Rajya Sabha MP from Meghalaya, Wansuk Syiem while speaking at the International Parliamentary Union at Belgrade asserted that India has made significant achievements in gender neutrality. Terms like ‘gender neutrality’ may be fashionable for western societies that have struggled to bring about a gender balance in policy-making and implementation. But India is still far behind in that aspect. India still suffers from huge gender disparities that are camouflaged by the use of good language at international conferences. On the ground it is found that in areas like health and education, budgets are gender blind or neutral. They fail to target the special needs of women. For instance women suffer from cancers that affect their reproductive organs such as the uterus, cervix, ovaries and breast, over and above the other parts of their biological system. A menopausal woman requires medical attention which a male person would not. Hence targeted intervention in health care is called for if women are to be productive beyond the child bearing years. Coming to education, in many of our villages it is still perceived as a luxury to send girls to school. Societal norms, expectations and deprivation often restrict them from accessing education.
Hence governments are expected to launch interventions that specifically target female students. At this juncture a gender neutral approach may hamper India’s attempts at women’s empowerment. Targeted interventions exclusively focus on improving the educational outcomes of girls (such as cash transfers to female students and building female toilets) and have resulted in more girls attending school and being retained there longer. Researchers have found that interventions that focus on the cost of schooling, distance to schools and health conditions, drive girls’ access to schools, while better teaching practices improve their learning outcomes. To achieve gander parity in education, paying attention to gender-specific needs can help achieve the goal of improving girls’ education and help them come at par with boys. Gandhi had famously observed that educating a man is educating one person but educating a girl is educating the entire family, society and nation.
A large and growing body of research has shown how gender inequality undermines health and development. To overcome gender inequality the United Nations Population Fund states that women’s empowerment and gender equality requires strategic interventions at all levels of programming and policy-making. These levels include reproductive health, economic empowerment, educational empowerment and political empowerment. UNFPA says that “research has also demonstrated how working with men and boys as well as women and girls to promote gender equality contributes to achieving health and development outcome