Top-Rated Free Essay
Preview

Women in India

Good Essays
1419 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Women in India
Women in ancient India were held in high respect. With the course of time, the status of woman got lowered. Muscle and money power started dominating the societies. And as men fought the wars and ran the ventures of industrial production, they started considering themselves superior to woman. After the development of science and technology, the practice of female foeticide on a large scale also started. This eventually led to a slump in the female sex ratio. According to the census of 2001, the sex ratio in India is 927 females to 1,000 males. Dowry has become widespread and the birth of a girl child became inauspicious. In several parts of India, women are seen as an economic liability, even with the contribution of women in numerous ways to our economy and society. Early marriages, rape, molestation, sexual harassment, forced prostitution, eve teasing, etc are a common issue today. The crime rate against women is mounting at a startling rate.

This essay depicts how women are being exploited and how their needs are being repressed in our primarily orthodox society. It also shows how it can avoided, so that women can live freely, walk freely and talk freely.

Women & Education:

Education is one of the powerful tools in the liberation and the empowerment of women. It is the single utmost factor which can amazingly improve the position of women in any society.

The 2001 Census report shows that the literacy rate among Indian women is only 54 percent. It is almost demoralizing to observe that the literacy rate of Indian women is even much poorer to the national average of 65.38.
The expansion of education for women in rural areas is very sluggish. This clearly means that still large number of women of our country is illiterate, backward, weak and exploited. In addition education is also not available to all equally which can be seen by the Gender inequality in education. The literacy rate for the women is just 54% against 76% of men according to the
2001 Census.

The phenomenon involving Women education is multi dimensional. Not one factor or cause can be held accountable for the low literacy rate of Indian women. It is related with the combination of many factors including social, economic, demographic, administrative, cultural, educational, political, etc.

Some of the important factors that can be credited for the current situation are: Female age at marriage: There is high connection of the female literacy rate with that of the female age during her marriage. The female age at marriage of 18 (lately 21 years) as approved by various legislations are not at all followed in India. It is very much neglected by the parents with low literacy background. This intolerable practice dejects the female children to continue their education, as they go into family life at an early age. Lower Enrolment in Schools: The low enrolment of girls in schools is one of the fundamental factors that stand as the tentative block for empowerment of Indian women. According to the latest statistics, two out of every ten girls in the 6 to 11 age group are yet to be enrolled in schools.

High dropout rate of girls from schools: The occurrences of dropouts among girls mainly in slums, rural, and tribal areas are quite high.
According to the latest statistics, occurrence of dropout among the girls is almost twice as that of the boys in India.

Poor School Environment for girls: Broadly, the school environment for girls in India is really not encouraging. There are still hundreds of schools with poor essential amenities such as drinking water, improper building and inadequate number of teachers particularly the female teachers who are preferred by many parents for the safety of their girl children. Poverty, Bonded Labour and Child Labour Practices: This is a very discouraging factor that stands as barrier for girl’s education in rural areas and also for the underprivileged families consisting of the washer men, the agricultural labour, the tribes and the scheduled caste people. According to

UN, India, with more than 50 million child labourers, is the most child labour populous nation in the globe. In most cases girl children are favored for high productivity and low cost.

Poor Political Will and Passion: Government officers, policy makers, and politicians of our country have neither political will nor passion for the empowerment of women.

Dowry as barrier: In many families, particularly the poor think that if their daughters are educated more, then they have to gather more property to offer as dowry at the time of marriage, so they favor to stop their children with average education.

Trafficking and Commercial sexual exploitation:

India is a source, destination and transit country for women being trafficked for the use of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation. Women are being held in debt bondage and are very vulnerable to forced labor working in rice mills, brick kilns, and agriculture and in embroidery factories.
Girls and women are trafficked inside the country for the purpose of forced marriage and commercial sexual exploitation. They are also being used as armed combatants by some terrorist groups.

India is also a destination for women and girls from Nepal and Bangladesh trafficked for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation, while the
Indian women are being trafficked to the Middle East for the same purpose.

Government and NGO reports approximates that there are some hundreds of thousands to millions of women and girls being prostituted in India, most of whom are victims of trafficking. The bulk of the women being prostituted and trafficked within India are from lower (scheduled) castes and are brought into the sex trade as young as 13 years.

Exploitation of women through media:

The exploitation of women in the media has become so familiar, particularly in advertising, which most people fail to even notice it or get annoyed anymore. Women’s body is continually used to sell cars, cigarettes, liquors,

male perfume and other male recognized products, as well as newspapers, magazines and television programs. In today’s society, people come across television ads such as Slice featuring Katrina Kaif, in which women are being offered in provocative manner. The camera will habitually zoom in on body parts. Society is still very much dominated by men who manage what people see. As a consequence, women are increasingly shown as sex symbols, so the media company can turn to profit. The Internet also has grown to be one of the biggest exploiters of women.

Trading on the female body - Exploitation of women for egg:

Poor women from around the globe are being seriously recruited to donate their eggs to fertility clinics and also for the cloning research. Miserably, egg donation has less to do with self-sacrifice and more to do with the exploitation of women, mainly young women and poor women who usually face large debts. Egg donation puts women’s health and her safety at risk.
Trade in human egg cells is ultimately an assault on the pride of women.

Avoiding the exploitation of women:

Today modern women are so smart and self-sufficient that they can be easily called superwomen, as she copes with many fronts single handedly.
Women are now intensely motivated and are showing their worth not only in the home, but also in their personal careers, and education in the society. In order to improve their status, women themselves should come forward and unite. They should draw encouragement from women like
Indira Gandhi, the first woman Prime Minister of India, Kiran Bedi, India's first woman IPS officer; Pratibha patil, the first woman President of India and many others.

