Gender Equality Context in India

With 1.2 billion people, India is expected to be the world’s most populous country by 2050. The lives of hundreds of millions of people can be improved: in recent decades, India made progress and improved child nutrition, immunisation rates and education enrollment rates to get economic growth. Yet, gender disparities persist: violence against women is still high, women’s participation in government is low, and discriminatory dowry practices continue.

The Constitution grants equality to women, ensures equality before the law, and prohibits discrimination against any citizen on the basis of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. It also allowed ‘personal’ laws, resulting in a dual system that allowed forms of discrimination against girls and women. Under civil law, for example, the minimum age for marriage is 18 years for women and 21 years for men, but in Muslim Personal Law (interpretations change) Muslims can determine when marriage is acceptable (sometimes at puberty).

Implementation of relevant legislation, such as the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, was weak, partly because the statute is unclear if it supersedes personal law. Similarly, The Hindu Succession Act of 2005 grants Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist and Jain women equal inheritance rights to ancestral and jointly owned property, but Muslims may allow daughters to inherit only half of things compared to their sons.

India launched the National Mission for Empowerment of Women (NMEW) in 2010, mandated to facilitate the coordination of all programmes related to women’s welfare and their socio-economic development across all ministries and departments. The government leaded initiatives focused on gender equality and other programmes that, although not focused exclusively on girls and women, benefited them, including its promotion of access to clean water and sanitation.