Gender bias halting women's empowerment prog: Parl Panel

New Delhi: A Parliamentary panel has expressed concern over the slow progress of government programmes for eliminating gender discrimination and has suggested a slew of measures including introduction of co-educational system in schools from elementary level. “The most painful devaluation of women is the physical and psychological violence that stalks them from cradle to grave,” the Parliamentary Committee on Women’s Empowerment said in its report tabled last week. [caption id=“attachment_1067689” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  This image of women in Nalagonda district of AP fetching drinking water has been used for representational purposes only. AFP. [/caption] Starting from the age of birth, women are discriminated in areas like access to nutrition, childcare, education and work, it said and emphasised that to achieve the objective of gender sensitisation, the government should work out modalities to introduce a pragmatic and result-oriented teachers’ training module as well as need-based refresher course. The committee said co-educational system should be introduced in almost all schools from the elementary level so as to encourage a caring and harmonious relationship between boys and girls. Mentioning the efforts taken to counter the challenges of gender discrimination, the HRD Ministry said enrollment of girls in schools, both in rural and urban areas, has shown a steady increase over the years. The gross enrollment ratio (GER) at primary and upper-primary level was 73.8 percent and 49.3 percent in 1992-93 respectively which has increased to 116.7 percent and 83.1 percent at primary and upper primary level in 2011 respectively. Female literacy rate, which was 39.29 percent according to the 1991 Census, increased to 64.6 percent in 2011. At the national level the gender parity index is 0.94 at the primary level and 0.95 at the upper primary level as per District Information System for Education 2011-12. Progress has been made towards reducing the gender gap. At the national level the gender gap at primary level; has reduced from 4.8 percent in 2003-4 to 3.30 percent in 2011-12 and at the upper primary level it has reduced from 8.8 percent to 2.74 percent, the ministry said. It also said that under the Sarva Shiksa Abhiyan, the percentage of girls’ enrollment went up to 48.63 percent of the total enrollment in 2011-12 at upper primary level. The ministry said it has initiated various steps at micro level like issue of curriculum, syllabus and textbooks, teacher training modules, classroom environment, school management committee aimed at gender sensitisation. PTI