Jon's Position

Coffey 1 Jon Coffey Ms. Burchi II Form Cultural Studies Position Article Literacy among women is vital in helping them rise up against societal oppression.

Men in India have oppressed women by asserting power in the forms of rape and sexual violence against women and girls. Improvements in education will help to further organize the women of India to campaign for equal rights and formal education. The fault lies in the government, if women were more represented in Parliament then they would be able to increase the severity of punishment to those who rape women, and bring the amount of female abortions down, but it all starts with women achieving literacy.1 There is a gender imbalance in India because of the long cultural oppression of women, which in turn has an affect on culture in society. 2 In India there are over 600,000 abortions of female fetuses every year, which if born would make up over 2% of the annual births in India.3 From this there has become an imbalance of men and women, for every 1000 men born there are 916 women born, a staggering range. 4 Because of preferential birth, like China men cannot find wives. This has brought India’s once exponential economic growth to almost a standstill in comparison partly because women are not part of the work force.5 In India, women aren’t receiving a formal education, which is denouncing them as valued parts of the work force. In a study done by the United Nations consisting of 150 countries, India ranked 143rd in female to male ratio in the work force.6 This is one of the reasons why the economy of India has stalled partly in the last 5 years, while women of China and South East Asia are working in factories or in management of some sort helping the economy Indian women are as dictated by their cultural norms 1

Banerjee, Sushanta K., Kathryn L. Andersen, Rebecca M. Buchanan, and Janardan Warvadekar. 2012.

Woman-centered research on access to safe abortion services and implications for behavioral change communication interventions: A cross-sectional study of women in bihar and jharkhand, india. BMC Public Health 12, no. 1: 175, Women who are raped make up 35% of abortions.

Kolhatkar, Sheelah. 2013. India's economy lags as its women lack opportunity. Business Week, Jan 28, 1. http://search.proquest.com/docview/1287909974?accountid=12012.

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Singh, Maina Chawla. 2000. Philanthropy, voluntarism, and women's education in colonial india: A study of the bethune school, calcutta. Asian Journal of Women's Studies 6, no. 3: 65-65, http://search.proquest.com/docview/197719349?accountid=12012.

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Coffey 2 staying home in most cases.7 As Sheelah Kolhatkar says in the Bloomberg BuisnessWeek, “The inability of the world's largest democracy to guarantee the security of half its population is indeed a moral crisis, but it's also an economic one�

(Kohlhatkar).8 India is facing a dilemma between honoring its own culture and moving with the ways of a modern, global world. I believe that in order to stay a world superpower it needs to distance itself somewhat from its own strict cultural norms of the past and move toward a more open and gender equal India and the first step towards a more equal India is to educate women to the same extent of men. Education is such a powerful asset in a global world that it could potentially stop the brutal rapes of Indian women and the lack of justice given to the assaulters. 9 India needs to distance itself from colonial India’s cultural modus and more towards cultural similarities between that of other modern, forward countries.

Women are becoming vital to the modern world, however we are still dealing with issues so daunting it is almost unfathomable. In 2010 there were just under 25,000 rapes reported in India.10 In a study done by Woman-centered research on access to safe abortion services in March of 2012 they reported that rape is 15% more likely in women with little or no formal educational background, another statistic that has shown the vitality of education in society.11 In the next decade it is going to be crucial for the Indian government to make several reforms to get women more involved in the economy and less in the traditional Indian society.12 Among the most important changes must be a reform making education more accessible to woman. This will help all over the spectrum from stimulating the Indian economy to even lowering the amount of rapes in India every year. In a constantly changing and evolving world in the years to come it is going to be even more important to get all aspects of the population involved in the economy doing their part to contribute, and the woman of India are no different.

Bibliography 7

Whitman, Sylvia. 1983. Among india's poor. Boston Globe (Pre-1997 Fulltext), Oct 16. http://search.proquest.com/docview/294211353?accountid=12012.

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WOMENS EMPOWERMENT-I complete awareness is an essential pre- requisite. 2002. The Statesman, Dec 20. http://search.proquest.com/docview/284128271?accountid=12 10

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Coffey 3

Banerjee, Sushanta K., Kathryn L. Andersen, Rebecca M. Buchanan, and Janardan Warvadekar. 2012. Woman-centered research on access to safe abortion services and implications for behavioral change communication interventions: A cross-sectional study of women in bihar and jharkhand, india. BMC Public Health 12, no. 1: 175, Women who are raped make up 35% of abortions.

Kolhatkar, Sheelah. 2013. India's economy lags as its women lack opportunity.

Business Week, Jan 28, 1. http://search.proquest.com/docview/1287909974? accountid=12012.

Singh, Maina Chawla. 2000. Philanthropy, voluntarism, and women's education in colonial india: A study of the bethune school, calcutta. Asian Journal of Women's Studies 6, no. 3: 65-65, http://search.proquest.com/docview/197719349? accountid=12012.

WOMENS EMPOWERMENT-I complete awareness is an essential pre- requisite. 2002.

The Statesman, Dec 20. http://search.proquest.com/docview/284128271? accountid=12 Whitman, Sylvia. 1983. Among india's poor. Boston Globe (Pre-1997 Fulltext), Oct 16. http://search.proquest.com/docview/294211353?accountid=12012.