Women’s Day: How are Hema, Rekha, Jaya & Sushma?

The President of India Ram Nath Kovind put it simply at a function called earlier this year to honour women achievers who have broken stereotypes and shattered the glass ceiling. The progress of women, the President said, is a barometer for progress in any country or society. This March 8, as we celebrate International Women’s Day, the report card does not look pretty. 

On the one hand, the women the President honoured, and those featured in a coffee table book  published by the Women and Child Development ministry (the book includes Aishwarya Rai Bachchan), have stood out for their exceptional firsts. Less in the limelight but also moving ahead are the likes of “Hema, Rekha, Jaya aur Sushma”, typecast as the urban Indian women in that famous ad for Nirma detergents, first doing laundry and years later moving out of their homes to push an ambulance stuck in slush while suited and booted men stood by.  As Hemant Mehta, MD of the leading market research player IMRB Kantar writes in a new book (“Understanding Indian Consumers”, Oxford University Press, D. Maheshwaran and Thomas Puliyel), “The docile housewives of the 1980s, who were content with, rejoiced even, in just doing the laundry, have now become confident women who refuse to be characterised by their housekeeping skills.” 

On the other hand, the largest and widest survey by India, the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4), which interviewed over 800,000 people, tells us a very different story and raises many red flags. 

More than half of Indian women are anaemic, almost unchanged from the figures of NFHS-3 survey of a decade ago. Almost one-third of married women (31 per cent) have experienced physical, sexual, or emotional violence by their husband and 24 per cent have experienced violence in the 12 months preceding the survey.  Women and men are both “most likely to agree” that a husband is justified in hitting or beating his wife if she shows disrespect for her in-laws (37 per cent and 29 per cent, respectively). The percentage of women who have some money of their own that they alone can use has actually declined slightly from 45 per cent in 2005-06 (NFHS-3) to 42 per cent in 2015-16 (NFHS-4). In other words, just under 60 per cent of women have no money they can call their own though women with bank or savings accounts that “they themselves use” have more than tripled, from 15 per cent in NFHS-3 to 53 per cent in NFHS-4.

So the Hemas, Rekhas, Jayas and Sushmas taken as a whole and spread across India (NFHS-4 covers all 29 States, seven Union Territories and 640 districts) are not doing as well as their select urban counterparts appear to be. The two perspectives are of course very different. IMRB seeks to understand consumers and brand consumption in urban India while NFHS is a nationally treasured source of data on health.  On the surface, the two sides offer a glimpse into the tear we see in India, where the affluent pockets are apparently doing well but the bulk of the society is not. Beneath the surface, higher consumption and improved standards of living in urban areas have not changed any of the deeply ingrained gender biases as can be seen from the sex ratio at birth. For children born in the last five years, the sex ratio at birth (girls/1,000 boys) is 919 with urban India (sex ratio 899) worse off than the rural (sex ratio 927).

There are as many if not more programmes and announcements from the government, like the push for women empowerment led by the Prime Minister as a part of the ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ (BBBP) programme. But what has not changed, and in fact been given a negative push in recent times, is the kind of pronouncements and remarks that show a deep seated mindset of patriarchal control and attendant ideologies that militate against the very idea of women empowerment. 

Consider that one arm of the government has published the coffee table to inspire other women to rise and take up challenging roles. More than half the achiever women featured in the book are in trousers and jeans; we see tattoos, swimsuits, shorts as the women are captured doing what they like best and are good at. From other official quarters and influencers, we find remarks of the kind made recently by Minister of State Satyapal Singh, a former IPS officer, that no one would marry a woman in jeans at a marriage mandap. What he intended to convey is still unclear but the headline message that stands out is that this attire for women is not favoured in India. 

Singh is not alone in airing sentiments of a similar variety and getting away unchecked. In the past, the Rashtriya Swamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat has been cited for remarks that discriminate against women.  Minister Singh’s remarks were made in the presence of the UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who himself has been known to have made remarks like women must be controlled and protected by their fathers, husbands and sons.

When the policy leadership offers this thinking, it will be well-nigh impossible to move the needle of some key NFHS indicators India must push if growth has to have any meaning. These are not a few remarks by a few people. They give power to millions more who still think in the same mould, as the NFHS survey has shown.  They mirror a thinking that must be changed by a combination of active communications, strong role models and the rule of law. Change is not a given and needs a constant push and lots of investment. But no amount of effort will yield results when the mind is beset with all the wrong notions and ideas, aired freely and frequently with no one to check the wild and the wayward. Till that happens, the only face of change will be Hema, Rekha Jaya and Sushma made to look better in ads that seem smarter.

(The writer is a journalist and faculty member at SPJIMR)