Musings & Amusings

South Asia is one of the worst places in the world to be female

India’s bachelor leader, Narendra Modi, struggles with the opposite sex. For a man usually so eloquent, Mr Modi occasionally lands his sandalled foot in his mouth: on June 7th he made an especially crass comment during an otherwise successful visit to Bangladesh, praising his host, Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister, for being tough on terrorism “despite being a woman”. Critics back home accused Mr Modi of having retrograde views, typical of those who revere the country as “Mother India” but who treat women atrociously. Yet such attitudes are widely shared, not just in India but across South Asia. The whole region fails to grant women equal respect or opportunities.

That may seem odd, given how prominent a role women play in South Asian politics. China, Japan, Russia and many other countries have failed to produce a female prime minister or president. South Asia has had several. If Hillary Clinton is elected next year to lead the world’s most powerful democracy, it will be a full half-century after Indira Gandhi first led the world’s largest one. Sri Lanka’s Sirimavo Bandaranaike pipped her to become the world’s first female head of government, in 1960. In that country, uniquely, both a mother and her daughter have held the highest political office. In the late 1990s Chandrika Kumaratunga even served as president at the same time as her ageing mother, Mrs Bandaranaike, completed a third, mostly ceremonial, term as prime minister.

Women prosper at the top of South Asian democracies partly because they are propelled by dynasties that long formed the core of political parties. In Bangladesh the two battling begums have ensured that no other politician gets a look-in.

But if South Asia is one of the best places on Earth for elite women who aspire to a political career, it is one of the worst places to be an ordinary woman. The occasional chauvinism faced by females at the top pales beside the burdens heaped on those at the bottom. South Asian women fare terribly in a “Mothers’ Index” put together in May by Save the Children, a British charity. It ranks 179 countries according to the well-being of their women, using indicators such as maternal mortality, the survival of young children and women’s involvement in politics. Subcontinental nations come out the worst in Asia. Women in India and Pakistan (ranked 140th and 149th) have a quality of life only a little brighter than those in Afghanistan (152nd) and far behind those in China (61st), who are far more likely to survive childbirth, or see their offspring spend a long time in school.

Let money do the talking

Yet South Asia will need to spend a lot more on women in order to see further improvements. The region devotes barely 1% of GDP to public health (China spends 3.1%).This puts a heavy burden on those who give birth and take most responsibility for child care.

The resources spent on women in South Asia are shared more unevenly than in most places. Among the richest quintile in Delhi (it is a similar story in Dhaka and elsewhere), women can enjoy maternal and other care close to first-world standards. By contrast the poorest quintile in the same cities, especially in slums, endure conditions as bad—or worse—than in far poorer villages: in Delhi only 19% of such women have someone skilled present when they give birth. Barely half of their children have had a measles jab and nearly three-fifths are stunted. Reducing such inequality would be one way to make existing resources go further in South Asia. But that is likely to happen no quicker than changing old-fashioned attitudes to women.

Source: The Economist (Asia)