In our country, women still lag much behind men despite some improvements since Independence. Women face disadvantage, discrimination and oppression in various ways :
(i) The literacy rate among women is only 54 percent as compared with 76 percent among men.
(ii) Similarly, a smaller proportion of girl students go for higher studies. Girls are performing as well as boys in school. But they drop out because parents prefer to spend their resources for their boys’ education rather than spending equally on their sons and daughters.
(iii) The proportion of women among the highly paid and valued jobs is still very small. On an average an Indian woman works one hour more than an average man everyday.
(iv) The Equal Wages Act provides that equal wages should be paid to equal work. However in almost all areas of work, from sports and cinema, to factories and fields, women are paid less than men, even when both do exactly the same work.
(v) In many parts of India, parents prefer to have sons and find ways to have the girl child aborted before she is born. Such sex selective abortion led to a decline in child sex ratio.
(vi) Woman face harassment, exploitation and violence on the domestic front.
