There’s an extreme manifestation of unequal social relations between women and men within the household and the market. The state fails to change the present social relations based on addiction, oppression and exploitation. Socio economic arrangements of sex / gender based disparity are reflected in lower wages for women, their under reporting in the workforce and the disadvantaged position of women in education and health.
Disadvantaged position of women in India
The constitution of India announced the equality of gender as a guiding principle. As such family ought to be essentially an egalitarian unit based on equal rights of the people who form a household. The subordination of women to men pervades family life in most classes and castes in India. A study on the status of women in Indian history is a tough task for many reasons.
The notion of better standing for Indian women has been gradually evolving, through spiritual and social reforms and change. It had several ups and downs. In actuality, the true emancipation of women started with education, occupational mobility, diversification of the roles, changes in child marriage, widow remarriage, sati and such.
Woman is the companion of man gifted with equal mental capacities. She has the right to take part in the minutest details of actions of man and she’s the exact rights of freedom and liberty. Indian women have varied multi-dimensional characteristics. They’ve advanced as well retrogressive, values and roles one of many religious and caste groups around India. Most of them are housewives.
The urban girls are better positioned and have profited from the present opportunities for growth at a faster rate than the rural. In the area of science and technology they now play a wonderful role. They have many hurdles to overcome yet. In a patriarchal society such as India, repression of those girls has ever been justified as a natural thing. Indian people and social activists didn’t take the matter of gender stratification quite seriously.
Indian Constitution and legislations
Indian Constitution and legislations give equal status to people. According to Article 14 of the constitution, the state shall not deny any person equality before the law. But in fact, all women don’t appreciate this equality of status with men. Especially in the house, married women are most likely to experience relative inequality because of patriarchal mind sets, rigid sex role stereotypes and socio-economic powerlessness. In India, the family is mostly patriarchal and patrilineal which denies egalitarian gender relations.
There prevails a excellent gender bias in society that prevents women from coming forward on front of life. Conscientization of girls makes them conscious about their social economic conditions, their responsibilities and rights and the best way to break the chains of the ignorance. Until and unless, confidence is built in girls that they are no way inferior to men and society, they won’t have the ability to recognize their individuality and their role in society. We can make laws and enact legislations, but legislations alone aren’t likely to prevent atrocities on women. These may be stopped only when people in society build public opinion against those atrocities.
For this, there’s a need to alter social attitude towards women. Collective awareness ought to be attracted amongst women about their rights and roles in the society. For this, action could be initiated through mass mobilization of women for their own empowerment. Media can play an essential part to bring about radical changes in the attitudes of men and women in society.
According to 2001 census the sex ratio is 933 females per 1000 males. The adverse sex ratio and its decrease age groups has emerged as matter of concern in India. Preference for sons, intra-household sex discrimination and restricted access to healthcare can explain this tendency.
India has enacted legislation prohibiting the use of prenatal diagnostic techniques for sex determination. Efforts are being undertaken for implementing a master plan of action to tackle the issues of violence against girl children through infanticide, sex selection and trafficking.
Central Social Welfare Board
The approach to women’s advancement in first five year plan (1951-1956) wasn’t obvious. Women were projected as beings in need of education, welfare and health services only. The Central Social Welfare Board (CSWB) set up in 1953, undertook to market several welfare measures through voluntary organisations. It was encouraged for producing essential services of education and health both by the CSWB and community Development program during the first and second five year programs. The third, fourth and fifth strategies lasted the identical approach without providing any assistance to the strategies of development perspectives and empowerment of women. The sixth five year plan (1979-84) failed to eliminate disparity and injustice in both the social and financial life. The seventh five year plan (1985-90) emphasized the strategy of direct assault on the issues of poverty, unemployment and the provision of gainful employment to the youth and women. The strategy in eighth strategy (1993-97) was “to make sure that the benefits of development from various sectors don’t by-pass women and special programmes were implemented to match the general programmes”.