Gender equality needs much more commitment and funds

A new tool to measure gender equality across the issues covered in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – the SDG Gender Index – was released at the UN General Assembly this week (September 19, 2018).

Designed by Equal Measures 2030 – a global partnership of civil society and private sector organisations – the new Index builds upon the official SDG monitoring framework. It uses a gender lens to scrutinise the SDGs to capture as many gender issues as possible for 12 of the 17 goals that the partnership set out to measure.

This year, the Index tracks gender equality progress for six countries: India, Indonesia, Kenya, Senegal, Colombia and El Salvador.

Amongst the six countries where EM 2030 is engaged, in SDG 5 (Gender Equality), India had the highest score on the legal grounds for abortion, alongside Colombia. In SDG 17 (partnerships for the goals), India registers a strong commitment to gender budgeting. In 2016, it also had the second highest social expenditure as a percentage of GDP amongst the six countries, although from the perspective of what is required for the SDGs to be achieved, public spending on social sector needs to be much higher. 

The new report based on the SDG Gender Index states that in SDG 2 (Hunger, Food Security and Nutrition), India has lagged behind the other countries in nutrition. Rates of stunting among girls are the highest. Prevalence of anaemia among women is also the highest, with rates nearly double that of Colombia, El Salvador, Indonesia and Kenya. With respect to SDG 5 on gender equality, India had the lowest percentage of women in its Parliament in 2018: just 12 per cent compared to 42 per cent in Senegal. It had the second highest percentage of child marriages, early and forced, before the age of 18. Nearly half the Indian women – 45 per cent  – reported believing that a husband is justified in hitting his wife, an indication of discriminatory social norms.

The new Index adds to existing tools such as the Gender Inequality Index linked to UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI). The improvement in India’s HDI ranking is a cause for celebration.  The HDI 2018 reveals that India has moved to rank 130 out of 189 countries, an improvement from its earlier rank of 131. The HDI also shows that while people living in poverty have decreased remarkably since 1990, disparities between the rich and the poor are increasing. The UNDP notes that nearly 27 per cent of India’s HDI value is lost on account of inequalities. While the disparities between the rich and the poor are a major cause for the loss of the HDI value, gender inequality adds to it. Bridging inequalities thus becomes imperative in the pursuit of SDGs and their commitment to ‘Leave No One Behind’.

The higher the Gender Inequality Index linked to HDI, the more disparities between females and males and the more loss to human development. In 2017, India ranked 127 on the Gender Inequality Index, with a GII value of 0.524. This is much lower than China which is ranked 36 with a GII value 0.152, Sri Lanka which is ranked 80 with a GII value 0.354. It is even lower than Myanmar which is ranked 106 with a GII value 0.456, Bhutan ranked 117 with a GII value 0.476, and Nepal ranked 118 with a GII value 0.480.   

Another measure for gender equality is the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index. Countries are ranked based on scores on a scale ranging from 0 to 1, with 1 being the most gender-equal. In November 2017, this Index ranked India 108 out of 144 countries. In comparison with Iceland, the most gender-equal country with score of 0.878, India’s score was 0.669.

India has wide gender gaps in literacy, higher education, female participation in the labour market, income and unpaid care work, to name a few. The National Mission for Empowerment of Women was established as part of the 12th Five Year Plan for holistic empowerment of women. Health, food security, nutrition, education, agriculture, employment, science and technology and economy were some of the key areas delineated in the draft national policy for women. However, most of the rhetoric is confined to policy documents without adequate budgetary allocations required to bring equality into reality. Though India formally adopted Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) in 2005-06 and the Gender Budget allocation for 2018-19 continues to be in the range of five per cent, actual expenditure falls far short of allocated funds. In real terms, financial allocations for women’s issues are actually declining. 

For India to improve its Human Development Index, reducing gender gaps is crucial. Further disaggregation of data is needed to give a better picture of inequities, especially among the most marginalised groups, such as the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups among the STs, or women manual scavengers among the SCs. Ultimately, commitments for women and girls must be reflected in higher budgets.

The author is a women’s health advocate associated with SAHAJ Vadodara and CommonHealth: Coalition for Maternal-Neonatal Health and Safe Abortion.
Views are personal.