Special Guests
General H. S. Panag:
Harcharanjit Singh Panag, PVSM, AVSMis a retired Lieutenant General of the Indian Army. He is presently a defence analyst and commentator on strategic affairs. A proponent of use of robotics by Indian armed forces[1] he is very active on social media. He served in the army for 40 years and retired as 3 star Lieutenant General he was the GOC for the northern command and also the central command. He writes extensively on military and security affairs. Gul Panag, the Bollywood actress is his daughter.
Anand Giridharadas:
Anand Giridharadas is an American writer. He is a former columnist for The New York Times. He is the author of three books, India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation's Remaking, The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas, and the New York Times best selling book, Winner takes All, he also wrote India Calling. He is Editor At Large, Time Magazine, and political commentator. Full disclosure, he is also my son-in-law
Vishal Talerja:
Vishal Talerja is a co-founder of Dream a Dream-along with 11 others. In 1999 they started volunteering with HIV+ and cancer affected children in care homes. Most of the founders left early, Vishal stayed on. Dream a Dream now reaches 3 million children from poorer communities in many states and is now in East Africa as well.
Pew Social data: The biggest discrepancy in word association for men and women was the word powerful - 67% positive for men and 92% negative for women
Pew Social data: In addition to viewing gender equality as important, most people are optimistic that women will eventually have the same rights as men in their country. Majorities in 30 of the 34 countries surveyed hold this view, including roughly 90% in the Netherlands, India, the Philippines and Mexico.
- In contrast, majorities in the African countries surveyed, as well as in India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Turkey and Lebanon, agree that men should have more right to a job than women when jobs are scarce. Roughly eight-in-ten say this in Tunisia and India.
These were the findings behind the new Gender Social Norms Index released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) today. This index measures how social beliefs obstruct gender equality in areas like politics, work, and education, and contains data from 75 countries, covering over 80 percent of the world’s population.
Found that almost 90% of men and women are bias against women
According to the count index, only 14 percent of women and 10 percent of men worldwide have no gender social norm bias (figure 4.7).
Numbers for India
Share of people with at least 1 biases = 98.28%
Share of peopled with at least 2 biases = 83.25%
Share of people with no Bias = 1.72%
Political bias = 64.10%
Economic bias = 69.91%
Educational bias = 35.24%
Physical integrity = 88.38
Link UN women study
Significant gaps are perceived in areas of social interaction: a) Within the household: 56% think that most women have control over their lives (compared to 70% for men). 53% think that most women feel safe when in their home (compared to 66% for men)
57% think that most women have a lot of influence on the decision of who to marry (compared to 68% for men). 57% think most women have control over their personal finances (compared to 71% for men)
In the economy: 43% think that it is easy for most women to be hired as skilled workers (compared to 55% for men). 50% think that most women have easy access to buy property (compared to 68% for men). c) In politics: 35% think that it is easy for most women to run for elected office (compared to 63% for men).
Link Picture a leader - NYT
-“Even when the drawings are gender neutral,” which is uncommon, Dr. Kiefer said in an email, “the majority of groups present the drawing using language that indicates male (he) rather than neutral or female.”
link We all believe in gender equality so why are the numbers so different. This Report presents a new social norms index that looks at the links between social beliefs and gender equality in multiple dimensions. Globally only 1 man in 10 (and 1 woman in 7) did not show some form of clear bias against gender equality. The biases follow a pattern: They tend to be more intense in areas where more power is involved. And there is backlash, as the proportion of people biased against gender equality has grown over the last few years (figure 10)
Link About six-in-ten (57%) say men face pressure to be willing to throw a punch if provoked.
Link Men, tend to indulge in more overt expressions anger. This seems vaguely self evident, but you know, for numbers: in the US, men accounted for 73% of people arrested and over 80% of those arrested for violent crime. Over 90% of people convicted of homicide are male, and 98% of mass shootings are carried out by me
Link Wife beating numbers
NHFS-4: 2015-2016.
51.6% of Indian women age 15-49 and men at 42.2% between the ages of 15-49 believe that at least one of the following women’s transgressions, from not having food ready to denying sex, justify a beating by their husbands. (The government National Family and Health Survey done once every Decade)
*the percentage showing is in relation to believing that at least one of the previous women’s transgressions listed above justify wife beating (page 542)
Women
· 42.9% of women with 12 or more years of education justify beating women
· 56% of women in poverty believe that women deserve beatings
· 55.6% of the middle wealth group believe that women deserve beatings
· 51.7.6% of woman in the next higher wealth level believe that women deserve beatings
· 40.7 of woman in the wealthiest level believe that women deserve beatings
· 18.5% of women experience physical violence in the highest wealth bracket
Men
· 41.8% of men with 12 or more years of education justify beating women
· 46.3% of men in poverty believe that women deserve beatings
· 45.7% of men in the middle wealth group believe that women deserve beatings
· 43.8% of men in the next higher wealth level believe that women deserve beatings
· 33.7% of men in the wealthiest level believe that women deserve beatings
link: The Global Gender Gap Index:
Women only account for 14% of leadership roles (136th) and 30% of professional and technical workers. Released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2011, India was ranked 113 on the Gender Gap Index (GGI) among 135 countries polled. Since then, India has improved its rankings on the World Economic Forum's Gender Gap Index (GGI) to 105/136 in 2013
India ranks 18th (score of 41.1%) on the Political Empowerment subindex. Of the past 50 years, the country was headed by a woman for 20 years (4th) which largely explains this strong performance. But today, female political representation is low: women make up only 14.4% of the parliament (122nd) and 23% of the cabinet (69th).
Link Woman in Politics in India :
Women make up only 14% of the Parliament as of 2019, the highest since independence, though they make up around 50% of India’s population. This number goes further down to 9% in various state assemblies.
In the general election of 2019, 78 women were elected as MPs, that is one woman representative per 8.5–9 million women
The difference in voter turnout among men and women that was as wide as 16.7% in 1962 has narrowed to 0.3% in 2019. Turnout is increasing across both rich and poor states, with female turnout surpassing men’s in Manipur, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Mizoram and Tamil Nadu. In fact, even for the most recently held New Delhi assembly elections, the gender turnout gap was reduced to a historic low of 0.07%.
Today, 14 states have 50–58% women representation at the Panchayat level. Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of women sarpanches at over 19,500 making up 34% at Panchayat level. This is the minimum they have had since 1992. So over the last two decades, the state of Uttar Pradesh alone has seen lakhs of women and at a national level with 29 states, it runs into crores of women who have held office. It is improbable that all of them belong to or related to a political dynasty.
Reality: A working paper by UN University titled ‘Women Legislators and economic performance’ disproves this assumption. The paper studied all the 4000+ constituencies in India for the period between 1992 to 2012. Some of the findings of this study are -
Women-led constituencies contributed 1.8% more to the GDP on India than male-led constituencies
The annual rate at which women MLAs accumulate assets while in office is 10% points lower than it is for men.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, only 8% of the candidates were women but 14% of the winners were women. This means that women are winning at a higher rate than they are being fielded in elections. In the same election, 10.93% of women contestants won their election while only about 6.35% of men contestants were able to win. Additionally, average winning margins for women candidates generally tend to be much higher than those of male candidates.