Article at a glance. This article is a 2010 CIPE International Youth Essay Competition third place winner in the category of women and participation.

Transcription

1 ECONOMICREFORM Feature Service March 11, 2011 Anonymous Article at a glance Women in India are treated harshly in some rural areas where superstition remains strong and cultural roots run deep. There are three ways in which women are treated unequally: socially, economically, and politically. Bringing women to positions of leadership in each of these three categories will create a stronger gender balance in society. This article is a 2010 CIPE International Youth Essay Competition third place winner in the category of women and participation. To comment on this article, visit the CIPE Economic Reform Feature Service online at th Street, NW Suite 700 Washington, DC ph: (202) fax: (202) cipe@cipe.org

2 Introduction Once upon a time there lived a beautiful woman who lived in a far off village in India. One day, her neighbor s son fell ill, and he soon died. A few weeks later, a farmer s cow stopped giving milk. That year the village experienced a severe drought. The villagers did not know why such terrible things were happening to them, so they went to the village priest for help. He performed some rituals and concluded that the beautiful woman was actually an evil witch in disguise. All the mishaps were her work. The villagers went mad with fury. They assaulted her with sticks and stones. When she cried, they hit her more. She was paraded naked through the village with her feet and hands in shackles. Her painful screams only spurred the villagers to further violence. Slowly her pleas became feebler and soon she was silenced forever. This is the dark reality of the world in which I live. Every year in the hinterlands of progressive India, hundreds of women are branded as witches, humiliated, assaulted, ostracized, and even lynched. How can we dream of women s emancipation in a world that breeds such ignorance and hypocrisy? Such superstitions are the vestige of an animistic and uninformed age. Before we can grow a new society, which treats women and men as equals, we have to weed out these outdated beliefs and customs. This can only be achieved if education is allowed to percolate to the grassroots of India. The First Step: Clearing the Ground India is a huge country. Ensuring that education reaches the grassroots population has proved to be an immense task for the numerous literacy missions that have attempted it. Even though the number of universities has increased from 27 in to 254 in , a huge percentage of the population is still illiterate. The challenges posed seem daunting, but the very system that gave rise to these anomalies is also the solution. India is a young country. The median age of Indians is only 25.1 years. This youthful energy needs to be channeled in the right direction. Every year, there are two million college graduates in India. 1 There are around 9,800 premier colleges in India. Almost 4.7 million students are enrolled in graduate and post-graduate courses. 2 The answer to the education problem lies with the educated youth of India. If every college student takes responsibility for educating just one uneducated person, the lives of millions can be transformed. The educated youth can impact the lives of the less privileged and enable them to maximize their potential. It was this theory that eventually led me to create Ahvaan. Ahvaan is a social venture that takes education to the illiterate of India with the help of student volunteers. Educating women is particularly important because it is closely related with delayed marriage and childbirth, improved mortality rates for both mothers and children, and reduced family size. As such, women are a particular target audience for Ahvaan s work. We currently have more than 100 registered student volunteers spread across the length and breadth of India who take education to the uneducated. Emancipation of Women To truly elevate the social standing of women, education alone will not suffice. Of the 1.3 billion people who live in absolute poverty around the globe, 70 percent are women. For these women, poverty does not just mean scarcity and want. It means rights denied, opportunities curtailed, and voices silenced. People s attitudes have to change before we try to empower women. Education will clear the ground for the work that is to be done. If men realize that women can be equal contributors to the welfare of the society, perhaps they will see them as worthy allies and not as inferior adversaries. I actually witnessed such a transformation at very close quarters. The Garinda Project During my freshman year in college, some other students and I were assigned a project on the emancipation of rural women. Our search for rural women brought us to a small village called Garinda, located in the obscure parts of western Rajasthan, India. A motley crowd of women and 2

3 children gathered upon our arrival. From their stares, we could see that they were clearly not used to seeing people in Western attire. The women had long dupattas (an Indian scarf ) that covered their faces. It was shocking to see that they still followed the ancient Indian tradition of not showing their faces to strangers. We knew we were intruding on their little private world, but surprisingly they were very hospitable. We gathered the women in an open place and described our plan. We wanted the women to start their own entrepreneurial venture. Some of the women scuffled nervously. Never before had they been treated as equals in society. The prospect of running their own business scared them. Centuries of social oppression had crushed their self-esteem and they were afraid of the social ridicule. Women always came second to their husbands in traditional Indian cultures. Their fate was irrevocably tied to the fate of their husbands. For centuries, women followed the practice of sati. In this ritual, women burned themselves alive on their husband s funeral pyre. A woman s life was worthless without the existence of her husband. In small communities like Garinda, to this day anyone who tries to break the mold of tradition is an object of social ridicule. Men have always been the traditional breadwinners for families. It is an exclusively male activity, and the thought of a woman entering this world was horrifying for some of Garinda s women. After the initial apprehension, a surprising number of women agreed to participate in the project. In fact, we did not anticipate the fervor with which the women threw themselves into their work. Despite having little or no education, most of them were fast learners. They quickly learned the art of making paper bags from old newspapers. The women collected old newspapers from nearby villages and made low cost paper bags out of them. The bags were then sold in the local markets. All of them worked with enthusiasm and determination. Their tenacity was mind boggling at first, but then I realized that this was not just a business proposal for them. It was their way of seeking redemption for the centuries of malice they had suffered. All of the women were desperate to generate profits. All of them had a point to prove. What started as a small university project snowballed into a self-sustainable entrepreneurial venture. The initiative now provides a livelihood for 16 women. But the most significant outcome of this project was not the generation of profits. It was the resurrection of women s self-esteem. Today, the same women are treated differently in the small village of Garinda. Some of the women earn more than their husbands. I had witnessed what entrepreneurship could do for the empowerment of women. The Second Step: The Way Ahead The Garinda project showed how successful entrepreneurial endeavors could facilitate changes in the societal perception of women. The society realizes the importance of female entrepreneurs and gives them the respect they truly deserve. We can bring about the same transformation on a larger scale by creating opportunities exclusively for women so that they have a chance to realize their full potential. There is a dearth of female entrepreneurs today, especially in developing countries like India. To realize this goal of societal transformation, the government and the youth have to work in close cooperation. The government needs to create a framework that not only encourages women to start a business but also grooms emerging women entrepreneurs. One way to do this is to offer capital to women entrepreneurs at lower interest rates. Moreover, the tax system should be different for women. The government could also introduce quotas for women in business schools run by the government so that we have better educated women entrepreneurs and managers. The youth, on the other hand, have to be more proactive than the government. Young people are more likely to support the equality of women in society, business, and politics. We need 3

