At least 80 per cent of the women in the poorest 20 per cent in the country are illiterate, a report from the United Nations on gender equality has highlighted. The report also pointed out that data shows a Dalit woman on average dies 14.6 years younger than a higher caste woman.
The report from UN Women, titled 'Turning Promises into Action: Gender Equality in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,' takes stock of the global status of key aspects of the gender equality as a part of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) that was set by the UN two years ago. The 17 SDGs aim to end poverty and hunger, assure gender equality and build a life of dignity for all in the course of 15 years.
In a foreword to this latest report, current Secretary-General of UN António Guterres has stressed that gender equality is imperative to the success of 2030 Agenda. "Gender equality is a goal in its own right," he writes, adding that it is a "powerful force for upholding the main promise of the 2030 Agenda - to leave no one behind."
Citing USAID data, the report compared the status of citizens aged 15-49 in the households in the top and bottom 20% of wealth distribution and found out that the illiteracy rates in women in the bottom 20% of the population is more than 80% while that of the men in the top 20% is less than 10%.
A crucial part of the report illustrates the compounding effect of wealth and location in widening gender gap. Based on Demographic and Health Surveys data, in India, a 20 to 24-year-old woman from a poor rural household is over five times as likely to be married before 18 and 5.8 times as likely to become an adolescent mother as one from a rich urban household. As for education, she is over 20 times as likely to have never attended school as compared to her rich urban counterpart.
The report, which comments on multiple and intersecting inequalities worldwide, also highlights the compounding effect of caste on gender and noted that a woman's caste can increase her exposure to mortality.
"The average age of death of Dalit woman is 14.6 years younger than that of higher caste woman," it said, citing data from the Survey on Morbidity and Health Care in the NSS 60th round survey This, it said, could be a due to factors like poor access to sanitation facilities, inadequate water supply and healthcare.
The influence of wealth on gender inequality is also evident in terms of work-time distribution, the report observed.
Citing a 2010 study ‘Understanding Poverty: Insights Emerging from Time Use of the Poor’, women who live in poor households spend about 24% of their work time collecting firewood, food, water and housing material, while their counterparts in non-poor households allocate about half of that time to such tasks.
As UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka notes, the progress for women and girls remain "unacceptably" low. "Even where progress has been made," she writes, "it has been highly uneven."
