Events of IGC
Closing the Gender Gap: Health, Education and Economic Opportunities
6th & 7th December 2019
Hotel Lemon Tree, Patna
Patna, 7 Dec. 2019. Winding up the International Conference titled “Closing the gender gap: health, education and economic opportunities” organized by the International Growth Centre (IGC), Asian Development Research Institute in collaboration with Women Development Corporation, Government of Bihar, Shri Harivansh Narayan Singh, Honourable Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, delivered the Valedictory Address. He stressed that if conscious efforts are not made to constantly improve the gender gap, the gains made so far can be reversed. Awareness generation will play a key role in this regard. Bihar is impressively progressing towards closing this gap with well-defined state policies. For instance, women have increased property rights and larger say in decision-making in Bihar today. He gave guidelines to promote gender equality.
Chairing the Special Lecture titled “Why Women’s health is a priority?”, Shri Mangal Pandey, Honourable Health Minister, Government of Bihar acknowledged few major observations made by Dr Quazi Monirul Islam, Professor & Senior Specialist (health systems) Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine that MMRs (Maternal Mortality Rates) are a good indicator of any state’s healthcare facilities. For improving the MMR of a state, we will have to ensure that both public and private healthcare systems need to be strengthened. In Bihar, apart from MMR, TFR (Total Fertility Rate) also poses a major concern. An important point by Dr Monirul was with respect to studying the issue of MMR, which he said should be based on unit level (such as district/village) data instead of generalized national values.
Commencing the day, Prof. Anu Rammohan, University of Western Australia elaborated on the importance of schooling and education in India, particularly schooling investments for females, in the special lecture. She said that there is under-investment in girls’ education. The reason for that is resource constraint as it is thought that boys will look after the parents in old age and so, they get the funds for education. Also, girls have to fetch water and look after siblings when the mother goes to participate in the informal labour market. Learning outcomes of government schools were declining even as it was improving for private schools because the former face resource constraints due to ever increasing enrolment figures. Early marriage leads to low education outcome for girls. In Bihar, there has been an appreciable increase in enrolment of girls (15-19 years) from 19 percent in 1995 to 64 percent in 2014 mainly due to the Chief Minister’s Cycle Program.
In the panel discussion on gender and education in India: from policy to practice, Professor Abhiroop Mukhopadhyay (Indian Statistical Institute-Delhi) pointed out that the gender gap in education really opens up when we move to older children (19 to 21 years). Dr Ashmita Gupta (ADRI) mentioned that women are missing out on middle-level jobs even as they are getting high and low-end jobs. Lakshmi Narasimhan Gadiraju (International Labour Organization) remarked that it is difficult to put in practice the resolution that hazards at the workplace should be prevented. Raghabendra Chattopadhyay (IIM-C) talked about females holding office in Panchayat local bodies. Professor Rammohan also participated in this panel discussion. In yet another panel discussion on “Women’s health: key for sustainable development”, Shri Sanjay Kumar (IAS), Principal Secretary, Health Department, Government of Bihar was the Chair while Professor Sisir Debnath, (IIT-New Delhi) was the moderator. Other panellists were Professor Arjun Bedi (ISS-The Hague), K. G. Santhya (Population Council), Professor Quazi Monirul Islam and Sumit Mazumdar (University of York). Shri Sanjay Kumar (IAS) lamented the fact that the woman eats the last in the house even though they are expected to deliver the babies. Women should be fed well. Otherwise, people will get affected as a group. People don’t understand this.
Dr Shaibal Gupta, Member Secretary, ADRI and Bihar Lead, IGC was also present on the occasion. Dr. N. Vijaya Lakshmi (IAS), Managing Director, Women Development Corporation, Government of Bihar and Dr Prabhat P Ghosh, Director, ADRI proposed a vote of thanks.
Patna, 6 Dec. 2019. While addressing the guests at the 2-day International conference titled “Closing the gender gap: health, education and economic opportunities” organized by the International Growth Centre (IGC), Asian Development Research Institute in collaboration with Women Development Corporation, Government of Bihar and Centre for Catalyzing Change(C3), Honourable Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar, Shri Sushil Kumar Modi opined that it’s not only economic and political empowerment that will close the gender gap. Rather, we need a multi-pronged strategy like spending more on education and implementing social programs like reservation for women in panchayat local bodies, promotion of self-help groups and Prohibition. He cited examples of Kerala spending as much as 1/4th of its revenue on education in the 1940s and post-independence, Bombay state had a five-fold larger spending on education than Bihar. Education reduces violence as well as TFR. He remarked that people want change. So, programs are required that can be game-changers. He mentioned 3 or 4 such programs like the Bicycle Yojana for school girls. You require a social reform movement and not just laws.
Mr. Gavin McGillivray, Head, DFID, India in his key note address held out that correcting people’s mistaken notions about what other people think can address violence against women and children. He quoted a school boy who wanted schools to teach its pupils how to behave decently with girls. Martin Rama from World Bank delivered the IGC India 10th Anniversary Lecture. He presented the magnitude of the gender gap specifically in India and reviewed what we think about policies to address the gender gap. He also touched on female labor force participation in India and Bihar. He pointed out that female labor force participation in rural areas of India is declining because of lack of suitable jobs for women and also societal norms of patriarchy where women are not supposed to go out to work. A positive aspect of gender equality in India is that 13 percent of pilots in India are women.
