[Answered] “Gender justice in India is in poor state with poor woman suffering the most.” Discuss.

Gender Justice means equality among women and men, boys and girls across all sectors. Gender Justice is important for development, poverty reduction, and is crucial to achieve human progress. Social, economic, political, environmental, cultural and educational equality is important for gender justice. These preconditions need to be satisfied for achieving gender justice.

Gender discrimination and Injustice in India: India was ranked 108th in the Global Gender Gap Index 2018. Indian women face is in poor state as indicated below:

1. Crime against unborn and newborn: The cultural construct of Indian society has reinforced gender bias against men and women, which lead to the continuation of India’s strong preference for male children. Female infanticide and sex-selective abortion is adopted. This reflects the societally low status of Indian women.
2. Inequality in judiciary: The Supreme Court is preparing to have three women judges for the first time in its 68-year history. Women constitute an abysmal 10% of the total sanctioned strength of the apex court, 31. As for the total strength of women judges in Indian high courts, it’s less than 12%. Thus women constitute very less in judicial institutions of the country.
3. Educational discrimination: Although literacy rates are increasing, the female literacy rate lags behind the male literacy rate. Literacy for females stands at 65.46%, compared to 82.14% for males. An underlying factor for such low literacy rates are parents’ perceptions that education for girls are a waste of resources as their daughters would eventually live with their husbands’ families.
4. Income gap: Discrimination against women has contributed to gender wage gap, with Indian women on average earning 64% of what their male counterparts earn for the same occupation and level of qualification. This has led to their lack of autonomy and authority. Although equal rights are given to women, these are not well implemented.
5. Poor Property rights: Women have equal rights under the Indian law to own property and receive equal inheritance rights, but in practice, women are at a disadvantage. In practice, land and property rights are weakly enforced, with customary laws widely practiced, especially in rural areas. Women do not own property under their own names and usually do not have any inheritance rights to obtain a share of parental property.
6. Access to credit: Although laws are supportive of lending to women and microcredit programs targeted to women are prolific, women often lack collateral for bank loans due to low levels of property ownership and microcredit schemes have come under scrutiny for coercive lending practices. This jeopardise there opportunities to grow.
7. Entrepreneurship: 48% of the Indian population consists of women, yet fewer than 5% of businesses are owned by women. In fact, in terms of entrepreneurship as an occupation, 7% of total entrepreneurs in India are women, while the remaining 93% are men.
8. Gender-based violence: Violence against women in India instead of decreasing is on rise. Rape, acid throwing, death due to dowry, honour killing, domestic violence, and Bride burning are major act of violence against women.
9. Political inequalities: This measure the gap between men and women in political decision making at the highest levels. India still lag behind when it come to political representation of women in India.

Since independence, Indian government has initiated many policies and legal reforms to address gender inequalities. The Constitution of India guarantee the right of equality and freedom from sexual discrimination to Indian women. India is also signatory to the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, or CEDAW. However, gender justice is a distant dream. There are lot of rigidities in traditions and beliefs. Lack of education, lack of development, poverty, improper enforcement of the laws, lack of awareness among women, deep rooted patriarchy, etc. prevented goal of gender justice in India.