Chapter-7: Gender and Son Meta-Preference: Is Development Itself an Antidote?

In this chapter, the survey points that despite all the awareness drives to end sex selection, the preference for sons in India is still on. However, in recent years, it has taken a subtle form rather. The survey says that many Indian parents are opting to continue having children until they have a son or desired number of son. This so called “son meta preference” has avoided sex-selective abortion, but has hurt the female children by reducing resources available to them. The consequence is that India has 21 million unwanted girls today. Relevant points from this chapter are as follows:

What are economic benefits of gender equality as per survey?

The survey notes that while the intrinsic values of gender equality are incontestable, there is growing evidence greater personal agency, political power & public status and equal participation in labour force by women can result in significant gains in economic growth also. Citing IMF chief Christian Lagarde, survey says that women’s participation in the workforce to the level of men can boost the Indian economy by 27 percent.

What are sex ratio of the last child (SRLC)  finding that result in “Son meta preference” and “unwanted girls”?

The number of 21 million unwanted girls has been reached by looking at the sex ratio of the last child (SRLC) which is heavily skewed in favor of boys. Sex ratio of last birth (females per 100 births) has merely changed from 39.5% to 39% between 2005-06 and 2015-16. We note that as per WHO, the biologically determined natural sex ratio at birth is 1.05 boy for every girl. For India, this ratio is 1.82 for first born boys while 1.65 for last born boys. Comparing India’s ratio to Indonesia, survey concludes that in Indonesia, the sex ratio at birth is close to biological ideal whether the last child is boy or girl. Further, in India also, the SLRC is close to idea in Meghalaya. Higher son meta preference is found in Punjab and Haryana.

Gender Equality is inherently a multi-dimensional issue. What are survey takes on this?

Gender equality is a multidimensional issue and the survey does the assessment in this chapter on three specific dimensions as follows:

• Agency: This is related to women’s ability to make decisions on reproduction, spending on themselves and their households, and their own mobility and health.
• Attitudes: This is related to attitudes about violence against women/wives, and the ideal number of daughters preferred relative to the ideal number of sons.
• Outcomes: This is related to son preference (measured by sex ratio of last child), female employment, choice of contraception, education levels, age at marriage, age at first childbirth, and physical or sexual violence experienced by women.

In all these dimensions, India has somewhere been an outlier. For example, the ratio of women taking up paid work has fallen from 39.5% to 39% between 2005-06 and 2015-16. However, the survey also notes that India has done better than other economies on several fronts. We note here that 62% women in India were involved in decisions about their own health in 2005-06 but the number increased to 74.5% in 2015-16. The percentage of women who did not experience physical or emotional violence also increased from 63% to 71% in this time.

What are survey findings on women’s ability to make decisions on reproduction?

Survey cites example of reversible contraception methods to analyze the women’s say in decisions over reproduction. It was found that the use of reversible contraception methods among Indian women is 51.6 percentage points lower than it should be. The number of married women in India who do not use any contraception method is high (46.5 percent). Among women using any contraception method at all, the percentage of Indian women using female-controlled reversible contraception is unusually low (32.8 percent). These findings warrant attention because since not many women use methods of reversible contraception, they have little control over when they start having children, but only seem to have control over when they stop having children. This could affect other milestones early on in a woman’s life; for example, women may not get the same access to employment that men do.

What are survey findings on female labour participation force and how does it explain the U-shaped chart of FLFP in India?

The percentage of women who work has declined over time (from 36 percent of women being employed in 2005-06 to 24 percent of women being employed in 2015-16). However, it is debatable whether this should be a cause of concern or would improve naturally with time. There is a general phenomenon of a U-shaped pattern of female labour force participation with respect to development; and India seems to be on downward part of this U. This U shaped pattern / behaviour can be explained on the bsis of this:

• On the supply side, increased incomes of men allows Indian women to withdraw from the labor force, thereby avoiding the stigma of working; higher education levels of women also allow them to pursue leisure and other non-work activities all of which reduce female labor force participation.
• On the demand side, the structural transformation of Indian agriculture due to farm mechanization results in a lower demand for female agricultural laborers. Evidence also points to insufficient availability of the types of jobs that women say they would like to do—regular, part-time jobs which provide steady income and allow women to reconcile household duties with work—and types of sectors that draw in female workers.

This, interacted with safety concerns and social norms about household work and caring for children and elders, militates against women’s mobility and participation in paid work

Finally, the sex ratio of last birth is biased against females and is lower by 9.5 percentage points in 2015-16 in comparison to other countries. And this has remained stagnant in the last decade.