పనిఁ హక్కు కల్పించాలి

పనిఁ హక్కు కల్పించాలి

Women constitute nearly 50 per cent of India’s population. Most women in India work and contribute to the economy in one form or the other. In fact, India has more working women than any other country in the world. However, more than 60 percent of women are chronically poor, and the figure would probably be higher if intra-household discrepancies in poverty levels were measured. For most women, their low status and lack of education and skill training opportunities limits them to a life of housework and agricultural labor. Although women in India work twice as hard and long as their male counterparts, their economic contributions often remain invisible and unrecognized. 96 per cent of women work in the informal and unorganized sector including direct and/or supportive works in the farms, handicrafts, unskilled labour, petty shops etc. The time women give to performing household chores including the significant time that goes into the most crucial job of raising children is largely unaccounted for. Females get into work relatively at a very young age than males.
In spite of legal provisions, women continue to receive lower wages than men. Women face legal discrimination in land and property rights. Most women do not own property in their own names, and are denied inheritance of parental property. If they inherit property, most cannot exercise control over it. Indian women are resource poor. Women in rural areas are highly dependent on land, forest, water and other common property resources for themselves and their families but hardly have any rights over them or even any decision making roles.
Maternal mortality is about 407 out of every 100,000 women mostly due to inadequate prenatal care, delivery in unsafe conditions with inadequate facilities and insufficient postnatal care. Severe anemia is responsible for more than 9 per cent of maternal deaths in India.
Only 60 per cent of girls get enrolled into schools and majority of them dropout before completing grade five. Only 54 per cent of the women can be considered literate in India.
Women are frequently subjected to violence both within and outside the family. The statistics of women rape, molestation, sexual harassment, and kidnap are simply alarming. A large number of women especially in rural households are now de-facto female-headed due to widowhood, desertion or male migration. Diseases like HIV/AIDS have directly and indirectly impacted women the most. Migration and displacement is hurting both women left behind and also those migrating.
In this backdrop, the women place the following demands to be pursued and fulfilled in the coming five years -
1. Equal wages for men and women.
2. Compensate 100% loss of wages for maternity leave up to 4 months to the mother from poor family.
3. No negative discrimination and more positive discrimination in recruiting women to any job.
4. 1/3rd reservation to women should be strictly implemented in PRIs, State Legislative Assemblies, Parliament, Political parties and all other political forums.
5. Gender budgeting in every department at both state and national levels.
6. 1/3rd of any budget in both state and center should be spent on women.
7. There should be no poor women outside SHGs.
8. Occupation-based women collectives should be built nurtured and empowered.
9. Women collectives should have exclusive rights over all common properties like land, water, tanks, forests etc
10. Compulsory and free education for at least 15 years of education (10+2+3).
11. Health and accident insurance for all poor women.
12. Health care and emergency services are the rights of every women and these need to be made available to her at no cost or payable from insurance. The insurance with low or no premium should be made available to all the poor women.
13. Current pension is inadequate for a decent living. This needs to be increased to cover the costs of a decent living.
14. Drudgery reduction should be national priority.
15. Add the value of home maker in the calculation of GDP.
16. Supplementary and supportive roles of women should be recognized and the value should be added in the calculation of GDP.
17. Free soft skills training for women
18. Increase the number and categories of vocational trainings in the country and ensure that at least 1/3rd are women.

prepared by Akshara Livelihoods Network, Hyderabad