Thread by @shrikanth_krish

A hackneyed critique of India worldwide is the "position of women" in Indian society

The Economist recently even ran a cover story - "How India fails its Women"

This thread attempts to take a long historical view and examine these claims of "oppression" both in past and present

While gender roles and distinct expectations from men and women have been a feature of civilizations worldwide for many millennia until very recently, India is often singled out and castigated for its exceptional "patriarchy" - though it is anything but exceptional

While the "gender neutral" society can be a subject for debate with many fine points to be made on either side, let's not venture there, as that makes the whole discussion highly ideological with little meeting ground.

Instead let's address the liberal critiques of the ill-effects of "patriarchy" on its own terms, particularly in the Indian context

Let's just stick to facts, and refrain from ideological arguments - though there is a place and time for those discussions too

There are many critiques advanced with regard to how women are "treated" in India.

Gripe 1 - Female Labor force participation is too low

Gripe 2 - Gender ratios v heavily imbalanced - female infanticide is to blame

Gripe 3 - Indian religion is somehow prejudiced against women. Think Sabarimala, Shani Shingnapur

Gripe 4 - India is unsafe for women. Think Nirbhaya

Gripe 5 - India is still the land of arranged marriages. Though I am not sure how that militates against the welfare of women

Gripe 6 - India treats its widows badly. This is usually followed by rants on the practice of "Sati" - a sporadic, if not rare, practice which was banned some 190 years ago

Gripe 7 - Women lag significantly behind men in terms of educational attainment

Some of these gripes are totally unfounded and misplaced.

Some are only in part true, but articulated in a tendentious and dishonest way

Some may be genuine gripes, which cannot be refuted (Eg : Gripe 7)

So let's start with the Economist's gripe on female labor force participation and its recent decline in India

Superficially speaking this is a true claim. But it is ALSO part of a global trend

Yes. Worldwide there has been a decline in labor force participation.

Here's a chart from data.worldbank.org that illustrates that this decline in many parts of the world, including US and China, is real

And it is also not something totally unexpected. As societies get richer at the lower end, you would expect many unskilled women workers to drop out and focus on family, instead of laboring for a minimum wage in some construction project

Sure, Indian labor force participation rates for women are significantly lower than the world average

But the "recent declining trends" do not have basis in culture or tradition

They merely indicate the often rational choices people make when they get out of subsistence poverty

Also when one looks closely at the female labor participation rates by state, it is very hard to find any definite trend

Let's look at these slightly dated female workforce participation rates by state from 2011

India - 25.5%
Chattisgarh - 39.7%
Manipur - 38.6%
Goa - 21.9%
Kerala - 18.2%
West Bengal - 18.1%
Uttar Pradesh - 16.8%
Delhi - 10.6%

These numbers show why it is ridiculous to pass "social commentary" based on labor force participation numbers

States scoring lower than average include affluent, relatively socially liberal provinces like Delhi, Goa. As well as communist-leaning provinces like Kerala, Bengal

States scoring high relative to average include very poor states like Chattisgarh and Manipur.

This is no commentary whatsoever on the degree of emancipation of women in any of these states

Now let's discuss the sex ratio.

India has a sex ratio of about 940 as per 2011 census.

And this is bemoaned as indicative of a deeply patriarchal culture that favors the male child

The reality is in fact quite different.

The low Indian sex ratio is a consequence of modernity and in particular the advent of ultra sound technology in the 80s / 90s, which contributed to spurt in foeticide in many regions

For much of Indian history, the sex ratio was actually much more favorable than it is now

Take for instance the 1901 census. The sex ratio that year stood at 972. Despite the extremely high rates of female mortality at child birth!

To control for this the great historian Anant Sadashiv Altekar, in his work, looks at new born incidence in each sex in late 19th cen

Here are the numbers on the # boys and girls aged under 5 out of 10K population of boys and girls looked at separately -

Clearly "female new borns" outnumbered male throughout late 19th / early 20th century

This is a clear refutation of claims of widespread infanticide.

What has changed in recent decades is the spurt in foetecide, driven by technology, which has desensitized many people to the loss of human life

This is a problem even in the West as noted in the scale of abortions.

The fact that it is not sex-selective doesn't make it any less condemnable or less problematic.

Next comes the claim of lack of safety for women in India

This is the most easily refutable of critiques, as it is very widely known that Indian crime rates and even rates of gender violence (including rape) are v low by global standards (even if one factors in under-reporting)

So let's instead move to the more tendentious indictment of Indian culture and tradition as being anti-women - something that requires a more detailed rebuttal

There are 3 or 4 major talking points -

The whole issue of widows and Sati and the related issue of Niyoga and its discontinuance

Education of women in Indian tradition

Role of women in religion

Women in secular public life

Will do a separate thread on this at a later point