I began
penning this on the 10th of October- a day before the world
celebrates the International Day of the Girl and a couple of days after most of
North India celebrated a festival called ‘Karwa Chauth’. Since 2012, October 11th
has been marked as the International Day of the Girl to highlight issues concerning the
gender inequality facing young girls. This day also marks a global movement to
recognize the combined efforts required to ensure each girl reaches the goal
she sets out to achieve- at school, in society and later in pursuit of a
dignified livelihood.
In India, girls need to scale several onerous challenges-
that of being able to complete school, avoid being married as children, face
inequities in their upbringing, gender violence at home and outside. As someone
who has been dabbling in the advocacy and communications space for health and
family planning for close to two and a half years now, I am not unfamiliar with
the myriad ways in which gender is a foundation for equities and
discrimination. Gender inequalities significantly affect women’s access to
health and reproductive health services and assertion of their rights. A case
in point is NFHS
III data that reveals 22% men feel that contraception is women’s business. Studies reveal that contraception decision
making often lies with men and male reproductive control of female partners,
particularly in the context of intimate partner violence (IPV), can impede
contraceptive use and increase risk for contraceptive failure.
Delaying age at first pregnancy,
spacing and limiting the number of children helps in empowering women. It
allows them to complete their education, enter the labour force, increasing
household incomes and assets. It also enhances the capacity of governments to
improve human resources and reduce poverty by increasing worker efficiency and
household savings rates. The International Conference on Population and
Development (ICPD), 1994 underlined the significance of sexual and reproductive
rights where more than 179 countries endorsed this and more than 20 years later
the unmet need for family planning remains high in developing countries. UNFPA studies conducted in more than 40 developing
countries show that the birth rate falls as women gain equality.
I began
reading UNFPA’s state of the World Population report, 2017 titled “Worlds Apart: Reproductive health and
rights in an age of inequality” earlier
this week. It mentions that developing nations with large or emerging
youth populations that have been able to reduce gaps in sexual and reproductive
health care and promote gender equality also have the potential to reap and maximize
a demographic dividend. In fact, back
home, data from the recently released NFHS IV validates that states that have
significantly increased their female health workforces in the last 10 years as
part of the National Health Mission, have not only witnessed a higher uptake of
modern contraceptive methods, but also in reducing child marriages and
adolescent pregnancies significantly.
Like in other developmental arena, the tenets
of Rights Based Family Planning assume the AAAQ framework- availability,
accessibility, acceptability and quality. Each of these is a universe on its
own, and there are gender barriers on each for women to overcome.
In the last few years, the
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has taken concrete steps to improve
quality of care of family planning services and methods, especially in the
post-Bilaspur (Chattisgarh) scenario and in expanding the basket of
contraceptive choices by adding three new modern methods of contraception to
the family planning programme. In fact, the recently launched Mission Parivar
Vikas initiative takes a micro-planning model to identified high fertility
districts- 145 districts in 7 states. However, access to sexual and
reproductive health rights is an area that needs inter-sectoral convergence and
synergies that cut across government, civil society and private sector
involvements. We all need to own up- empowering women, and tangibly addressing
inequities needs to go beyond commemoration of specific days and events. You
and I need to take responsibility, not shift it…
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