Social Development and Women:Legibilityin Statistics

RatnaAnjan Jena
Statistical Adviser
Ministry of Women and Child development

The term social development hastwo different connotations to it. The word
social signifies human interactions in the network of socioeconomic
institutions
with
their
cultural
values
and
norms,
and
the
worddevelopmententails dynamic processes of change, growth, progress or
evolution. Therefore, social development has an implication of universal
welfare, resulting from collective efforts of improving social conditions down
to each woman, man and child. In other words, development being basically
a generic concept ramifies into several concrete sites where women both
individually and as a group are entitled to rights of participation as equal to
any other. It has been our experience thatthese concrete socio-economic
spaces of democratic polity and modernity have more often failed to make
development process gender sensitive and gender responsive. Also,it has not
conduced an enabling environment for women as equal partners of
development in access to health, education, participation in decision making,
work economy, etc. The question that we may ask ourselves is what it is that
makes development in regard to women imbalanced, asymmetric and to a
great degree adverse against them. So our hypothesis here is that there has
been existing in the past and also does exist at present a visible invisible
structures in the functioning of development process by which their
independent voices of articulation and concerns have been both admitted
and erased. Even though they are active and forceful participants in the
development process, they are not accounted for in it. The reasons for this
are not at far to seek.The symptoms that testify to their not being accounted
for in development process are manifest in violence and discrimination
against them. Our attempt at makingvisible invisible structure legible needs
a nuanced analysis and this analysis must begin with understanding how this
mechanism works and to read the symptoms in violence, discrimination and
denial of their rights.
Women therefore constitute an importantsegment of society and
theirempowermentis an urgent necessityfor the country. Infact, it is the
indicator for assessing development. The concept of Women in
Development(WID) that emerged in seventies, considered womens issues
in development projects for improving their status. Women and
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Development (WAD), a theoretical and practical approach suggested that

women have always been an integral part of development and it was only
made possible by the involvement of women. Gender and Development
(GAD) focus on the socially constructedbasis of differences between men
and women and the need to challenge existing gender roles and relations
that have systematically subordinated women. GAD focus primarily on
gender division of labor and gender as a relation of power embedded in
institution.
Women Empowerment - Indian Scenario
In seventies in India, majority ofwomen were excluded from formal job so
much so that 94% of the female workforce was engaged in the unorganized
sector in agriculture, agro-forestry, fishery, handicrafts and so on. In addition
to this the violence on women has its manifestations in the most universally
prevalent forms of domestic and sexual violence, dowry, honour killings,
trafficking,child sexual abuse,child marriage, etc.The Government of India
(GOI) has taken several affirmative actions to empower women and bring in
gender equality in the development process of the country. The Ministry
of Women and Child Development is the nodal Ministry for advancement of
women and children, largely guided by the objectives to empower them to
live with confidence, dignity, and, economic and educational abilities and to
nurture children to develop them to their full potential, make them safe and
healthy in protective environments. The Ministry formulates plans, policies
and programmes, enacts and amends legislation, guides and aims at
coordinating both governmental and non-governmental organizations for
supplementing the efforts that women make for their development. It
implements certain innovative programmes for women and childrencovering
welfare and support services, training for employment and income
generation,
awareness
generation
and
gender
sensitization.Theseprogrammes play a supplementary and complementary
role to the other general developmental programmes in the sectors of health,
education, rural development etc. All these efforts are directed to ensure
that women are empowered both economically and socially and thus become
equal partners in national development along with men. The focus of all the
initiatives of the government is to recognise womens centrality in the
developmental schemes/programmescutting across all sectors, and
mainstreaming gender perspectives in legislations, policies and programmes.

