Women in India: A Status Report
 
Aug 28th 2002
In India, improvement in the relative conditions faced by women has been among the explicit goals of government policy, along with growth, reduction of poverty and inequality and improved human development indicators. Indeed, in the 1990s, the publicity given to the need for gender equality and women’s empowerment meant that there was a proliferation of government schemes specifically for women.
 
Nevertheless, some of the data on conditions of women indicate that things may not have got much better for the bulk of India women over the past decade. This is reflected even in demographic indicators, which tend to sum up health and living conditions at the most basic level of survival.
 
One of the basic measures traditionally used as a proxy for capturing the relative position of women in terms of conditions of survival, is life expectancy. The other is the sex ratio (number of females per number of males). The recent Indian experience with both of these indicators is described in Charts 1 and 2, and it is apparent that they suggest slightly contradictory conclusions. It will be seen from Chart 1 that the life expectancy of women has improved at a faster rate than that of men, so that by the mid-1990s, women in India had greater expectation of longevity than men, along the standard international lines and as predicted by biology. However, the life expectancy differential between women and men is still below the international norm.
Chart 1 >> Chart 2 >>
 
Chart 2 presents a somewhat different, and more depressing, picture. While the aggregate sex ratio for all ages improved between 1991 and 2001, at the later period it was still lower than the level of 1981, showing thereby a long-term decline. And the sex ratio for the 0-6 years age cohort has declined continuously and quite substantially.
 
This is startling given that the spread of access to modern medical techniques is supposed to ensure birth and survival of children to a greater extent. It points to the likely role played by the combination of greater neglect of girl children and wider practice of female foeticide based on modern medical techniques to determine the sex of the foetus
.
 
Chart 3 presents evidence on sex ratios for the total population by state for 2001, and Chart 4 for the sex ratios for children in the age group 0-6 years. It is clear that there is very substantial variation across states – but more significantly, that such variation has virtually nothing to do with per capita income or degree of development. The lowest sex ratio is to be found in Delhi, which has the highest per capita income of all states, and is the most urbanised, and among the most developed of all states. The agriculturally developed and high per capita income states of Punjab and Haryana are next in terms of low sex ratio; in fact, in Punjab, the figure drops to an appalling 793 girls per 100 boys in the age group 0-6 years.
Chart 3 >> Chart 4 >>
 
By contrast, Kerala, which has much lower per capita income, shows the best sex ratio at 1058 women per 1000 men, close to international norms. However, even in Kerala the 0-6 years sex ratio is unsatisfactory, while it is higher than the national average. In general, several of the states that are economically less developed (such as Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu), perform better than the national average by these indicators. The complex relationship between economic growth and the status of women, becomes very evident here.
 
While infant mortality rates have declined over time, evidence from the Registrar General’s Sample Registration Surveys (SRS) suggests that the rate of decline has decelerated over the 1990s. This is also evident from Charts 5 and 6 which give aggregate IMRs for rural and urban areas respectively. 
Chart 5 >> Chart 6 >>
 
The aggregate infant mortality rate for males fell by 26 per cent between 1981 and 1991 (from 110 per thousand to 81 per thousand) but only by 12 per cent over the subsequent decade, to 71 per thousand. The deceleration in infant mortality among girls over the two decades was even sharper, from 27 per cent to 10 per cent, such that the female IMR was 72 per thousand in 2001. Of course this conceals the extent of female foeticide, which is likely (if anything) to have brought down female IMRs.
 
Some states have very high female IMRs, ranging from 96.9 per thousand in Orissa to 81.4 per thousand in Haryana in 1998-99. The female IMR in Madhya Pradesh in that year was as high as 101.5 per thousand. What is even more disturbing is that in the recent past, there is evidence of rising IMRs in several states, which reverses the long run trend of decline evident across India since Independence.
 
Death rates during the first five years of life also show very significant gender differentials. In 1998-99, the national average child mortality rate (CMR) was 29.3 per thousand. However, the CMR for rural boys was 27.9, while that for rural girls was one and a half times higher at 41.7. The urban gender differential was somewhat less: the urban CMR for boys was 14.6 while that for girls was 19.7. For all these variables there are significant variations across states, and in addition, within states as between different sub-regions, ethnic and social groups such as certain castes and tribes and minority groups.
 
Maternal mortality rates reflect health infrastructure conditions as well as other factors such as maternal nutrition levels. It is disturbing to observe that the rate of decline of maternal mortality has been very slow in India. Maternal mortality for the country as a whole was estimated at 580 per 100,000 live births in the early 1990s. (P.N. Bhat, Mari K Navaneetham and S. Irudaya Rajan "Maternal mortality in India: Estimates from a regression model", in Studies in Family Planning, 1995)
 
Once again, there are significant rural-urban differentials (the rural rate at 638 is nearly double the urban rate of 389 per 100,000 live births). Similarly, there are wide variations across states, as evident from Chart 7. The extent of variation is quite dramatic, varying (according to UNICEF estimates) from 738 in Orissa to only 87 in Kerala. These may be underestimates. Thus Bhat et al. (1995, op.cit.) estimate MMR in Assam to be as high as 1068, with MMR in Uttar Pradesh at 920 and in Bihar at 813
Chart 7 >>
 
Indeed, the low MMR in Kerala indicates how much can be achieved through the greater spread of improved public health facilities and provision of basic nutrition through the Public Distribution System. It has been estimated that 40 per cent of all maternal deaths in rural areas are due to bleeding of pregnancy and puerperium, and anaemia. The former is a directly obstetric cause, which can be mitigated through medical attention, while the latter is directly affected by nutrition.
 

| 1 | 2 | 3 | Next Page >>

Print this Page

 

Site optimised for 800 x 600 and above for Internet Explorer 5 and above
© MACROSCAN 2002