Are Women’s Issues Synonymous with Gender in India? Looking Across Geographic Space

Addressing inequalities is imperative not merely from the human rights perspective, but also to ensure sustainable and inclusive growth. The most basic of such inequalities are those deriving from gender. Gender inequalities effectively constrain the development potential of half the population. While the current trend of equating ‘gender’ with ‘women’ understandably dominates the literature on the subject, gender disparities are not always anti-women—disparities against men are beginning to emerge even in a strongly maledominated country like India. Gender disparities are unacceptable—whether against men or women. This paper attempts to shift the focus from ‘women’ to the significance of the gender equation by assessing the intensity of gender disparity across geographic space, and enquiring into the reasons for these persisting inequalities. A basic question that needs to be answered is whether women are equally unequal across geographic space. India, with a multitude of distinct regional contexts, provides a good testing ground. As the states of the Indian union have distinct regional entities, inter-state gender disparities would reflect both economic and socio-cultural diversities grounded in historical realities.