At the policy level, National Policy for Women 2001 provides a framework
for policy actions by laying down specific objectives to bring out
advancement, development and empowerment of women. The Ministry of
WCD has enacted progressive legislations and introduced programmes and
scheme interventions that reinforce commitments of the government to
strengthen the resolve and facilitate progress towards the goals of gender
equality and womens empowerment.
The women related acts that been reinforced to protect women from
discrimination and violence are, i)The Sexual Harassment of Women at
Workplace
(Prevention,
Prohibition
and
Redressal)
Act,
2013,covering all women in workplaces in the organized and unorganized
sectors, casting the responsibility to constitute Internal Complaint Committee
upon the employer; ii)Protection of Women from Domestic Violence
Act, 2005providing effective protection to women who are victims of
violence of any kind occurring within the family - emotional, sexual and
economic violence; iii) National Commission for Women Act, 1990, to
constitute a National Commission for Women and to provide for matters
connected therewith; iv)The Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act,
1987,providing for the prevention of the commission of Sati; v) The
Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986prohibiting
indecent representation of women in any form in any advertisement,
publication, writing, painting, in any other manner; vi)The Dowry
Prohibition Act, 1986,penalizing the demanding, giving, taking or abetting
Dowry; vii) The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1986,prohibiting
trafficking in human beings and for establishment of protective homes and
special courts; viii) The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act (PCMA)
2006,prohibiting child marriages rather than only restraining them.
TheWomen relatedprogramme interventions for enabling environment for
girl child are i)BetiBachao, BetiPadhao (BBBP) tocelebrate the girl child
and enable her education.BBBP addresses the issue of declining Child Sex
Ratio (CSR)andrelated issues of disempowerment of women.The key
elements of the scheme include Enforcement of PC&PNDT Act, andthe
outcome of this programme are to improve CSR, SRB, gender differentials in
Under Five Child Mortality Rate,health and nutrition, gender parity in
educationin
100
gender
critical
districts.ii)
Sabla-Scheme
for
Empowerment of Adolescent Girls, aiming at empowering Adolescent
Girls (AGs) of 11-18 years by improving their nutritional and health status,
upgrading home, life and vocational skills; iii) Indira Gandhi
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MatritvaSahyogYojana (IGMSY) is a conditional Maternity Benefit

(CMB)Scheme for Pregnant &Lactating Mothers during pregnancy and
lactation inresponse to individual fulfilling specific conditions; iv) National
Mission for Empowerment of Women (NMEW), involving National
Resource Centre for Women (NRCW) to provide technical support to MWCD
along with convergence initiatives with partner Ministries/Departments to
address issues related to empowerment of women.
The programme interventions for supporting women are, i) One Stop
Centre Scheme in each State to provide integrated support and assistance
under one roof to women affected by violence, both in private and public
spaces in a phased manner. These Centres will facilitate access to medical
aid, police assistance, legal counseling, court case management, psychosocial counseling and temporary shelter to the affected women;
ii)UniversalisationWomen Helpline(181) Schemeto provide 24 hours
emergency and non-emergency responses to women affected by violence in
any sphere of life, and seeking support and information,and to facilitate
crisis intervention through referral and appropriate support services;
iii)Expansion of Womens Hostels, SwadharGrehs and Ujjawala;
Working Women Hostels provide safe and affordable hostel
accommodation for working women, working at places away from their
home-towns;Ujjawalascheme involveslocal bodies and community for
prevention of trafficking; Swadharis a kind of Short Stay providing quality
services to the beneficiaries;iv) RashtriyaMahilaKoshto empower poor
women through skill training and micro financing and to provide credit to
individual also , besides SHGs, v)STEP (Support to Training &
Employment Programme for Women)Schemeprovides skills to improve
employability of women and enhance their competencies.
The major scheme which is being implemented by the Ministry is Integrated
Child Development Services (ICDS). This is one of the worlds largest
integrated family and community services scheme with the objective of providing
care and nutrition to the children at age 0-6 years including girl child.Another key initiative
undertaken by the Government of India to promote gender equality has been
the adoption of Gender Budgeting (GB) as a tool for mainstreaming
gender in all government policies and programmes.
Through Gender
Budgeting the Government aims to ensure the translation of Governments
policy commitments on gender equity into budgetary allocations.