Adding onto that, as the social evils like dowry, child marriage, caste system and other practices deprive rights of education for children belonging to poor and underprivileged families, they should be abolished through well designed packages of mass awareness programs and social welfare measures with full support of political parties, NGOs, government agencies and public.

Indian Government should also address the fundamental issue of gender inequality and the structure that allows those most marginalized in society, mainly lower caste women and girls to be exploited for commercial sex. GoI should put programs in place to provide practical alternatives to prostitution and provide micro financing, so that they have other options to provide for themselves and their families.

A nation's progress and prosperity can be evaluated by the way it treats its women. Men must recognize and admit the fact that women are equal partners in life.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Media is an important communication tools that delivers variety of information worldwide. People are encountered lots of conceptions that women in South Asia are subjugated, degraded and oppressed because of social practices. From patriarchal society and prevailing religion, their subordination position under her father or husband, women become stereotypically victims as domesticated subjects. Lack of equality and oppression is the position of women in South Asia majority societies. Separation of gender role make a distinction in which women as vulnerable and dependent whose typical roles are taking care of children and family in order to preserve and continue of tradition. These fixed gender roles for women make hard to find their freedom…

    • 158 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    This research paper introduces the discussion of legal responses to violence against women. It provides the context for the more detailed examination of those legal issues to which the courts can respond. Its objective is to show the many ways in which violence is relevant to legal disputes, even where it is not the direct issue and even though it is often ignored. First, it discusses examples of different legal remedies that have been, or might usefully be, invoked in cases in which violence is the central issue, the reason for bringing the legal action. The examples illustrate briefly the possible role of areas of law other than criminal or quasi-criminal law. The paper presents examples of cases where, while the legal issue before the court did not directly involve violence, the judgment reveals that it was an underlying factor in the case. In these examples violence was not a focus of the discussion in the case but it emerges clearly from the judgment.…

    • 3242 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Bangladesh, farmers called barui[3] prepare a garden called a barouj in which to grow betel. The barouj is fenced with bamboo sticks and coconut leaves. The soil is plowed into furrows of 10 to 15 metres' length, 75 centimetres in width and 75 centimetres' depth. Oil cakes, manure, and leaves are thoroughly incorporated with the topsoil of the furrows and wood ash. The creeper cuttings are planted at the beginning of the monsoon season.…

    • 5156 Words
    • 21 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    I understand that this recommendation will be used only for admission and financial support decisions and…

    • 312 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    * access at all times in a year, and in times of unusual events like war and natural calamity…

    • 1763 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    More importantly, the country’s economy rests to a very large part on the shoulders of women. The Sri Lankan economy’s main foreign exchange earners used to be tea, rubber and coconut cultivation for export. Apart from these commercial crops, paddy (rice) cultivation has been the mainstay of the rural economy. Women’s labour plays an important role here, but in most instances is not taken into account.…

    • 1443 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Women's Movement in India

    • 650 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The study of social movements is not an area for historians alone. Sociologists studying social structure, processes and change would logically be interested in social movements. It is a process through which a collective attempt is made at mobilisation for change or resistance. However, in the context of change it differs from evolutionary process of social mobility and change in the sense that movements are based on a perception of injustice or oppression of a certain section or sections within the society. Social movements adopt protest, confrontation or conflict as a method to focus attention on different issues and attempt to bring about qualitative changes in the traditional social structures and social relationships, which are unequal and oppressive.…

    • 650 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Women Enterprise in India

    • 1567 Words
    • 7 Pages

    As the online magazine telling the story of contemporary Indian women, we examine the rise of women entrepreneurs in India. By Aparna V. Singh…

    • 1567 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Indian Journal of Gender Studies 19(1) 127–136 © 2012 CWDS SAGE Publications Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC DOI: 10.1177/097152151101900106 http://ijg.sagepub.com…

    • 3408 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    8) Approximately how many people(in %) around you discouraged you for having chosen the course after you took the course…

    • 351 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    womens in india

    • 482 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In the past, women have been oppressed to a point where they were treated as a completely different species. They were in a country that seemed to be a dark tunnel with no hope, dreams, or sense of fulfillment. Now women have been given their natural birthrights, and they are now able to do everything males can do.…

    • 482 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    women in India and China

    • 522 Words
    • 3 Pages

    - Urban India: girls and boys have almost same education, in rural India girls are still less-educated than boys.…

    • 522 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    woman education in india

    • 407 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The history of female education in India has its roots in the British Regime. Women's employment and education was acknowledged in 1854 by the East India Company's Programme: Wood's Dispatch. Slowly, after that, there was progress in female education, but it initially tended to be focused on the primary school level and was related to the richer sections of society. The overall literacy rate for women increased from 0.2% in 1882 to 6% in 1947.[56]…

    • 407 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    women in india

    • 511 Words
    • 3 Pages

    women in India now are more educated and more aware of the world. they now stand equal with the men, in some places or careers women have even overthrown the heights the men have reached. today's women is unstoppable, gone is the women who was vulnerable, unprotected, uneducated and abused. todays women stands tall, with pride, as she can achieve heights that sometimes are not even thought of. thats todays women…

    • 511 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Women Empowerment in India

    • 1146 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Women Empowerment has been addressed in Various national and international communities and took various efforts to empower them so as to enhance their social and health status and involve them in development activities. In India national family health survey 1998-1999, provides an opportunity to study women’s empowerment. Women empowerment in political, economic, social, cultural and business activities plays a significant role in today’s life. There are significant divergences in the women’s empowerment across different states and socio economic and cultural settings with in India.…

    • 1146 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics