Did You Know That The World Could Have Been 3 Billion Fewer People? Here’s How!

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Did you know that if every woman had access to secondary education, the world would have been 3 billion fewer people?!

Okay, do you know that India’s population will exceed China’s by 2024? And by 2100, it will be the most populated country in the world!

Interestingly, it took the human population over 200 centuries to reach one billion people, and just a couple of centuries to cross the seven billion mark! And if the current rate of population growth remains the same, it is estimated that we would be around 10 billion in 2050 and over 11 billion over 2100.

If this doesn’t scare you, then I’m not sure what will!

On the occasion of World Population Day (WPD), putting sense to these daunting figures has become one of the most challenging things to do. But what, this is not the only thing to worry about.

As we continue to grapple with the global pandemic, WPD highlights multiple segments we need to work on — unitedly. Health, Economic & Social — family planning, reproductive health and mental health — are among the many other issues that have gone for a toss.

And while we are trying to do enough to keep ourselves sane, let’s agree that the world womenfolk have been impacted negatively more in every possible way.

From domestic violence to marital rapes, unplanned pregnancies, extra household chores, and degrading mental health — our beloved ‘aadhi aabadi’ is having all of it. In fact, the reports of increased domestic violence have been found across the globe as well as in the country. Women, also being the largest shareholder of the frontline workers, have also been economically impacted as 60% of them earn by working into the informal sector.

Yes, this is scary, indeed!

Thus the theme of World Population Day 2020 is set to be “How to safeguard the health and rights of women and girls now” keeping an eye on the ongoing obstruction.

Why the focus on women and girls?

Increase in violence

A recent study by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) says, “47 million women in low- and middle-income countries may not be able to access modern contraceptives” when lockdown-like disruptions happen. This can result in 7 million unintended pregnancies.

With this, ’31 million additional cases of gender-based violence and two million cases of female genital mutilation (FGM)’ is also predicted if the lockdown continues for six months.

Female child marriages likely to increase

According to the UNFPA, a substantial decline can also be recorded in the awareness programs run by the organization at ground level due to which 13 million child marriages in the next ten years is also predicted to happen.

Inequality likely to increase against women

According to the research, due to covid-19, there is a possibility of increased inequality towards women once again in society. In the last few decades, there have been many campaigns all over the world to get women all equal rights as men. This is likely to have a significant impact.

Concern for older women’s care likely to increase

According to the report of the United Nations Population Fund, many poor women usually earn their livelihood with unsafe wages and try to sustain themselves. The pandemic will impact their economic lives as well as their future. Violence may also increase due to the increasing needs of older people.

Impact on the education system of girls

Above all, the pandemic has also destroyed the education system. In such a situation, the extended closure of schools will heavily impact girls’ education.

Oh well, do you know that if every girl child studies even until the standard tenth, then the world population will be reduced to 150 crores by 2050? Because education gives them a better understanding of family planning. Had it not been the campaign of family planning in India, we would have been a population of 307 crores instead of 138 crores!

Source

Our role in World Population Day

Create and celebrate awareness
Try to learn about girls/ women in your neighbourhood who were or are being deprived of primary education and get to know about their troubles
Educate them about family planning and the rights to healthcare and gender equality
Talk about sex education and human rights

The United Nations Development Programme introduced World Population Day in 1989 after the world population hit an all-time high of 5 billion in 1987. The idea is to highlight the “urgency and importance of population issues” concerning the public interest and awareness.

Featured Image: Raminder Pal Singh, epa

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In the last few days, we have been celebrating the first woman Vice President of color -Kamala Harris – of the United States, the most powerful country in the world. This is a true victory for us, fighting for women’s equality and women empowerment. Indians have also been very vocal about their celebration of her victory, which is more special to us considering, that she has Indian roots. As we celebrate this victory of womanhood, when we look into the political scenario in India, we see a grim picture – women make up only 14% of the Parliament as of 2019, though they make up around 50% of India’s population. Furthermore, women represent only 9% in various state assemblies.

Lack of interest due to lack of inclusiveness

So, what is stopping the women to actively participate and reach higher heights in politics?

The most common answer to this is that women are not really interested in politics. But the thing to ponder here is whether girls/women get equal opportunity or an ambiance to develop this interest. We still live in a society where the education of girls is given secondary preference to her brothers, where the girl child is expected to do household chores in addition to her studies, where important issues are discussed and decisions taken by the men in the family, where the main work of a woman from a young age is still considered as cooking and tending for the family. So, does she really get the environment to develop an interest in politics – probably not?

Empowering the rural woman

The 73rd Amendment Act of 1992 brought about radical changes in rural governance especially with the guarantee of one-third reservation of seats for women in Panchayati elections. This was a great initiative to improve women’s participation in politics. But rural areas still face very basic problems of patriarchy, poverty, female illiteracy, male dominance. Till the time, these basic problems are eliminated, it is difficult that this one-third of reserved seats are true representatives of the people. These seats can be easily bought by offering more basic essentials in return for dummy representation. When we talk about women empowerment, the focus also needs to be on rural women whose voices have been shut down for ages.

Objectification – every day, every where

We have come across several cases in the past few years where we see women even in high positions of political parties being objectified – some for their looks, some for their dressing sense, some for their past profession. These references are mostly never even mentioned for their male counterparts. This makes one wonder how much worse things would be for women still starting up and trying to find a foothold in politics. This objectification is an indication of the regressive mindset that still exists in society. The insecurity of men when seeing their female colleague rise up the ladder exists in almost every section of our society, but more so in areas that have been pre-dominantly male-dominated, like politics.

Acceptance

Research suggests that women legislators in India raise economic performance in their constituencies by about 1.8 percentage points per year more than male legislators. Studies also confirm that women are less likely to be corrupt with regards to their male counterparts. Recently, we have seen the efficiency with which Covid situations have been handled by nations like New Zealand and Germany which are headed by women in comparison to other countries. In spite of this, there is still a reluctance in society to accept the capabilities of women. Acknowledging the role and vision of women in improving the socio-economic condition of a country is often underplayed and not accepted.

Our Future

India was one of the countries in the world, which was headed by a woman, when it was almost unthinkable for many other countries, even the most developed one. Even in the current day political scenario, we have several strong women personalities – Nirmala Sitharaman – Minister of Finance, Smriti Irani – Minister of Textiles, Minister of Women and Child Development Sonia Gandhi – President of the Opposition party, Mamata Banerjee – Chief Minister of Bengal to name a few. However, the fact remains that these women remain largely anomalies in the Indian political scene rather than the norm. Studies show that for women to have a meaningful impact in Parliament, they need to reach at least a 30% threshold. We are still far away from this number, but hopefully, we will reach there soon in order to fulfill the dream of a gender-equal India.