Gender battle: Is it equality or

equity women should fight for?

An actress turned politician-Sunday 15th June 2014
Smriti Zubin Irani, now Indias Minister of Human Resource Development but in
February 2014 just a politician from the Bharathiya Janata Party, had spoken at the
International Womens Conference 2014 held in Bangalore representing her party. Her
topic was Making a Global Connection relating to the empowerment of women
throughout the globe (available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b6Q_8iGF0k).
This versatile speaker is no stranger to Sri Lankans. But she is known here not by her
real name or for her political views. She is known here by her screen name Thulsi,
the quintessentially matriarchal role she played in the mega teledrama telecast as
Mahagedera entertaining thousands of local fans for
years.
Smriti Zubin Irani: Allow women to live their life with dignity and in peace
In her short speech, she delivered a very powerful message to an applauding
international audience consisting of, among others, some of the former and current
office bearing women politicians from the region.
The essence of her message was as follows: What women want is not the right to
speak which they immensely enjoy. What they want is the right to be heard which is
not there. Conflicts prevent people from connecting to each other. They arise when
there is poverty, illiteracy and greed. Thus, if one wants to end conflicts, one should
empower women because women would contribute to eliminate poverty and illiteracy
and through it, moderate greed. But that cannot be done through legislations. That can
be done only by changing oneself with the changes which one expects to happen in
the world, a quote from Mahatma Gandhi. That change should come from within and
not through impositions from outside.
In her short speech, Indian Minister of Human Resource Development Smriti Zubin
Irani delivered a very powerful message: What women want is not the right to speak
which they immensely enjoy. What they want is the right to be heard which is not
there. Conflicts prevent people from connecting to each other. They arise when there
is poverty, illiteracy and greed. Thus, if one wants to end conflicts, one should
empower women because women would contribute to eliminate poverty and illiteracy
and through it, moderate greed. But that cannot be done through legislations. That can
be done only by changing oneself with the changes which one expects to happen in
the world, a quote from Mahatma Gandhi. That change should come from within and
not through impositions from outside
Women should build courage to stand up to unreasonable treatments
meted to them by modern societies. Quoting Kautilya from the Arthashastra, she said
that it is not enough for a good leader to be victorious over his external enemies. A
good leader should overcome his own burdens and flaws and be victorious over his
internal enemies by reasserting the ideals of humanity in him. Her implication is that if
women want to be in leadership, they should first win over the enemy within.
For the globe to connect and nations to be empowered, it is extremely essential that
women in those nations be educated, employed and treated as human beings she
emphasised. For that, every woman should be given the right to live her life with
dignity, in peace and in a fashion that she can teach others of the value of treating
everyone fairly thereby giving them equal opportunities.
Global obsession for gender equality
Smriti has offered a view alternative to the global campaign for gender equality that
demands that men and women should be treated equally and should not be
discriminated on the ground of being a man or a woman. However, since men are at
the top rung in society, the action plans have been directed not to make men equal to
women but women equal to men. Hence, gender equality is portrayed as synonymous
with equality for women.
UN bodies and other international organisations too have taken gender equality in this
sense. For instance, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation
or UNESCO, while putting into practice a Priority Gender Equality Action Plan for
2014-21, has used the promotional tagline Equality for Women is Progress for All
(available at: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/themes/gender-equality/ ). Since
women are at the bottom of the social, economic and political life in many
communities, the action plan envisages bringing them to societys mainstream to be
on par with men.
Women are the best trainers of future members of society
Womens contribution to societys social, economic and political developments has
been known throughout history. In addition to their direct participation in these
activities, they have been credited for their role in developing the personality and the
character of children so that they become achievers from early childhood.
Harvard University Psychologist David McClelland in developing his need for
achievement theory found that children get the motivation to achieve in life from the
heroic stories related to them by their mothers and grandmothers. Children having
gotten into a world of fantasies through these stories are resolved to act out the roles
of the heroes in the stories which are related to them from a very early age.
But women should do mothering and not smothering
However, McClelland warns that the very same mothers and grandmothers could
destroy the motive for achievement in children too. That was by smothering them
instead of mothering so that children are not permitted to make reasoned judgments
through real world experiences. But, this applies only to a minority of mothers and by
and large mothers are considered to be the best trainers of their children into what
they become in the future.
Dangerous cry for equality between sexes
However, equality for women is a dangerous proposition for two reasons.
The first is that it leaves women in a state where they have to fend for themselves. The
two sexes have been created with essential differences in mental traits, physical
capabilities and ability to take pain in order to facilitate them to work for each other.
Hence, in an ideal world, there is no competition between the two sexes where each
sex is independent from the other. Instead, it is a world where the two sexes are
interdependent for both survival and prosperity. It is cooperation rather than
competition that will help them to attain the best for themselves.
Equality will also mean women being exposed to unfair competition
The second is that, given the essential differences in physical capabilities, the
treatment of women equal to men in many activities will mean unfair competition for
them. Suppose a woman has to run the 100m stint with a man. Even a woman with an
average speed will not be able to compete fairly with a slow running man. If both are
placed in the same competitive event, it will be unfair to the woman who has been, as
economists would say, adversely selected for the competition knowing her chances of
winning are fairly low.
There are many such activities where women cannot compete with men and men
cannot compete with women. Take for example child-bearing. In that activity, even the
most talented and capable man cannot compete with an ordinary woman.
Pinguttara: He treated women equally but was unfair
This point has been well illustrated in a tale in Ummagga Jataka, the story wound
around a spy-and-escape tunnel relating to a previous birth of the Buddha. In this
particular tale, a young man called Pinguttara completed his studies at the Principal
Guru at Taxila and was about to return his home in Mithila. The tradition in Gurus
family has been to give in marriage the Gurus daughter to his best student. Having
completed his studies so well, Pinguttara qualified himself for the rare privilege.
