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Nod to India’s female lawmakers highlights how few there are On day celebrating women, reminder of lingering gender gap
(about 9 hours later)
NEW DELHI — What was meant as a gesture of respect toward women ended up reminding India that it needed to improve female representation in politics. International Women’s Day on Tuesday celebrated women and their accomplishments, but it also offered a stark reminder of the gender divides in rights, representation and pay.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for only female lawmakers to address the Indian parliament on International Women’s Day included silence — because there weren’t enough women to speak. The day carried the theme “Pledge for Parity” — a phrase and hashtag born out of the World Economic Forum’s recent projection that the progress on achieving global gender parity is slowing.
Of 543 elected members in the lower house, only 62 are women — or just 12 percent. The global average is 22 percent for women in Parliament, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union Google’s home page on Tuesday featured a video of women and girls dreaming and doing big things. Twitter and Facebook feeds filled with quotes from inspirational women and calls to action.
The women who spoke in the assembly Tuesday raised issues including allowing women’s entry into Hindu temples and better education for girls. They also demanded renewed effort in passing long-stalled legislation to require that 33 percent of lawmakers be women. But the U.N. cultural agency also offered sobering statistics: More than 63 million girls are excluded from school in more than 200 countries across the world. Almost 16 million girls between the ages of 6 and 11 — compared with about 8 million boys — will never get the chance to learn to read or write in primary school “if current trends continue,” according to a report from UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics.
“Surely, maximum governance also means giving us women our legitimate due, namely the much-awaited Women’s Reservation Bill,” opposition Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi said, chided her colleagues for failing to push it through since it was first floated in Parliament at least two decades ago. Women also account for 70 percent of the world’s hungry, the U.N. reported, in part because longstanding discrimination has limited their access to food.
The legislation aims to correct some of the social imbalance between genders, but has been blocked by powerful socialist groups and political leaders worried that a female quota system would cost their male-dominated parties seats. President Barack Obama, a father of two daughters, said in a statement that allowing women and girls around the world to rise and achieve their full potential will mean “a brighter, more peaceful and more prosperous future for us all.”
Communist lawmaker K. Sreemathi Teacher sought to shame her male colleagues by noting that Afghanistan’s parliament is 28 percent female, even with the Taliban presenting a constant threat to women. Hillary Clinton, vying to become the country’s first woman president, tweeted Tuesday that advancing the status of women and girls will make economies grow and nations more secure.
Her colleague from West Bengal state’s Trinamool Congress party agreed. “It’s the right — and smart — thing to do,” she wrote.
“We don’t want a separate seat in the bus. We want to drive that bus. We don’t want separate queues. I want to earn money and pay my taxes,” said Shatabdi Roy. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed empowering women as he spoke of preventable deaths during child birth and those who are subjected to “genital mutilation.”
Meanwhile, Bhavna Gawali from the Hindu nationalist group Shiv Sena party said male priests were being ridiculous in holding to the ancient, sexist practice of barring women from the inner sanctum of the Shani temple in the western state of Maharashtra. “While we talk of equality, we can’t go to temples,” she said. Actress Emma Watson, kicking off a weeklong U.N. arts event aimed at initiating a dialogue about gender, said it’s not enough for people to rationally understand the necessity of gender equality.
Not all of the women in the assembly were prepared to speak, but after all those who wanted to speak had taken their turns, there was enough time left for the Speaker to ask the men in the house for input on the day’s agenda. “It’s also about making them feel it in their bones,” she said.
Some countries treat the day as a holiday, and women could be seen on a sunny Tuesday in the Romanian capital carrying flowers, the traditional gift. Elsewhere in Bucharest, women brandished a banner saying “March 8 is for fighting.”
In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for only female lawmakers to address parliament on Tuesday included silence because there weren’t enough women to speak. Of the 543 elected members in India’s lower house, 12 percent are women.
In China, International Women’s Day is treated as a one-off where state media are fond of publishing photo galleries of “Beautiful Women Reporters” covering a ceremonial legislature.
The Communist Party-run People’s Daily made no mention of leadership roles in a front-page editorial Tuesday that said women “can not only help to make homes more pleasant and lively, but also contribute their valuable female perspective and efforts to the progress of the entire society.”
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Associated Press writers Ashok Sharma in New Delhi, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Dave Bryan in New York contributed to this report.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.