Miles to go to fulfil PM Modi's Nari Shakti pledge for India in 2047

The rising share of women in the police force and aviation are among the few sunshine areas in a landscape of low, slow, or declining progress of women

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today listed equality, specifically equality for women, as one of the five pledges citizens must take to fulfil the dreams of the freedom fighters for India by 2047, the 100th year of Independence. It is a pledge that will challenge the nation on many fronts.

"Our Nari Shakti (woman power) is being represented in all sectors -- in police, villages, etc. The more opportunities we give to our daughters, the more they will take us forward," he said.

Indeed, women now constitute 10.5 per cent of the police force, according to 2021 data, the latest available from the Bureau of Police Research and Development. That’s a near doubling of their proportion from 5.7 per cent in 2006.

However, when these police women take their investigations to the judiciary, they are still more likely to face men judges than women. They are likely to be protecting more male politicians than female. And, in discharging their duties towards the country’s workforce, they are more likely to be serving men than women. The rise of women as a proportion of the police force is one of the few rays of sunshine in a landscape of low, slow, or declining progress of women, leaving a lot of ground for India to cover in meeting the Prime Minister’s Nari Shakti pledge.

One of the bleakest spots is the Female Labour Force Participation Ratio. It has dropped sharply and steadily in the last decade and a half, from 32 per cent in 2005 to just 19.2 per cent in 2021, although the latest data is a small recovery from 18.6 per cent – the lowest in 32 years -- in the first pandemic year of 2020.
 

The gender ratio in the workforce has got more skewed towards men despite more women getting educated. Women's net enrolment in schools and colleges has increased and reached near parity with men.

However, legal education is far from reaching parity. The proportion of women enrolling for an undergraduate law degree has remained unchanged at 33 per cent since 2014-15, despite a tripling of seats.

This shows up downstream. It is not feasible to deduce the percentage of women among the lawyer population, given how unstructured the profession can be. But the gender ratio among judges is far from ideal.

Five of the 11 women Supreme Court judges in India’s 75-year history were appointed in the last three years. But, these five constituted only a fifth of the 26 judges appointed to the top court in that period. As a result, women are just 12.5 per cent of the apex courts' bench strength. The position in the High Courts is no better: only 13 per cent of the judges are women. In comparison, district courts shine, with 35 per cent of their judges being women.

In politics, this year marks a milestone for women, with India electing its second female president. Indeed, the proportion of female parliamentarians has gone up from 11 per cent in 2012 to 14.9 per cent in 2022, but it is still lower than – surprise! -- Pakistan's 20.5 per cent and Bangladesh’s 20.9 per cent. Only 9 per cent of India’s female lawmakers are ministers in the government in 2022 — lower than the 10 per cent in 2012 — and fewer than in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

The number of women directors on boards of companies has risen, but 3 per cent of the companies listed on the National Stock Exchange still did not have a single woman director as of March 2021, though the figure has fallen from 8.5 per cent in March 2015.

Even these seemingly low percentages stand out because there should be no company without a woman director. The Securities and Exchange Board of India, the markets regular, has made it compulsory for companies to have at least one woman on their boards. This order came into effect in October 2014 and was reported to have triggered an initial rush of women of the promoter families joining their boards.

Among professionals or managers, women are just 32.8 per cent of the total. Which is above Bangladesh’s 28 per cent, but way off the near-parity achieved in the developed countries.

Indeed, it is not all gloom and doom. In the recently concluded Commonwealth Games, 40 per cent of India's medallists were women, though that is lower than the 46.4 per cent in the 2002 Games.
 

A recent Bloomberg report showed India’s success in increasing diversity in aviation, having the highest percentage of female pilots in the world. The International Society of Women Airline Pilots says about 12.4 per cent of all pilots in India are women, compared with 5.5 per cent in the United States, the world’s largest aviation market, and 4.7 per cent in the United Kingdom.

The report went on to express bewilderment over this accomplishment by a country ranked 135th among 146 countries on gender parity by the World Economic Forum. That is a good point to begin while taking the Nari Shakti pledge.