Though the daughter was very beautiful, and so she was called Princess in the family,
Pinguttara did not have any desire for her. Consequently, he did not consummate the
marriage.
Since Pinguttara could not say no to his Guru, he set forth the homeward journey with
his newly married wife. On the way, he was all the time scheming how to get rid of her
and the chance fell upon him when they were close to Mithila. They were hungry and
Pinguttara having spotted a wood-apple tree full of ripe fruits climbed the tree and
started to eat wood-apples having seated himself on a branch. Princess who was also
hungry asked him to pluck some wood-apples and throw them down to her.
Pinguttaras immediate reaction was a verbal outrage that carried a selfish tone in it.
He shouted at her: Why? Dont you have hands and legs? If so, get into the tree and
pluck wood-apples by yourself. Princess had no choice but to climb the tree and when
she did so, Pinguttara hurriedly climbed down and blocked the trunk of the tree with
thorny bushes so that Princess could not climb down and follow him. He immediately
fled the site leaving her behind on the tree.
Ignore interdependence between genders and reap losses
In this tale, Princess was treated as equal to a man but that treatment was unfair since
she was not expected to climb a tree like a man and fend for herself. She was not
treated with equity and her dignity was compromised by her husband. The
interdependent relationship which would have helped both of them to prosper had
been broken by her husband abruptly and she was left to die all alone on the tree. But
fortunately, according to the tale, King of Mithila was passing by and having seen the
beautiful girl on the wood-apple tree, got his aides to get her down from the tree and
made her his First Queen having named her Udumbara Devi the queen found from a
wood-apple tree.
Pinguttara, finding it difficult to get a suitable job for his qualifications, was condemned
to work as a labourer in the construction of roads in the city. This tale ends up in a
situation where the woman becomes better off while the man becomes worse off by
the mans neglect of interdependence with the woman. But the core of the tale is that
pursuing gender equality as a goal is dangerous for women and neglect of the
interdependence between the two sexes is bad for both.
What women need is equity supported by opportunities
What should be pursued by women is not gender equality but gender equity. Gender
equity is exactly what Smriti had given as the concluding remarks of her speech: That
is, women should be permitted to live with dignity, in peace and they should be
afforded with opportunities for advancement. Give them opportunities, then you do not
have even to show them the path. They will rise up and walk along the path without
any support from outside. But there can be some women who cannot walk along the
path on their own due to other deficiencies. That is not peculiar to women and there
could be men too who would fall into that category. Both these men and women need
special attention and that is outside the debate on gender equality.
The experience of the Isuru Project
This writer got personal experience in the value of empowering women when he was
the Director of the Small Farmers and the Landless Credit Project, called Isuru Project
in Sinhala, during 1992 to 2000. This was the first ever microfinance project for poverty
alleviation in Sri Lanka and it was implemented by the Central Bank on behalf of the
Government.
The project, funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development or IFAD
and the Canadian International Development Agency or CIDA, was a pilot project
implemented in four districts Kandy, Puttalam, Galle and Matara which had the
highest incidence of poverty in late 1980s.
Empowering women through minimum quotas of opportunities
One of the objectives of the Project was to empower the poor rural women and help
them to join the mainstream of the economy by undertaking income generating self-
employment projects. There was a fear harboured by the two donors that when the
project was introduced, men would grab all the opportunities for them and leave the
poor women behind. Hence, a condition was imposed on the project management that
at least a third of the people to receive assistance from the project should be women.
The idea behind the imposition of a minimum quota for women was that in a society
driven by men, womens rights had to be protected by rules and regulations, a notion
which was dismissed by Smriti in her speech.
Give opportunities to women and they will do marvels
Pretty soon, women proved that the donors were wrong. Within two years of the
commencement of the project, womens participation increased to about 65 to 78% of
the total number of participants. They were keen on empowering themselves by being
ready to go through the tedious process of social mobilisation compulsorily
implemented by the Project to help them to become good borrowers, efficient
entrepreneurs and self-supporting members of social groups. They dominated the
project, making men a minority group.
Women proved to be better learners and more disciplined
Unlike men, they had the discipline of attending the group meetings regularly and on
time. They were good savers the weekly compulsory savings as well as the
additional voluntary savings because they knew the value of savings to keep
themselves in support in needy times.
They were quick learners the skills which they needed to do banking with a formal
bank, undertake a microenterprise project, keep its accounts properly and attend to
quality, marketing and legal matters relating to the products they produced for the
market. The most important self-development was the competency they had acquired
in speaking-up without offending their listeners in public forums.
Womens active involvement in the project activities was due to the fact that they had
the best of the family at their heart: the health of family members, education of
children, improvement of housing conditions and accumulation of assets by the family.
Impact assessment:
Women managed to cross the poverty threshold
The Impact Assessment Survey done on the Project in 2005 revealed that about 63%
of the beneficiaries had escaped poverty and about 66% of beneficiaries had improved
their living through the project activities.
Womens leadership abilities were shown by the fact that when the individual Isuru
societies were converted into limited liability district associations, it was women who
were elected by the membership for all the top positions in those associations. Thus,
there was no necessity for taking these women to prosperity by holding their hands.
They were just given opportunities and they stood up to the challenge by going
through the process on their own.
Equity, not equality that matters
What matters for women is therefore not gender equality but gender equity. They
should be treated as human beings and should be allowed to live with dignity and in
peace with opportunities for self-development.
(W.A. Wijewardena, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, can
be reached at waw1949@gmail.com.)