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Human Development in South Asia Report Documents Discrimination Against Women

2001-01-11

'Human development, if not engendered, is fatally endangered.' (Mahbub ul Haq)

Twenty-five years after the first United Nations Conference on Women, South Asian women lag far behind men in virtually all human development measures, according to the Human Development in South Asia 2000 Report: The Gender Question, the fourth in the annual series. (The report series was established by the late Mahbub ul Haq, founder and chief architect of the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Reports.)

In previous years, this series has documented the magnitude of human deprivation in the region. "This year's report focuses on the disproportionate share of this burden of deprivation that is borne by the women of South Asia," said Khadija Haq, at the Report's official Canadian launch held in Ottawa in December 2000. Ms. Haq is the Report Team Leader, and Director of the Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Centre in Islamabad. (Her presentation was followed by commentaries from Maureen O'Neil, President of the International Development Research Centre, and Rieky Stuart, Executive Director of Oxfam Canada.)

Gender-discriminatory practices

"The Report analyses gender-discriminatory practices in the legal, economic, political and social spheres," states Haq in the Foreword, "and it raises the following questions: How have patriarchal systems affected women's lives? Why are women invisible in economic and political spheres? How can women's capabilities be enhanced? How can women's economic and political opportunities be enlarged? And what institutional mechanisms are needed to bridge the prevalent gender gaps in South Asia?"

Among its findings:

• As a region, South Asia has both the lowest literacy rates and the largest gap between the rates of male and female literacy — 64.1 % and 37.2 % respectively in 1997. While South Asian women make up about 21 % of the world's female population, 44 % of the world's illiterate women are South Asian.


• Discrimination against South Asian women begins at, or even before, birth. Female foeticide and infanticide, neglect of health, and gender-biased feeding practices combined with heavy work burdens: all are manifestations of son preference and the patriarchal structures which prevail across the region. South Asia has one of the most distorted sex ratios in the world — there are only 940 females for every 1000 males. (The global average is 1060 females per 1000 males.)


• Official statistics in South Asia show women's economic participation as a mere fraction of that of men. As the majority of South Asian women work in the informal sector and as unpaid family helpers, their work goes unrecognized in national systems of accounting. South Asian women's real GDP per capita at US $874 is lower than any other region in the world, including sub-Saharan Africa.


• Women's political representation is very poor in South Asia: only 7 % of South Asian parliamentarians are women.

In its concluding chapter, the Report provides a framework for action to help women achieve complete equality with men "in critical areas" including: equality under the law, equality in access to education and health services, equality in economic opportunity, and equality in governance.

John Eberlee

For more information:

South Asia Partnership Canada, Tel: (613) 241-1333; Fax: (613) 241-1129; Email: sap@sapcanada.org

Excerpt from Human Development in South Asia 2000: "The Network of Invisibility, Exclusion, and Inequality"

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