Popular culture is rife with examples of disproportionate representation of women’s right to equality
According to UN Women (2024): “In a world facing multiple crises that are putting immense pressure on communities, achieving gender equality is more vital than ever.”
In the Article titled: International Women’s Day 2024: ‘Invest in women: Accelerate progress’ published on 14 December, 2023 on the website: unwomen.org
“Gender equality remains the greatest human rights challenge. Investing in women is a human rights imperative and cornerstone for building inclusive societies. Progress for women benefits us all.”
The idealism remains in: “Ensuring women’s and girls’ rights across all aspects of life is the only way to secure prosperous and just economies, and a healthy planet for future generations.” (UN Women, 2024).
UN Women is the United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. A global champion for women and girls, UN Women was established to accelerate progress on meeting their needs worldwide.
Google Doodles (2024) has succinctly delineated the historical significance of observing the 8th of March as International Women’s Day: “March 8th commemorates two early Women’s Day demonstrations, one in Saint Petersburg, and the other in New York City. While in different years and places, these rallies had common goals of achieving gender equality including fair and safe employment, the right to vote, and the right to hold public office.”
Google Doodles (2024) further elaborates that: “IWD marches today focus on issues like gender and racial wage gaps, reproductive rights, and the prevention of violence against women. Today, people celebrate women who have transformed society, fought for equality, and set positive examples for people everywhere.”
But the question which no one seems to be asking is whether gender equality would only have to be seen from the lens of the disadvantaged strata of society?
According to Farrell (2020): “A first wave of research acknowledged that elites are critical to understanding inequality.”
Hence, the scope of understanding gender inequality would need to assimilate elitist theories so that the intra-gender stratification can be accounted for.
As per the evaluative research of Keister et al. (2022) in the chapter entitled: Gendered Work And Family Arrangements, incorporated in their research article: Gender in the Elite (2022):
- “Researchers have also shown that the division of paid and unpaid labor in couples is core to understanding gendered patterns of labor market inequality
- A growing body of research suggests that elite work, the division of paid and unpaid labor, and related family dynamics are simultaneously important indicators and critical drivers of inequality
- Very high-income, high-wealth households have the resources to arrange work and family responsibilities in ways that reflect gendered power dynamics, social norms, and labour market pressures
- For instance, couples in the top one percent have more gender-traditional divisions of labour than even couples just slightly lower in the income and wealth distributions”
Therefore, it becomes imperative to understand how women perceive gender equality and whether the real destination in the journey of realising equality lies in attaining an equality to the dominant male gender or whether the dearth of opportunity amongst the feminine gender represents a greater impediment.
In thinking about an apt illustration, it would involve a situation whereby a woman namely Petra-Silvia while existing in an elitist environment would be conferred with the acknowledgements and laurels that were posthumously awarded to her late husband Dostoyevsky-Vitor. This form of recognition would be easily assimilated in oligopolist Russia whereby the widow could revel in the laurels of her affluent and influential dearly departed spouse for the enterprises of materialistic gain which Dostoyevsky-Vitor endeavoured during his lifetime.
But sometimes, rationality demands to interject with logical thinking and disillusion the practice of receiving awards for the works of one’s male spouse because this isn’t any palpable form of gender empowerment aimed at attaining gender equanimity.
Even popular culture is rife with examples of disproportionate representation of women’s right to equality.
For instance the recent gaffe by actress Poonam Pandey wherein it was posted on her Instagram handle that she had died due to cervical cancer only to resurface the week after looking like she had arisen from the grave after a deep death sleep. This distasteful social media influencing move took away crucial impetus that was being generated towards awareness of cervical cancer and ended up becoming an exploitative marketing tool.
In the same way, in Goa, the abrupt political move of the ruling political party in the State to consider fielding a female candidate for the South Goa LS Polls represents a move aimed at socially engineering public perceptions by seemingly demonstrating that their governance structure is gender inclusive when in fact male dominance in politics continues to be the norm as well as the preference.
The true test of gender resilience therefore should be that what would women be inclined to do if they weren’t disadvantaged by their submissive roles in their shared coexistence with the dominant male gender?
According to Gabriela Ramos, Assistant-Director General for the Social and Human Sciences of UNESCO, she read once that: “Diversity is a fact. Inclusion is an act,”
Gabriela Ramos (2023) in her Foreword to the UNESCO Report titled: Empowering women for the good of society: gender-based resilience, commented:
“Gender-based inclusion is not a zero-sum game. Increasing the benefits of some does not happen at the expense of others. All the evidence we have gathered shows that including and empowering women leads to greater pies, so to speak, so that everyone can enjoy greater welfare and well-being and thrive in more resilient economies and societies.”
Gender Resilience:
For any form of innate gender resilience to become evident, it would be a pre-requisite to adopt an individual and inclusive perspective and analyse the impact of shocks and structural changes on women, men and gender-diverse identities.
Resultantly, a gender transformative resilience model which moves away from what is considered “normal” (e.g. the breadwinner model for men versus the caregiver model for women) and looks at how to make change happen.
“Empowering women and men who live in poverty, also through the provision of quality education to all girls and boys; employing women, men and other gender-diverse people; debunking stereotypes; ensuring reproductive rights; and making infrastructures and services available to ease the life of all people constitute the pre-requisites of gender-based resilience.” (UNESCO, Women in Science, 2023).
