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Incredible India Womans Rights

Jawaharlal Nehru once said, “You can tell the condition of a nation by looking at the status of its women.” [1]Unfortunately, the above-mentioned quote cannot apply to India. It could have applied in the year of 1947, when not only did India achieve independence but also when it started to improve the status of women. The year 1947 saw the introduction of laws such as The Prevention of Immoral Traffic, The Sati Act, and The Dowry Prevention Act, which stopped the heinous crimes against the women of India. However, to utmost dismay, these laws have been strongly rejected by the people living in the rural areas of India, where traditions are deeply rooted. Although these rules have been enforced and accepted by some of the urban areas of India, close attention needs to be paid to the rural parts of India where dowry, illiteracy and forced prostitution is widespread.

 

When India achieved independence in 1947, the illiteracy rate for women was less than eight percent. However, as population grew (or grows) the rate increased with sixteen million being the rate in 1991 far more than the rate in 1981.[2] Recent reports in 2008 showed that the female illiteracy rate in India was sixty-two percent, whereas the male illiteracy rate was thirty-four percent. One reason behind this high rate is that the parents of girls or women are unwilling to expose their daughters to the potential assault on their virginity, where majority of the teachers are male (only one-third of the population are women teachers). This source of information contradicts statistics found in the year of 2000 when it showed that on average a woman is raped every hour in India.

 

In 1994, a report by the Asian Age showed that there are at least 70,000 women sex workers in Madras, Hyderbad and other places.[3] Thirty percent of these women are under twenty years of age. Forty percent are twenty-thirty years of age, and approximately fifteen percent of them became prostitutes as children under the age of twelve.[4] More statistics showed that Human Trafficking is an eight million dollar business in India. Around 10,000 Nepali women are brought to India annually for commercial sexual exploitation.[5] In India, many innocent victims are forced into prostitution by their husbands or relatives. Some are tricked or enticed into prostitution.

 

Many husbands force their wives into prostitution when they do not receive a sufficient dowry. According to Government, figures there were 5,377 dowry deaths in 1993, an increase of twelve percent from 1992.[6] Despite the existence of rigorous laws to prevent dowry- deaths under a 1986 amendment to the Indian Penal Code (IPC), penalties are severe yet convictions are rare. Recent reports showed that every ninety-three minutes a woman is burnt to death due to dowry and 6,000 deaths each year occur over dowry.[7] These rates are extremely high considering that the Dowry Prevention Act has been in existence for thirty-three years now. It is estimated that the average dowry today is equivalent to five times the family’s annual income and that the high cost of weddings and dowries is a major cause of indebtedness among India’s poor.

 

With population increasing day by day, these figures are surely to increase. The women in India are still waiting for equality, something which should have been theirs years ago.

 

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Equality is one word that India never got for a long time. Men were considered more superior. Women were known to take orders. That’s how life was. Throughout their lives women never got a say in anything. They were only taught to listen, and never got to voice out their opinion. Saying that India is the second most populous country in the world, holding 989 million people is not meant to be said with pride, when you realize it has about 120 million women who live in poverty. [1]

 

Gender is the main problem to this cause. Women are no different than men; they are all considered as people and should be treated equally. But in most South East Asian countries, men are supposedly better and much more worthy of being alive than women. Even food and water go to the male child first. This starts from childhood when girls get less breast fed than boys, and leads to a series of deaths of female children under the age of 5. From the start most Asian families always pray that they get a male child, and when they do there is celebration. But some families don’t have this “luck” and end up with a girl. Sometimes men even beat their wife for bearing a female child. As these girls grow older, instead of being taught mathematics, science and English they have to stay at home and learn the basic cooking, cleaning and taking care of the family. This kind of puts them in between bars of freedom. They have no right to speak up to their parents and try to learn and grasp knowledge. Some families that have enough money would send their children to school, but will take out the girls from school at some point and teach them what they think a girl should only know. Others with not enough money choose to send their boys to school, leaving the girls to take care of the house.

 

Even though India’s constitution provides free primary education for boys and girls up till they turn 14, most parents don’t allow the girls to get even a primary education, which is why the literacy rate for women is 39 percent while for men its 64. The rural parts of India are still a bit behind as many villages don’t have schools. But one of the good things is that India is growing and most of the urban areas are now more lenient towards girls getting some sort of education. Incredible India is how people outside the borders see it as. Now knowing the facts India may not be as incredible as people think it is. But sure enough with enough help and support and a push towards the right direction, India can become a better place.