By Sr. Justine Gitanjali Senapati, CSJ
“Achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls is the unfinished business of our time, and the greatest human rights challenge in our world,” says Antonio Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
The world is going to celebrate the International Women’s Day on March 8, 2018. This year’s priority theme for 62nd United Nation’s Commission for the Status of Women is “Challenges and opportunities in achieving gender equality and the empowerment of rural women and girls” and the review theme as “Participation in and access of women to the media, and information and communications technologies and their impact on and use as an instrument for the advancement and empowerment of women.”
A woman or a man is an incomplete face of humanity without the other. I am happy to be born as a woman. My parents are from both Dalit and indigenous communities are known as excluded communities in India’s caste societal order as untouchable and most vulnerable. I come from the state of Odisha, eastern India, which is considered to be the poorest region. As per Odisha Human Development (UNDP) Report 2004 that the Indigenous and Dalit people living Below Poverty Line in this region with the percentage as high as 92.4% and 88.90% with literacy rate Dalit and Indigenous female as low as 36.08% and 26.87% in comparison to state literacy rate is 65.12%.
Parents as well as grand-parents sowed the seeds of equality and confidence in me and my siblings but ensured that we respect others deprived of basic necessities of life so that we understand the poverty around us. Both of my parents were teachers in the state-run schools. Either at home or in the surrounding, we never felt discriminated or restricted going out to a river for the bath, catch fish or haunting fruits in the forests. Freedom, dignity and equity of a person valued more than the wealth. It is only when I moved out of my home and surroundings for higher schoolings; I was dumbstruck by the deprivation and discriminations of women and girl children.
In India, caste system not only regulates the social and economic life but denies these communities of equal opportunities imposed by certain groups on others to participate in the basic political, economic and social functioning of society. Nearly 350 million belong to these communities constitute 25% of its populations with restrictions on access to resources and life.
Many Dalit families are landless and daily laborers. It is the result of high illiteracy rates, especially among women. The charitable organization, OXFAM India reports that caste and religion are primary factors of India’s inequality and poverty. In this context, women and girl children face the brunt of it. They could be married off at the very young age as parents cannot afford to buy them education and earnings.
The Dalit/indigenous woman faces thrice discriminated; as a subaltern group, religious minority and as a woman in the caste, patriarchy and religious majoritarian country. The female feticide is rampant in modern society; a curse that has not affected Dalit and tribal communities at least in our region. Yet, patriarchal system is slowly swallowing the entire society that had been untouched. According to the Indian Human Development Survey (IHDS), conducted by the University of Maryland and the National Council of Applied Economic Research in 2004-05 and 2011-12, only 5% of women in India choose their husbands, while 80% need permission to visit a health centre. As a whole, society is stereotyped, biased and often a victim of superstitions.
Although women in general face violence and discriminations, yet the plight of Dalit and tribal women are multiples; face untouchable practices, discriminations, violence as well as economic restrictions and deprivation, with extreme poverty pushing them for easy targets for traffickers for sex and enslavement. Indian law prohibits discrimination and violence against Dalit people, but in reality, atrocities are a daily occurrence. As per India’s National Crime Records Bureau, more than four Dalit women are raped every day in India.
International Women’s Day is a time to reflect on progress made thousands of women; both rural and urban cities; literate and educated are the heroes of women empowerment. To call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of their countries and communities. To celebrate rural and urban activists who transform women’s lives, who come to the realization that they are happy to be born as women and could bring about the change in society. We need to join for this year’s campaign action to “Commit to Press for Progress”: To maintain gender parity mindset, challenge the stereotypes and bias, forge positive visibility of women and influence others beliefs/actions and Celebrate Women’s Achievements.
For me being born as a woman in India, and now living in New York, representing the Congregations of St. Joseph (Global) at the United Nations is like a dream. It is one of the rarest and richest experiences in my entire life. I gain insights into growing perception of my personal life as well as the situation of the global-gender issues. Often here, we discuss and work for the critical policy initiatives which could protect the dignity and rights of every woman and girl child in the world.
Society can never become sustainable, vibrant and grow till women enjoy their full dignity and rights as equal citizens of the nation. The culture of gender-based poverty, abuse and exploitation has to end with a new generation of equality that lasts. Gender inequalities are nothing but male chauvinism that needs to be dismantled for equity, dignity and freedom of every person in the world.
Wish India with diversity and plurality of every citizen promotes women’s dignity and freedom free from caste, patriarchy and gender inequality.
(Sr. Justine Gitanjali Senapati, an Indian national based in New York, is a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph. Since 2014 she serves at UNO as a member of NGO for the Congregations of St. Joseph that includes 30 Independent congregations as Main Global Representatives.)