What is the Current Status of Women's Position In India?
The evidence of human establishment can be dated back to the Neolithic era, where the population settled and did agriculture. The Indus valley civilization also has evidence of human settlement and town planning. Wherever there is human settlement, there will be a proper home and a profession for that family. The profession since ancient times has been carried in a lineage. For e.g., the Indian society in the ancient time was divided into 4 categories, Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra. The Brahmins performed all the pious works of the kingdom and were appointed as Raj purohits. Kshatriya usually looked after the defense and weapons of the kingdom. Vaishya were given the trade portfolio whereas the Shudra’ did all the menial work.
The profession in the particular category kept going on from generation to generation without amending it. Status is a broad category which includes the position of a person, lifestyle and occupation in a society. In ancient times, traveling overseas for occupation was considered a sin. Nowadays even students are going abroad for better education and employment opportunities. The society is marked as modernized not by the new technology adoption or better roads and connectivity but by adopting modern values and ethics.
Society upgraded to modernization because of changes in occupation and economy. All the above four categories in today’ generation have not stuck to their old occupation, they changed the profession. The reason for the shift in occupation was because of the need of the hour, revenue generation and modernization. The phenomenon has brought a change in the society because of the need for science and technology in conventional norms and jobs. In ancient times, the king was considered as the highest position holder, all the decision making, welfare of the kingdom, peace and security were in the hands of the king and his cabinet. The position was mostly hierarchical and limited to only a single royal family.
With modernization, we have now come to become a democratic republic where the citizens decide their leader and exercise their rights with the help of voting. Now the leader is in charge of the welfare of the citizens, maintaining peace within the country and in the neighborhood. The citizens also have become more aware and tech savvy regarding the government’ work and continuously observe and give reviews for the same. Freedom of speech and expression was given to each and every Indian citizen by the constitution, but with the advent of modernization, it has been used in many forms. This fundamental right is exercised via social media, print media, news, movies, series, etc.
Modernization of society involves change in social, political and economic organizations. Social modernization includes gender parity. Both the genders should be given equal status and equal work, keeping aside their physical limitations. Before several years, women were limited to being the caregiver of the family and helping with just household chores. Nowadays the women have been working at par with men, making their place in the top most position of the company, international organization and handling household chores too.
Perks Of Modernization–
· Gender parity and gender sensitive society – with rising awareness about women rights and their position in the past, modernization of society has helped improve status of women. From just handling household chores to now handling country’ economy, women are in almost every sector. The induction of women in the Indian army is a breakthrough in status. It shows that women can also handle the toughest situation on the border and maintain country’ security.
· From conventional farming to commercial farming – several years ago, farming and agriculture were limited to only a specific section of the society. The family entirely relied on the weather and harvest for their revenue. Now, with the modernization of the society, government involvement, privatization and commercial farming has occurred. In commercial farming, an individual or a private entity purchases land and hires a group of people to do farming, growing cash crops and maintaining.
· Mechanized industries – from traditional technique of hand weaving to power looms, cottage industry has upgraded into well-equipped industry. This helps in in of products, as we are promoting vocal for local under make in India campaign. Instead of importing products, emphasis has been laid on making every tool from scratch in India only. This increases employment rate, research and development and changes our country’ status to an exporting country.
· Women’ status – when a woman is given decision making power and resource management, she does wonders. Since ancient times she has been facing social evils like sati, deprived education rights, etc. But with the rise in awareness, women’ literacy rate, status has seen an acceleration. The total fertility rate has decreased from 6 in the 1960’ to 2.2 in 2019. The total fertility rate is the number of children a woman bears during her fertile period. The decrease in the number of children is a good sign, this shows that a woman is independent in her decision making of her own reproductive health.
· Improved status in matters of living, occupation – in search of a job, the rural population tends to shift to urban areas for livelihood. This causes a shift in niche and standard of living. The family adapts to the urbanization which involves education, culture, nutrition level, etc. standard of living gets better due to literacy of things and technology. Purchase power increases due to good pay scale and affordable rates of basic things. With a good education system, the children can become compatible to compete with the world.
Drawbacks of Modernization
· Limitations of a huge population – it is a hurdle in a country having a huge population to educate and make everyone adapt to the modernization at once. Starting from the bottom top approach, modernization in villages is a challenge, as they follow their conventional methods of employment and refrain from understanding.
· Education and social system – the urbanization has offered scopes for better education but created a gap with the rural public. An MD shall face a problem in making the rural public understand the repercussions of alcohol, drugs, etc. or even cure cancer. This is because they are surrounded by less literate people and more social evils like occult, voodoo, etc.
Status should not only be limited to occupation and position of a person; it should be like an ideology imbibed into every person so that it upgrades with time.
Reference - Sociology notes by Triumph IAS academy, The hindu.