Statistics and legibility( through indicators)

Statistics has always been a tool of the State to invent and reinvent society
by associating itself with democracy and equality. Unlike other
approaches,the approach of statistics has been to transform human beings
into subjects equal to each other and measured with a common
denominator/s. This apparent equality that characterizes democracy has
simultaneously made it possible the measurement of deviations from the
average and democratic mean. When we say on certain quantifiable
parameters, the situation of women is far from the average and expected
democratic mean, it establishes the measure of inequality.Statistics is
therefore a technology of governmentality by which the ideal aspirations of
theState are upheld before it and is used by the State for implementation of
schemes, policies,programmes for the development of population resource
not only materially in health, infrastructure facilities, education, but also
spiritually in providing conditions of equality and freedom and of political
participation in nation building.Apart from its modernizing role in separating
individuals from their marked traditional loyalties such as family,
kinship,caste,etc, statistics function as a tool of legibility. For example,
censuses, as Benedict Anderson says, are part of statistical procedures by
which people imagine themselves as a district nation. Statistics transform
population into a legible one by throwing up an array of numbers which has
nothing to do with any traditional communities. Therefore, we can say that
Statistics has broadly three objectives: one, towards modernity; second,
towards governmentality, and third, towards legibility.
To make the conditions of women legible, The Ministry has been grappling
with efforts to develop suitable statistical tools and standards to make it
possible to makecontribution of women legible, be it in the unremunerated
domestic sectors,vulnerability to poverty, discrimination against them etc.
For example, labour force statistics, national income statistics, statistics of
prices and finance etc. cover only that part of the society which is connected
with economic activities. Since the market is viewed as the core of economic
activities, participation of labour force as well as production of goods and
services included in conventional statistics refers only those goods and
services which are exchanged in the market. Unremunerated work not
entering the market is not counted in official statistics.
Work participation rate by gender, rural- urban divide in India (%)
Rural
Urban
All
Years

Male

Female

Male

Female

Male

Female

2011-12

54.3

24.8

54.6

14.7

54.4

21.9

2009-10

54.7

26.1

54.3

13.8

54.6

22.8

2004-05

54.6

32.7

54.9

16.6

54.7

28.7

Source: NSSO, 61st (2004-05) 66th (2009-10) & 68th (2011-12) round

Valuation of unpaid work has an important gender dimension, as it indicates

that women, predominantly engaged in such work, have a claim on the
national resources to improve their conditions and their productivity.
In India every women-oriented scheme or programme of the Ministry of
Women and Child Development for instance has a set of pre-defined
indicators to measure at the outcome level. However, this Ministry has to
depend on other Ministries, departmrnts and organisations to have credible
and reliable data on the conditions of women. The ministry as such does not
generate any data or statistics. For example the indicators from census data
of sexratio at birth, child sex ratio (0-7 years), female literacy rate determine
gender criticality. Statistics of women economic empowerment such as
female work force participation rate, employment rate, female contribution
in informal economy, institutional access to credit, ownership of land, time
spent in paid /unpaid work etc. come from periodical NSSO surveys.
Similarly, to know the safety and security of women , the Ministry has to
depend on the crucial indicators compiled under the sub-categories of
violence against women in the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data.
Gender sensitive education indicators such as gross enrolment ratio,
percentage of female teachers, adult literacy rate, toilets in school etc. are
provided by Ministry of Human resource development. Health indicators from
Ministry of Health and Family welfare includes maternal mortality rate,
proportion of women under prevalence of anemia, number of institutional
deliveries, contraceptive prevalences and use , HIV prevalence etc. and so
many others. There are other important gender sensitive governance
indicators like proportion of women parliamentarian, decision making
positions in local government/parliament or in local civil bodies etc. which
can be provided by Minstry of Home affairs. The States/ UTs also analyse
data at their level and provide feed backs whenever required.
However, scheme related outcome indicators,especially for ICDS scheme, are
captured periodically through existing monitoring system at the level of
Anganwadi Centres (AWC),being the focal point of delivery of some services
for women and children on ground. The data captured by the Anganwadi
6

workers through maintenance of several registers,updated periodically are

transmitted to the next and next higher levels and are then consolidated in
the Ministry. However we are not going into detail of that as ICDS has not
been taken in the purview of this theme paper.

