Padukone. As we take an objective look at where women stand on 10 important parameters, perhaps there is a strong case for positive interventions. There is an urgent and enormous need for improvement even in comparison with neighbours including Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Other studies show that only two-thirds of women graduates are employed. Not surprisingly, only 5% of BSE 100 companies have women at the top and very few women-led startups are being funded.
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In the infographic titled, ‘Why India needs her half a billion women to rise’ published on January 4, Monster.com was the source for the pay parity data. This was inadvertently missed out. The error is regretted.
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The idea of the aggressive male has to be challenged.
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Intolerance of different leadership styles and assuming that only your way is right.
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