Examining Gender Equality, Discrimination & Contemporary Challenges

This report provides an overview of gender equality, gender discrimination, and related issues, focusing on contemporary challenges in Indian society. It begins by defining gender equality and outlining factors contributing to gender inequality, such as illiteracy, child marriage, social evils, and discrimination against the girl child. The report discusses various types of gender inequality, including inequality in the family, natality inequality, professional or employment inequality, ownership inequality, and household inequality. It also addresses gender discrimination in Indian society, highlighting its presence in the workplace, schools, public spaces, institutions, and relationships, along with its psychological and physical effects. The report further explores gender issues like unequal education, child sex ratio, unequal pay, racism, sexual harassment, health disparities, nutrition, and violence against women. It concludes by identifying contemporary challenges such as poverty, gender-based violence, lack of girls-friendly school environments, child marriage, body shaming, and unequal political representation, referencing Sustainable Development Goals as a framework for addressing these problems. Desklib offers this and similar solved assignments to aid students in their studies.

Gender Equality, Gender
Discrimination, Gender Issues:
Contemporary Challenges
Prepared by
Dr. Khwairakpam Sharmila
Assistant Professor
Dept. of HDFS

Gender Equality
 The view that both men and women should receive equal treatment and
not be discriminated against based on their gender.
 Also known as sex equality , gender equalitarianism, sexual equality or
equality of the genders.
 The process of being fair to women and men.
 Requires equal enjoyment by women and men of socially valued- goods,
opportunities, resources and rewards.
 It doesn’t mean men and women being the same.

Cont…..

Factors
responsible
Illiteracy
Child
marriage
Social evil
Job
segration
Unemployment
Lack of
bodily
autonomy
Discriminatio
n against the
girls child
Lack of
legal
protection
Poor
medical
care
Factors responsible
for Gender In-
equality

Factors responsible for gender inequality
Illiteracy
Illiteracy is one of the factors responsible for gender inequality. According to 2011 census
of India., the literacy level in India is 74.04% in which the male literacy level is 82.14%
and female literacy level is only 65.46%.
Child Marriage
Children specially the girls are married at a very young age. This proves fatal for their
overall development and have a negative impact on their health, too.
Social evils
Social evils like dowry system, sati system, are also responsible for the low status of
women.
Discrimination against the girl child
The girl child is not treated properly in the family. People still prefer the birth of a boy
rather than a girl. The girl child is basically trained for household work only. Even today,
female infanticide is a common social evil.

Cont.
Lack of employment equality
The current global labor force participation rate for women is close to 49%. For men, it’s
75%. That’s a difference of 26 percentage points, with some regions facing a gap of more
than 50 percentage points.
Job segregation
One of the causes for gender inequality within employment is the division of jobs. In most
societies, there’s an inherent belief that men are simply better equipped to handle certain
jobs. Most of the time, those are the jobs that pay the best. This discrimination results in
lower income for women.
Lack of legal protections
In many countries, there’s also a lack of legal protections against harassment in the
workplace, at school, and in public. These places become unsafe and without protection,
women frequently have to make decisions that compromise and limit their goals.

Cont….
Lack of bodily autonomy
According to the WHO, over 200 million women who don’t want to get pregnant are not
using contraception. There are various reasons for this such as a lack of options, limited
access, and cultural/religious opposition. On a global scale, about 40% of pregnancies are
not planned and while 50% of them do end in abortion, 38% result in births. These mothers
often become financially dependent on another person or the state, losing their freedom.
Poor medical care
women receive lower-quality medical care than men. This is linked to other gender
inequality reasons such as a lack of education and job opportunities, which results in more
women being in poverty. They are less likely to be able to afford good healthcare.

Types of Gender Inequality
There are many kinds of gender inequality or gender disparity which are as follows: Inequality in Family Natality inequality Professional or Employment inequality Ownership inequality Household inequality

Inequality in Family The divorce proceedings have been equal for men and women since 1976. Divorce by
mutual consent is legal but in reality, any woman who initiates a divorce is condemned
by the public opinion. For that reason, divorces are very rare. The old Hindu traditions favored men in matters of inheritance: only sons – not
daughters - could inherit their parents. After independence, however, these traditions
were abolished by law. But in the North, nothing has really changed and women are still
deprived of inheritance.

Natality inequality
In this type of inequality a preference is given for boys over girls that many male-
dominated societies have, gender inequality can manifest itself in the form of the
parents wanting the newborn to be a boy rather than a girl. There was a time when
this could be no more than a wish (a daydream or a nightmare, depending on one's
perspective), but with the availability of modern techniques to determine the
gender of the fetus, sex-selective abortion has become common in many countries.
It is particularly prevalent in East Asia, in China and South Korea in particular, but
also in Singapore and Taiwan, and it is beginning to emerge as a statistically
significant phenomenon in India and South Asia as well.

Professional or Employment inequality
In terms of employment as well as promotion
in work and occupation, women often face
greater handicap than men. A country like
Japan and India may be quite egalitarian in
matters of demography or basic facilities, and
even, to a great extent, in higher education,
and yet progress to elevated levels of
employment and occupation seems to be
much more problematic for women than for
men. The example includes unequal pay at
work, unpaid care work.

Ownership inequality
In many societies the ownership of property can also be very
unequal. Even basic assets such as homes and land may be very
asymmetrically shared. The absence of claims to property can not
only reduce the voice of women, but also make it harder for women
to enter and flourish in commercial, economic and even some social
activities. This type of inequality has existed in most parts of the
world, though there are also local variations.