UNDP has just (International Women?s Day) brought out an Asia-Pacific Human Development Report (APHDR), with a focus on gender equality. Unfortunately, reportage of HDRs is too often based only on indices?GDI (gender-related development index), GEM (gender empowerment measure) and others. To dispose of these first, India scores 0.594 on GDI. (GEM cannot be computed because of data paucity.) Like HDI (human development index), GDI is based on indicators of health (life expectancy), education (literacy, gross enrolment rate) and PPP per capita income and splices in male/female differentials. Let us gloss over methodological issues and there are some. To benchmark ourselves in the South and West Asia region, Iran has a GDI of 0.770 and Afghanistan of 0.310. We are also behind Maldives, Sri Lanka and Bhutan, but ahead of Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh. Not all development or deprivation indicators are necessarily used in constructing indices.
Here are a few more. In 2007, 42.7 million women in India were missing, because of discriminatory treatment in health and education. The under-five male mortality rate is 72.0 (per thousand), but the female figure is 81.0. The net primary school enrolment rate is 86.8 for females and 90.4 for males and discrimination continues up the education ladder. Estimated female PPP per capita earned income is $1304, with a male figure of 4102. Female labour force participation rate is 34.2%. Mao Zedong?s quote about women holding up half the sky means a large chunk of the Indian sky is missing or is full of holes. While that is obvious, notwithstanding MDGs (Millennium Development Goals), there are three reasons why everyone should read the APHDR. First, it is topical because of the women?s reservation Bill and has a discussion on quotas. Second, there is a rich discussion on policy (ownership of assets, inheritance, nature and quality of female employment, sexual abuse, violence) and APHDR transcends many other HDRs on this count. Third, it states the case for gender equality in a broader framework. ?The case for gender equality is often pitched as a human rights or social justice argument, but a growing body of evidence reveals that gender equality is good economics as well. For instance, over the last 10 years the increase of women workers in developed countries is estimated to have contributed more to global growth than has China?s remarkable economic record. Reaching the same level of women?s labour market participation in the US?over 70 per cent?would boost GDP in countries, for example, by 4.2 per cent a year in India.The gains would be greater where current female participation rates are the lowest.?
That?s a potential demographic dividend of a slightly different kind. Such HDRs use all-India figures. Let?s not forget backward States have low female work participation rates. In 2001 Census, female work participation rate was 16.82% in UP and 20.71% in Bihar.
On reservations proper, the authors of APHDR couldn?t possibly have anticipated how relevant this document would be or that there would be this remarkable coincidence, though 8th March was the obvious date for the release of APHDR and for placing the bill in Parliament. ?Both (BJP and Congress) parties have female leaders and platforms that make commitments to gender equality. But often women are put into constituencies where they are less likely to succeed?a common practice for parties that want to appear to embrace gender equality without actually having to disrupt the status quo.? Opposition to the Bill is partly about disrupting status quo.
However, APHDR also has a quote from a note of dissent to the 1974 meeting of Committee on Status of Women in India. ?Our investigations have proved that the application of the theoretical principle of equality in the context of unequal situations only intensifies inequalities, because equality in such situations merely means privileges for those who have them already and not for those who need them.? Distinctions between de jure and de facto apart, a key question is identification of backward, deprived and poor. All collective categorisations are second-best.
Identification through collective categories like caste, religion and gender leads to an obvious double problem?excluding the deprived outside these collective categories and including non-deprived inside these collective categories. Ideally, one should move to a stage where all identification of backwardness and poverty is individual-based, with caste, religion, gender, residence, class as determinants, but not used as fool-proof indicators.
However, are we ever likely to get this first-best? Probably not. As second-best, as experience with local bodies demonstrates, reservations aren?t a bad idea. Not for economic reasons, but thanks to the dividend of broader social empowerment. Having said this, an even bigger challenge is removal of legal discrimination in personal (marriage, divorce) and inheritance laws. We do need uniform civil code and arguments based on preserving diversity are actually arguments for discrimination.
The author is a noted economist