Max's position article

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Ramsay-Burrough 1

Bottled Up, India’s Women Although India is experiencing a meteoric rise to the fore of the world’s powers, the economic growth of the world’s largest economy is overshadowed by the lack of any similar progress in Indian society towards the equality, respect, or even basic bodily security of its female citizens. A recent poll of 370 gender specialists voted India the worst place to be a woman out of all the G-20 countries, and it is clear that India’s economic breakthroughs have not been accompanied by a major moral reassessment of women’s rights by Indian society. i Making up only 24% of the Indian workforce (according to a paper published in 2012 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies), the disproportionate ratio of women in the workplace and the quality and salary of their jobs, prevents women from taking the respected and equal place they deserve in society.ii Without strong and esteemed women in administration and business, women are not able to achieve any degree of equality with men. Last year Indian women held only 5% of senior positions in comparison to the global average of 20% (according to last year’s study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies).iii The lack of opportunity and representation for women in administrative and corporate roles as well as their lack of financial independence and household authority perpetuates the powerlessness and vulnerability Indian women. Sheelah Kolhatkar, a correspondent at Bloomberg Businessweek, asserts, “[t]he continuing exclusion of India’s female human capital from professional life is something that the country can no longer afford.”iv Kolhatkar message is that India’s women are too valuable to the country that faces a myriad of problems associated with its modernization, and they need to be respected and given the opportunity to work for a prouder, safer, more united state.


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