Data Gaps and endeavor to fill it

Government needs to know how its legislations/ programmes/ schemes are
getting implemented on ground level. In the absence of baseline data, the
schemes and programmes are run hypothetically with a preconceived
stratified approach of society.Hence these schemes need rigorous,
concurrent monitoring at every level so that mid-course corrective actions
could be taken. Though government makes efforts,
through different
Ministries and organisationsto collect data on wide range of indicators but it
isvery difficult to determine the extent of vulnerability at each dimensions, if
information is not captured at the household level. On one hand, some
indicators pertaining to status of women are easy to be captured through
statistics such as mothers nutritional levels, maternal mortality rates, sex
ratios, literacy rates, participation in economic and political decision making
etc., however it is difficult to measure the work that women does which
never gets recognised, monetized or enumerated. Therefore data wherever it
exists, is either has inaccuracies raising questions on its reliability or it gives
an incomplete picture of the situation of women.
The Ministry of WCD is endeavouringwith National Informatic Centre (NIC) to
develop a common web based portal relating to Prevention of Crimes
Against women and working on developing a mechanism to use the
scheme wise captured data for making informed policy decisions.
Way ahead
Despite all theconcerted efforts, indices depicting the status of women show
that more needs to be done. The technical support from the Ministry of
Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) and convergence with
relevant line Ministries in collating gender disaggregated data would go a
long way in improving the efficiency and effectiveness for reporting and
improving accuracy of data.This would finally enable us in making social
development legible or visible with key focus on matters related to women.If
7

we consider women in the work economy, we have to acknowledge the fact

that, there are a number of unaccounted for hidden cost that affect the
earnings of a female worker and reduce the wages actually paid. The
reproductive role of women is so much hidden away and foreclosed from the
public space that it is not recognized. This hidden dimension of womens
work has been given a theoretical recognition with a pilot study of Time
Utilisation by Men and Women. This study classified the activities based on
the 1993 system of National Accounts (SNA) into three categories: i) those
coming under economic activities already included in SNA,ii) those that are
not currently included in the SNA but are characterized as extended SNA.
These include household maintenance and care for children, old and the sick
in the household, iii) non SNA consisting of social cultural activities,
leisureand personal care. The afore-said pilot study marshaled the fact that a
relatively major share of time is spent by women in domestic chores and care
for the sick, old and children.The progreressivedomesticisation of work is
more pronounce among women than among men
Table
Weekly average time (hours) spent on SNA,Extended SNA and Non SNA
activities by gender and place of work ( combined for six states)
Activities
Rural
Urban
Total
Male
Female
Male
Female
Male
Female
SNA
42.3
22.5
41.1
9.2
42.0
18.7
Extended
3.7
33.9
3.4
36.4
3.6
34.6
SNA
Non SNA
122.0
111.5
123.5
122.4
122.4
114.5
Total
168.0
168.0
168.0
168.0
168.0
168.0
Total
22285
21130
10305
9549
32590
30679
Persons
Note: Time Use Survey was conducted in 18,591 households spread over six selected states
namely, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Gujrat, Orissa, TamilNadu and Meghalaya.
Source: CSO 2000

Here, I want to refer to the repot of the National Commisson for Enterprises
in the Unorganised Sector under the chairmanship of Late ArjunSengupta,
wherein the commission has tried to quantify unorganized or informal
workers not having any employment security, work security and social
security. Two tables may be seen here compiled from the NCEUS report. It
has been well established by the statistics compiled in that report that while
women workers constitute a marginalized category among the class of
workers in general there are layers of subordination manifest in conditions of
their social status and in economic sector to which they belong. Add to this
8

there are differentiation within women in general and women workers in

particular.
Therefore, estimatingthe contribution of women in purely market
terms to the economy in different segments of activity and as a whole would
be the most challenging task ahead. Without this, it is difficult to grasp
the abyssal conditions to which they are thrown and the potential that they
have to not only to ameliorate their condition but the condition of all human
being. Till such time disparate statistical profiling of their conditions in the
outcomes of schemes and programmes or in demographic vital statistics
would be of limited help and not cover the entire field. The way forward is , I
again repeat is to marketise their contribution in order to return to them their
subject-hood of development and not its passive object. Statistics would play
a crucial role by providing quantifying tools and standards that would reveal
the process of social development hand in hand with the development of
women in all aspects of life. Our practical beginning to bring this process
legible may begin with the work concretised in the NCEUS report.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions reflected in the paper is that of the
author only and not of the organization.
Bibliography:
1. Website of Ministry of Women and Child Development, www
2. NCEUS Report
3. NSSO Surveys
4. CSO Reports