Unfinished business of gender parity in India

Hindustan Times

18-06-2025

Here is a truth that often goes unnoticed: India needs women to be at parity to progress. Or it will get left behind. It is already getting left behind. This is the sad inference that emerges from the dry statistics in the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2025, released recently. It ranks India a dismal 131st out of 148 countries — below every other Brics nation and trailing most of its South Asian neighbours. The fall is not so much due to regression as because other countries are closing their gender gaps faster. Our catch-up pace needs acceleration.
There is good news and bad news.
The good news is that there have been visible gains in education and political visibility. At 97%, women's educational attainment is approaching parity. India's political empowerment score is higher than China's and close to Brazil's — thanks perhaps to the panchayati raj laws that insisted on 33% women's representation. Women have 45% participation in panchayati raj institutions — a genuine contribution to deepening democracy. But, in Parliament, they account for just 14% of members — sadly, the highest it's ever been.
Poor economic participation drags India down to among the world's bottom five. In a scenario of high unemployment, men win: The historical female labour force participation rate, the World Bank points out, has declined considerably over the decade, and women contribute less than 20% to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), earn under a third of what men do, and hold only a sliver of decision-making roles.
This is not merely a gender issue but one aligned with economic ambition. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that gender parity in employment could add $770 billion to India's GDP by 2025. At current rates, that could take another 135 years. This isn't just a missed opportunity — it's an economic liability. It should alarm every policymaker into signalling a radical and urgent shift in national priorities to privilege women's participation.
No less a person than the Prime Minister has repeatedly acknowledged that progress depends on women-led development. But recognition is only a beginning. Policy and practice designed to ensure women's equal participation in economic, political, and social life must be maximised by both the state and the private sector. Everyone has a role. But, the State has the primary responsibility to showcase transformation.
At present, the commitment looks hesitant. In recent years, the pace of inclusion has indeed accelerated, but inclusion is reluctantly conceded.
Women made up 41% and 38% of recent recruits to the elite Indian Administrative Service and Indian Foreign Service, respectively — an encouraging uptick. However, their overall representation across both services remains unclear. With less than 3% women in the armed forces and 12% across all police, the bastions of defence and security remain hard to breach. Even apex institutions — tasked with ensuring equality — struggle to show commitment. At its 2021 high, the Supreme Court briefly had four women out of 33 judges; now, it is back to one. The National Human Rights Commission, in all its history, has never had more than one substantive woman member at a time. Even its law requires only 'at least one woman'.
There are many pathways to inclusion — some already at work. The expansion of women-led Self-Help Groups, targeted savings schemes, and access to low-interest credit have begun to shift the economic ground. State-backed programmes, from Kerala to Uttar Pradesh, have helped lakhs of rural women move from subsistence to enterprise.
Political inclusion too is poised for a jump, pending the census and delimitation needed to activate the long-promised 33% reservation for women in Parliament and assemblies. With millions of women already serving as panchayat representatives, the feeder line already exists. In the UK, Labour's insistence on all-women shortlists drove female representation from under 10% to over 30% in two decades.
Systems shape society — and carry its values and biases. Stubborn patriarchal cultures and inherited procedures block inclusion. Institutions often assume male-dominated environments are neutral, fair, and meritocratic. When women demand their social and biological realities be taken into account, it is seen as seeking indulgences. A man's merit is assumed; a woman's presence is often chalked up to tokenism or reservation.
That refusal to acknowledge difference is one reason so few women rise to the top. Women make up 38% of subordinate court judges, but only 14% in high courts. In the police, women make up just 8% at the officer level. In the private sector, while women hold around a respectable percentage of positions at the middle management level, fewer than 2% of India's Fortune 500 companies are led by women.
Parity is about equality and balance, about agreeing that no one gender should hold more than 50–60% of any space. But the national discourse remains stuck at a ceiling of 33%, as if the demand for equal space and place is itself an impertinence. This comfort with 33% betrays grudging acceptance as well as a settled comfort with unfairness. The slow, incremental pace, often called progress, actually reflects a reluctance to reconfigure spaces for women.
The onus is on institutions to change. Inclusion demands that all institutions evolve — urgently and intentionally — to reform today's deficits and create environments that include women. Not partially, not temporarily but fully. Not as a concession but as recompense for a long-denied right.
Maja Daruwala is chief editor, India Justice Report. The views expressed are personal.