While giving the Special Address, Mr. Alkesh Wadhwani, Director, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation wanted to talk about how to see that laws to address the gender gap can be implemented effectively. He said there has been an increase from 38 to 55 percent in economic independence of women due to self-help groups. To effect norm change and behavioural change, mobile phones can be used and the Foundation has partnered with the Health Ministry and Jeevika to achieve gender equality by using mobiles given to ASHA workers. He lauded Bihar for being one of the front-runners in addressing gender issues.
Dr. N. Vijayalakshmi (IAS), Managing-Director, Women Development Corporation, Government of Bihar, pointed out that child marriage has declined from 69 to 42 percent now and malnutrition has dropped from 55 to 48 percent now in Bihar.
While welcoming the guests, Dr. Shaibal Gupta, Member-Secretary, ADRI and Bihar Lead, IGC-India pointed out the even wider gender gap in developing countries like India as compared to developed countries. Government of Bihar has made direct interventions to address gender disparity. Pronab Sen, Country-Director, IGC-India gave the vote of thanks and said that the issues being discussed were applicable not only to Bihar but to India and beyond as well.
Subsequently, Anandi Mani, University of Oxford talked about how poverty affects people’s choices and behaviour. Women suffer more from depression because of the poverty and uncertainty of income and the sheer work load.
In the post-lunch session’s panel discussion on women economic empowerment: constraints and solutions, it was pointed out that empowerment is the key to close the gender gap and discussion on closing this gap is not just about women but also about other identities that witness wider gaps. Positive correlation for women working outside the household is witnessed with respect to domestic violence. Bringing changes in social norms will require a shift of focus from the adults towards children and youth. This session was chaired by Dr. N. Vijayalakshmi and moderated by Niveditha Menon of the Centre for Budget and Policy Studies. Girija Borker (World Bank), Jonathan Phillips (University of Sao Paulo), Tanushree Goyal (University of Oxford), Sheetal Sekhri (University of Virginia), Shubha Chakravarty (World Bank) and Tarun Jain (IIM-A) were the panellists.
Special Lecture-2 was delivered by Devaki Jain of the Institute of Social Studies Trust and chaired by Dr Pronab Sen, Country Director (IGC, India).
Another panel discussion on gender and labour aimed to deepen our understanding of what matters and what works to empower females and set them on a positive healthy trajectory. This discussion was rooted in questions central to the Saksham Initiative for What Works, Bihar, anchored by the Centre for Catalyzing Change (C3) and their partners. It focuses on the biggest contemporary challenges like women’s declining labor force participation, their safety, mobility, and how skilling can reach women. Also, it looks at how resilient agencies can be built and at both micro and macro-economic questions. Supply and demand factors that influence both the sexes, access to incomes and good quality work are critical. This panel was moderated by Yamini Atmavilas (BMGF) and other panellists included Ashmita Gupta( ADRI), Ashwini Deshpande (Ashoka University), Farzana Afridi(ISI-D), Nilanjana Sengupta(ICRW), Sher Singh Verick(ILO) and Sonal De Desai(University of Maryland). It was chaired by Prof. Prabhat P Ghosh, Director ADRI.
Brief Note: According to the Global Gender Gap (GGG) Report for 2018, which includes 149 countries with available data, not a single country in the world has succeeded in closing the gender gap completely. Globally, there is still a 32 percent gender gap that needs to be closed. While many countries have made remarkable progression in closing gender gap, countries in regions like South Asia are still lagging behind. In case of India, gender gap has widened in the recent past. The country holds 108th position for its overall gender gap and 147thon the parameter of health and survival rate.India has been experiencing a trend of defeminisation of the workforce since mid-2000s. Like India, over the past decade, Bihar has made impressive strides in closing the gap, especially with regard to poverty, health and education, through improved governance and service delivery mechanism; better infrastructure to the last mile. More importantly, the state’s visionary and forward-looking approach to address inequality and gender discrimination- through the Cycle Yojana, KanyaUtthan Yojana, campaigns on child marriage and dowry and livelihood promotion - has visibly transformed the gender dynamics of the state. Bihar has had a mixed performance in closing gender gaps. While gender gaps in elementary schooling have narrowed, maternal mortality has declined, women and men have the same types of jobs, and child sex ratio has improved; adult women in Bihar remain twice as likely to be illiterate than adult men, and female labour force participation in the state is lowest in the country (World Bank Group, 2016). One of the imminent gender concerns of the government remains the skewed sex ratio, lower than the national average. The state sex ratio decreased further by one point, from 919 in 2001 to 918 in 2011. Within this background, affirmative action for gender equality in governance and political decision-making draws significance for vitiating these intersections.
To stimulate thoughts on this important issue within the context of India, International Growth Centre of London School of Economics, Asian Development Research Institute in collaboration with Women Development Corporation, Government of Bihar and Centre for Catalyzing Change (C3) is organising a conference on Closing the Gender Gap on December 6thand 7th2019 at Hotel Lemon Tree, Patna and will host panels on issues linked to Gender, Empowerment, Labour, Education and Health.On behalf of organisers, I am pleased to invite you to attend the Conference.
As part of the Conference, Gavin McGillivray (Head DFID India) will deliver the Keynote Address; Martin Rama (Chief Economist World Bank) will deliver the IGC India 10th Anniversary Lecture which will be preside by Shri Sushil Kumar Modi, Hon’ble Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar. As part of the programme,Prof Anandi Mani (University of Oxford), Prof Manoj Mohanan (Duke University), Prof Anu Rammohan (University of Western Australia) and Prof Devaki Jain (ISST Trust) will deliver Special Lectures.