India Gender Equality Challenges

• Most of the gender inequality is shown in densely populated rural areas such as Maharashtra, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh = high populations
• In 2019, 30.9% of crimes were related to “Cruelty by Husband”
• In 2022, there was a reported 6,753 dowry killings
• In 2019, there was 32360 rape cases - 15% of those were on minors
• In 2019, kidnapping and abduction of women was at 17.9%
• In 2019, 6,616 were trafficked; 2,914 were children and 3702 were adults
• 11.1 million people were trafficked in 2023 for modern slavery (65% of these were women)
• Employment opportunities are limited for females due to discrimination and lack of knowledge and education - in a report down by UNICEF, 70% of women said they feel as though their job is staying at home and doing the cooking, cleaning etc
• Only 70% of girls have access to primary education and around 40% then go on to secondary, but theres a high dropout rate as they have responsibilities at home
• On average, nearly 1/3 women across India don’t have access to government health services
• Poor representation in Parliament - only 11% in Lok Sabha (lower house) and 10.6% in Rajya Sabha (Higher house)
• Maternity benefits are denied by most employers in the workplace - In Delhi, only 25% of women return to work after childbirth