Status of women: a comparative study of female and male household heads in India
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Status of women: a comparative study of female and male household heads in India Ankita Chakrabarti1 Received: 1 February 2020 / Accepted: 10 September 2020 © China Population and Development Research 2020
Abstract The social reality of gender discrimination in India is stratified, multi-phasic and structurally complex. Studies suggest that there are obvious differences in the conditions of households headed by male and female and that female-headed households are more disadvantaged poses the question of gender discrimination at household level. The study explores how gender roles and norms, impact family head’s ability to exercise resources and agency differently, by gender and how women’s agency is often restricted compared to men’s. An innovative method to measure gender status called Gender Status Index is adopted from the quantitative part of the African Gender and Development Index that compares the status of female heads to the male heads in India. The index measures the gender gap in social, economic and political aspects of life among the family heads with help of data obtained from the Indian Human Development Survey round two (2011–2012), which is a nationally representative, multi-topic survey. The nearer the score is towards 1, the better is the gender status along with a shrinking gender gap. Results indicate that the status of female heads is indeed poor, showcasing a value of 0.555 with a wide social and economic and even wider political gap. The paper concludes that the status of women is poor irrespective of their head position in the family. The role played by a female head both as a provider and caregiver does not earn much of a higher status than male heads. Thus, the role of ‘head’ for a female is not a powerful agency to improve women’s access and control of resources. Keywords Agency · Capabilities · Female-headed households · Gender role · Gender status index
* Ankita Chakrabarti [email protected]; [email protected] 1
Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
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A. Chakrabarti
1 Introduction A household is not only an economic unit, it is also a unit of co-residence and reproduction, with idiosyncrasies of gender roles. The role is the function of the people in relationships while status is the position given to an individual in the social system which is essentially acquired. In words of Stromquist (1998) “Not only have roles been made different between women and men but the rewards and the prestige attached to that roles- and, thus, their statuses-are also different.” The family roles thus perceived by men and women based on their gender ideologies are very different and are rooted in strong patriarchal social processes. The term ‘head of the household’ indicates that a hierarchical relationship exists between the family members and the head, who is the most governing person in the house in terms of decision making and/or financially managing the household. It may so happen that the head may
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