This study seeks to understand the changing status of women in India and Canada with special reference to social, legal and educational aspects. It seeks to argue constitutional and legal provisions in India in the context of social reality, interpretation of religious texts from social perspective and role of educational counsellors in raising consciousness and in providing girls and boys skills to effect change in perceptions about the roles of women and men in society.
I am thankful to all the contributors, Dr. A.A. Engineer, Professor Naomi Griffiths, Ms. G.J. Unnithan, Dr. Indu Mathur, Dr. R.R. Gupta, Dr. Nandini Upreti, Dr. Anam Jaitly, Dr. Sushila Jain and Ms. Madhu Shastri for their scholarly contributions.
I am also thankful to Printwell Publishers for their speed and efficiency.
The problem of the status of women involves equality between men and women. The women, throughout the world have been considered the second sex-the inferior sex. Equality and status are closely associated with power. Changing status involves the sharing of power on equal footing with men in decision making and its implementation at informal and formal sector. The societal value frame work plays an important role in determining the changing status of power equations, and, hence, the status of women involves the distribution and redistribution of power.
Social sciences are in the process of a creative rethink. We are rethinking about development and we are rethinking about women and we are rethinking about equality. The process of development in the third world countries and internationalisation of the women's movements compels the social scientists to concern themselves with the objective analysis of changing reality throughout the world and understand women's position in the changing scenario. "The women'squestion today is........ no longer an issue confined to the position of women within the family or their rights to equality with men in different aspects of social life. It is part of the total far broader question regarding the direction of change of that process."1 And the improvement in the status of women depends on the changing perceptions of the roles of women and men in the society. In the postcolonial era economic, plitical and social changes are taking place; they are linked with the problems of women all over the world and they have great im-pact in the third world countries. In early seventies, it was realised that the process of development could not be accelerated in the third world because nearly half the population consisting of women had no access to the process of development and their problem was not taken care of.
A new consciousness has been developing among the educated women since the seventies. U. N. Decade for women did very little to improve the status of women but it helped in activating a large number of educated women at national and international level. They have become articulate about their rights and status. This consciousness compelled them to demand economic, political and social justice and equality with men. In India also as A. R. Desai put it, "Indian women are developing a new sensitivity and consciousness which will no longer tolerate the suffocating, familial, institutional, political and cultural norms which place them in a humiliating, subject status. This sensitivity may not be able to express itself in a clearly articulated intellectual logical form, but it is manifesting itself as a deep under-current of ferment which is slowly acquiring a higher voltage and is acting as a powerful force in the innermost depths of society.
Half of the world's population known as better half are women. But better half are great sufferes in mendominated society under menmade laws. Development has to be a multidimensional process having effect on different segments of society. Improvement in the status of women will have effect on political, economic and social aspects of the society and societal value frame-work. Women's personalities are intrinsically women with socio-cultural and economic aspects of society, so their issues are not isolated but integrated with the problems of overall development. While women represent half the global population and one third of the labour force, they receive only one-tenth of the global income and less than one percent of world property. They also are responsible for two thirds of all working hours." said former U. N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim in his report to the U. N. Commission on the status of women. Also, two out of three of the world's illiterates today are women; while general illiteacy rate is falling, the female-illiteracy rate is increasing. In the third world, women are responsible for more than 50 per-cent of all food production. On the African continent women are engaged in 60 to 80 percent of agricultural work, 50 percent of animal husbandry and 100 percent of food processing. In industrialised end so called advanced countries, women get only one half to three quarters of what men earn at the same jobs and they are categorised in lower paying female intesive jobs. The issue is why such discriminatory practices against women? Unless and until majority of women exercise influence on decision making processes even the progressive legislations in favour of women will not bring a change in the status of women.
Women's issues are inter woven with the larger issues of peace and security, poverty and affluence, development and under-development and vice.versa; if women's status is not improved, they are not given equality vis-a-vis men, probably the pressing issues before the world community will not be solved in a desired way. Deveki Jain has rightly said, "Most of the political and economic systems operating on the globe today are spent forces. They have not been able to contend with inequality, inflation, or the threat of war. No global organization (such as the United Nations) or global ideology (such as Marxism) is able to deflect the world from this path since they all are parties to the existing system, women, however, can generate these new energies-because women are not parties to the system. But how can this be accomplished? In organic way".
Nehru's view on the status of women was that of equality. He could envisage women's contribution in nation-building task. He said, "We should like to displace the picture so deeply im-pressed upon the social imagination of man standing forward to conquer new worlds, woman following wearily behind with a baby in her arms. The picture which we now envisage is that of man and woman comrades of the road, going forward together, the child joyously shared by both. Such a reality we feel cannot but raise the manhood and womanhood of any nation". It ex-plains sharing of power and responsibility equally by men and women.
In this book, the changing status of women has been discuss-ed from various aspects. It deals with the conceptual frame-work, constitutional and legal provisions, socio-economic factors and educational aspects in changing scenario. The problems of the Hindu women as well as the Muslim women have been analysed, in order to understand a difference between the socio-legal position of the two inspite of similar constitutional and political rights. In the book, one chapter on the Canadian woman has been added in order to have comparative understanding of the status of Canadian and Indian women. Unless and until we have a comparative study of the women of different cultures, it is not possible to understand their problems. We find, most of the problems of Canadian and Indian women are similar inspite of cultural differences. The women in both the countries do not enjoy equality with men..
Dr. Anam Jaitly in "Avoiding Conceptual 'Rat Traps': A Normative Exercise Towards an Enduring Status for Women in India" views the status of women against the background of international order and national scene. He says, "Internationally, the world today witnesses reigning contrasts of development-maldevelopment, affluence-poverty, unsatiable consumerism abject hunger and malnutrition. The national scene likewise depicts. the fact of progress and achievement on the one hand and the face of poverty and bare survival on the other... Thus the twin realities of international and nationol orders clearly bring out the central place of injustice, oppression and dominance in human affairs, which does not distinguish between male and female. Therefore, he thinks "every issue is a woman's issue". And "the woman's status in India is inseparably linked with the wider social status of India, that no sectional promotion of women's interests is possible without catering to the wider sociopolitics cultural issues of existence and survival...." But Dr. Jaitly does not realise that in every class, in all the levels of oppression women are more oppressed than men-there is greater injustice against women and women's sufferings are more than men's. In the end, however, Dr. Jaitly accepts equal power sharing and resource sharing between men and women and gives some concrete policy proposal which are worth consideration.
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