4 more grassroots projects like the Garinda project. Projects that focus on the economic empowerment of women will help to balance the system in an organic way. While the urban corporate world is always looking for qualified female professionals, women residing in rural areas are left out of the system. Since the majority of the Indian population still lives in villages, youth projects have to venture outside the big cities and reach out to the hinterlands of India. Political Empowerment I believe that economic empowerment of women will pave the way for increased female participation in politics. Once society understands that women are equally as capable of adding value to society as men, it will be able to accept women in the more powerful and influential roles of political leadership. I firmly believe that because I have witnessed it in my own family. My mother is an educated woman. Ten years ago, she started her own boutique. Years of hard and honest work made the boutique quite successful. My family now has the highest respect and admiration for my mother. I believe that my mother s success has a lot to do with the admiration she enjoys from her family. Of late, she has been encouraged to participate in the local elections. Her economic success has truly empowered her, and now society feels that she is capable enough to become a leader and make important decisions for the community. My experiences make me feel that political empowerment is the final step in female emancipation. My mother has been lucky to find her own niche in a male-dominated social order. But the majority of Indian women are not so lucky. Even though there have been significant policy changes to increase women s political participation in recent years, we have not seen the emergence of true female leaders. This is primarily because the women in politics are not invested with the necessary authority to implement their ideas. Women in rural India have been given representation as a sign of political empowerment. There are many elected female representatives at the village council level. However, their power is restricted because men wield all the authority. Female decisions are often overruled by the government machinery. It is crucial that these women leaders receive training on being effective representatives for their electorates so that they can be catalysts for change in their respective villages. It would be helpful to have another developing country whose experience in empowering women could act as a model for women, but the broader picture of women s participation in politics is equally dismal. According to the UN Development Report, only 4 percent of the ministers in South and Southeast Asia are women, compared with only 11 percent in the industrialized West. I believe that cultural stereotyping is one of the biggest hurdles for women who want to enter politics, either locally or nationally. For centuries, women have been cast in the roles of mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters. They are not given the opportunity to venture out into leadership and political roles. The Third Step: The Final Step In order to tackle the above challenges we need to have a legal and political framework that gives significant importance to women s rights and representation. I believe that all-female political parties will not work as a mechanism for improving access to political participation because they polarize the society and increase the tension between the two genders. However, we can have quotas in the parliament to ensure a certain level of female representation. Even though quotas attract a lot of controversial arguments, I believe they are necessary to achieve political balance. Interestingly enough, while a female quota is always an easy target for criticism, in many countries, other quotas (such as regional and ethnic) are never opposed in the same way. Politics is often considered a murky world for women to enter. But stalwarts like Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi proved that women can not only enter the political arena but also conquer it. It all starts with a small pat on the back and a little encouragement from family and friends. 4

5 Even in an educated society, in order to protect our loved ones, we unintentionally deny them the opportunities that they deserve. It is our love for them that constricts them. We have to learn to let go and let them find their own way through life. I believe that this is true emancipation. Endnotes 1. BBC UNESCO Institute of Statistics The s 2010 International Youth Essay Competition asked young people aged to share their ideas about democracy, entrepreneurship, and women s participation. This essay won third place in the Women and Participation category in response to the following questions: What does empowerment mean for women? How can economic empowerment for women lead to their political empowerment? How can women better organize to voice their needs and help level the playing field for women in business? How can women s participation strengthen economic policy for them and for all people? Are there examples of associations or other local organizations of women in your country that are working to put women s business issues on the political agenda? To learn more about the essay competition, visit The views expressed by the author are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE). CIPE grants permission to reprint, translate, and/or publish original articles from its Economic Reform Feature Service provided that (1) proper attribution is given to the original author and to CIPE and (2) CIPE is notified where the article is placed and a copy is provided to CIPE s Washington office. The Economic Reform Feature Service is CIPE s online and electronic article distribution service. It provides in-depth articles designed for a network of policymakers, business leaders, civic reformers, scholars, and others interested in the issues relating to economic reform and its connection to democratic development. Articles are ed and posted online twice a month. If you would like to subscribe free of charge, please join the CIPE network by entering your at CIPE welcomes articles submitted by readers. Most articles run between 3-7 pages (1,000-3,000 words). All submissions relevant to CIPE s mission will be considered based on merit. The (CIPE) strengthens democracy around the globe through private enterprise and market-oriented reform. CIPE is one of the four core institutes of the National Endowment for Democracy. Since 1983, CIPE has worked with business leaders, policymakers, and journalists to build the civic institutions vital to a democratic society. CIPE s key program areas include anti-corruption, advocacy, business associations, corporate governance, democratic governance, access to information, the informal sector and property rights, and women and youth. 5