The persistence of hunger and abject poverty in India and other parts of the world is due in large measure to the subjugation, marginalization and dis-empowerment of women. Women suffer from hunger and poverty in greater numbers and to a great degree then men. At the same time, it is women who bear the primary responsibility for actions needed to end hunger: education, nutrition, health and family income.
Looking through the lens of hunger and poverty, there are seven major areas of discrimination against women in India:
Malnutrition: India has exceptionally high rates of child malnutrition, because tradition in India requires that women eat last and least throughout their lives, even when pregnant and lactating. Malnourished women give birth to malnourished children, perpetuating the cycle.
Poor Health: Females receive less health care than males. Many women die in childbirth of easily prevented complications. Working conditions and environmental pollution further impairs women’s health.
Lack of education: Families are far less likely to educate girls than boys, and far more likely to pull them out of school, either to help out at home or from fear of violence.
Overwork: Women work longer hours and their work is more arduous than men’s, yet their work is unrecognized. Men report that “women, like children, eat and do nothing.” Technological progress in agriculture has had a negative impact on women.
Unskilled: In women’s primary employment sector – agriculture – extension services overlook women.
Mistreatment: In recent years, there has been an alarming rise in atrocities against women in India, in terms of rapes, assaults and dowry-related murders. Fear of violence suppresses the aspirations of all women. Female infanticide and sex-selective abortions are additional forms of violence that reflect the devaluing of females in Indian society.
Powerlessness: While women are guaranteed equality under the constitution, legal protection has little effect in the face of prevailing patriarchal traditions. Women lack power to decide who they will marry, and are often married off as children. Legal loopholes are used to deny women inheritance rights.
India has a long history of activism for women’s welfare and rights, which has increasingly focused on women’s economic rights. A range of government programs have been launched to increase economic opportunity for women, although there appear to be no existing programs to address the cultural and traditional discrimination against women that leads to her abject conditions.
These are truths that Rohan, Pune and Vive can’t admit and many more with twisted wrong impressions
