By Nikhilesh SinhaOn
As an Indian who has had the good fortune to travel and live abroad, I am not unaccustomed to having questions about the politics, culture and history of the subcontinent being thrown at me. While I am ever conscious of the absurdity of formulating any view that even attempts to describe an area of the world that is so diverse, I am rarely discomfited by what most outsiders associate with the idea of India. Most of these questions suggest views that are largely if not wholly positive even when they appear misinformed, and perhaps this is because my interlocutors have been without exception, polite and well meaning. India is seen to be a multicultural, populous ex-british colony, full of temples, snake charmers and IT parks, exotic but approachable. Yet when I get asked travel advice by a woman planning to travel around India by herself, I instinctively advise her to be careful, and to avoid traveling unaccompanied as far as possible. I hold the biased view that the south of the country is somewhat more pleasant to navigate on your own than the north, but this leads to my question. What is it like to be a woman in the world’s largest democracy? I realised that I don’t know, and as an Indian man I am arguably worst placed to comprehend the reality of 48.5% of the population of India (Our sex ratio is about 940 women to every 1000 men as per the 2011 Census).
India ranked 129th out of a 146 countries on the Gender Inequality Index published in the 2011 UN Human Development Report. Bangladesh in contrast is ranked 112th and Pakistan 115th. China incidentally is ranked 35th and the only one of our neighbours who seems to be doing worse than us is Afghanistan at rank 141. Sudan is right above us (128) and Kenya just below (130). Slate and The New America Foundation put together a map which graphically represents where the world is in terms of the gender gap in different countries. You can zoom in, zoom out, and drag the map in order to get a better look at the different countries.

This is the point at which many might reach for the “lies, damned lies and statistics” card and ask what this ranking is based upon. The Index is constructed using publicly available national level data on reproductive health, including maternal mortality and adolescent fertility, educational attainment, parliamentary representation and labour force participation. You can find out more about the Index here.
For some, the bit that may seem hard to swallow is that Pakistan and Bangladesh are higher up in the rankings. In the end the relative rankings are not really that  important. If all we’re interested in trying to prove is that women in India are better off than women in Pakistan and Bangladesh, then we really do have a huge problem. Of course there are differences between regions, but what are we at our best and what are we at our worst? Perhaps the fact that I am surprised by the rankings is a testament to my being as delusional as the many who believe that Indian women are basically no better or worse off than women in other developing countries except perhaps for those in a few ‘rogue’ states. It allows one to laugh at and dismiss articles like the one about  the Khaap panchayat in Haryana that blamed consumption of chowmein for the growing number of sexual crimes against women being reported in the state. Not surprisingly the ‘solution’ suggested was that the legal age for marriage should be lowered from 18 to 16, in order that young women are kept safe.
I found some other data on the number of years that women have spent in school as a percentage of the number of years men have spent in school for about 15 countries (the data was sourced from from Gapminder, but was originally compiled by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluations IHME). The table allows you to compare where the countries were in terms of this metric in 1970 with the figures for 2009.

Women in India spent at an average 35% of the number of years men spent in school around the 1970s, and by 2009, this figure was about 72%. Bangladesh on the other hand started off in the 1970s with a similar ratio, but by 2009 the ratio is closer to 80%. Few would suggest that Saudi Arabia should be held up as a model of gender equality, but given that they started with a base of 28% in the 1970s, they definitely seem to have done a better job than India has on giving women access to education. The only countries where women spend relatively less time in school are Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Pakistan.

It is true that these statistics only represent a fraction of the real story,  but it would be hard to argue that the picture they present is completely inaccurate. I know of some Indian women who have chosen to live outside the country primarily because they feel constrained and degraded every time they walk down the street in an Indian city. Perhaps the link between  maternal health, parliamentary participation, access to education and ‘eve-teasing’ seems tenuous, but in my mind the element that ties it all together is respect. There doesn’t seem to be enough of that stuff around.
I had the undeserved honour of chairing a discussion at an event organized to celebrate Women’s Day last year, which discussed several issues related to the way women are perceived and the level of empowerment that women of different socio-economic classes actually feel. This was held at a fairly high-end five-star hotel, and there were uncomfortable silences when issues such as marital rape or  female infanticide were being discussed. Towards the end of the discussion when questions were being addressed to the panel, one lady asked if she could make a comment. She stood up and said that she wanted to talk about how wonderful Indian fathers and husbands are and that all of this discussion about horrible acts committed by deviant people should not allow us to forget the fact that ‘most’ Indian men are wonderful and understanding and supportive. This may in fact be the crux of the matter. Unless we start admitting to ourselves that there is a problem, we’re never going to be able to address it.