Gender Inequality: A Comparison of India and USA (original) (raw)

Reflecting on India’s Development, 2018

Abstract

Gender inequality refers to the differential ability of men and women to access society’s resources and to receive its privileges. Gender inequality is complicated, because every individual, categorized as either male or female, also falls somewhere within a matrix of domination that includes other dimensions like race/ethnicity, social class, age and sexuality. The paper makes an attempt to compare gender inequality in a developed (USA) and developing (India) country on dimensions such as education, health, labour force participation and politics based on Gender Data Portal of World Bank for the period 2007–2017. In terms of Government Expenditure on Education, USA spends much more than India on education. The number of out of schoolchildren has decreased for India but has increased for USA from 2007 to 2013. Primary and Secondary School enrolment has also shown an increase in India while a decline in USA. Gender inequality continues to have a negative impact on many health outcomes of Indian women. USA women fare better than Indian women at all indicators studied. The paper argues that if economic growth was the only criterion for labour force participation, then there should not be disparity among LFPR of males and females in USA, but lower LFPR for females than males in USA reflects disparity among males and females. About 81.94% of females in India were self-employed in 2017 as compared to only 7.34% in USA. India and USA both fare poorly in political participation of women. The paper thus concludes that although India performs poorly across various socio-economic indicators as compared to USA, one can say that there is no perfect gender equality in any of these two countries.

Ruby Dhar hasn't uploaded this paper.

Let Ruby know you want this paper to be uploaded.

Ask for this paper to be uploaded.