NEW DELHI: While a girl child in India has to face gender-based discrimination throughout her lifetime, survival is her first challenge, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) annual State of the World's Children report released on Tuesday.

Lauding India's investment in women's leadership, the report "Women and Children: The Double Dividend of Gender Equality" said providing girls with an education was the first critical step on the road to empowerment. Women must also be given the opportunity to fully participate in decision-making regarding their own lives and the lives of their children. To do this, they must have equality and voice in the household, in the workplace and in the political sphere.

The report cited the example of West Bengal where villages led by women have achieved twice the investment in drinking water, increased visits by health workers and a 13 per cent decrease in gender gap in school attendance compared to other villages.

It said building the capacity of women panchayat leaders was a key strategy, as most women leaders were entering public spaces in a position of authority for the first time.

The latest India data reflected the global scenario mapped out in the report and showed that despite great strides in positive policies, India still faced a declining girl to boy child sex ratio in 80 per cent of all districts, a high number of early marriages with nearly half of all girls marrying before the legal age of 18 years, and high infant and maternal mortality rates. These were all directly linked to attitudes towards women and their lack of access to basic services.

The report laid out seven milestones to achieve parity including education, financing, legislation, legislative quotas, women empowering women, engaging men and boys and improved research and data. It said the way forward was empowering women, and there were three critical domains in which change was needed — gender equality in household decision-making for contributing to women's greater status within the home and community; gender equality in employment and bridging the wage gap between men and women who do the same work; gender equality in politics and government — whether at the local or national level — that can help advance legislation focussed on women, children and families.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail