THE theme for this year’s International Women’s Day (IWD) which falls on a Sunday is, “Make It Happen.” The theme indicates that this is the year for action on gender equality. While several actions have been taken to reduce the gender gaps in the workplace and in schools and colleges and also in reducing maternal mortality across India, so much more still needs to be achieved. There are some important domains where progress has not happened even with economic growth and policy reforms. This is true especially in the area of access to resources and women’s ownership and control over productive assets such as land and housing. In India women’s safety remains a persistent concern. Without adequate safety women cannot pursue professions that require them to work late night hours, more so if the organizations they work for do not undertake to ensure their safety by dropping them back after work.
This year governments across the world will meet to adopt new Sustainable Development Goals that will succeed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which were benchmarked for the year 2015 but have remained unmet. The most lagging indicators include targets related to women’s health and leadership. Although there have been significant gains in school enrollment among girls these have yet to translate into equal pay, equal opportunities, and an equal chance to make decisions about their own lives, health, and work. Girls and women face multiple constraints resulting from discriminatory laws and customs that hinder their productivity and impose opportunity and other costs on them, their families, and their economies. This year the United Nations proposes to collect more and better data to fill up the knowledge gaps regarding women’s work, time use, asset ownership, vital statistics, and access to resources such as technology or fertilizer, all of which can help identify entry points for tackling poverty. Increased date on time use or labor force surveys on the unpaid work that women do would help bring their problems upfront. There is need to measure subsistence production, entrepreneurship, physical and financial assets that women and men hold within households. If there is better information on not only the time men and women spend on different occupations, but also a way to value it, it will inspire women to do much more for they would be able to measure their contribution in real terms.
