History can weigh on us in ways we don’t realize. A study conducted by the Pew Research Center showed that it can also have an effect on our engaging gender behavior. In the last four months of 2019-20, about 30,000 adults across India were consulted. While four-fifths of respondents – 79% of men and 82% of women – affirmed that “it is very important for women to have the same rights as men”, a similarly large proportion agreed with the proposition that “men” There should be more authority on the job when jobs are few”. It doesn’t add up. Competence biases may have little to do with it, as in response to another pose on the leadership show. Only a quarter of people held the view that men make better political leaders. About 55% expressed a gender-neutral opinion on this (“equally good”) and 14% considered women better for public roles than we might assume that she is challenged and held in high esteem. It would not be a stretch to attribute it to the country’s stand-out record in leadership of women in politics. Indira Gandhi’s prime ministership ended before the birth of the millennium But the history of independent India was so heavily shaped by his policies that his legacy would live on for better or worse. Is. Broad areas, from foreign relations to our banking system. Even today, women leaders are often (and influentially) voted for high office.
So, what can explain the irrationality of the job exception revealed by the Pew survey? Because large-scale opinion polls cannot afford to use open-ended questionnaires, they sometimes suffer from tick-the-box bias in their format. For example, an ‘agreeableness bias’ may slip if respondents feel that any statement is best met with consent, a nod to our social conditioning. If a supporting ‘reason’ is included in the proposed alternative, their chances of agreeing, even against their better judgment, may increase. In this case, however, many Indians gave their nod to unequal job rights, so that it could be based on spontaneous consent. This attitude also seems to correspond to an alarming trend in Indian labor force participation. According to World Bank data for 2019, only one-fifth of all working-age women in India were either employed or looking for work. That dismal level was a drop of more than a quarter in 2005, and given its apparent correlation with job losses in recent times, our post-pandemic ratio could be worse. In contrast, working-age men in our workforce have remained stagnant at more than half of their workforce. An explanation has been offered that there is less need for dual income as rigid families have become better off and have opted for more maternal time over home education of children. But the survey suggests even more atheistic forces at work.
This patriarchal value remains. But, sadly, their influence is also increasing. Gender equality should make no room for the ‘first earner’ paradigm which assumes that only men play this role. An economy that distorts its workforce by gender identity (or any other form for that matter) will find it difficult to optimize its human resources to achieve value creation and prosperity. Globally, more women at work leave with better economic outcomes overall because the well-recognized diversity benefits take effect. The empirical evidence of this benefit is compelling in both small and large situations. While we have indeed made progress, it is clear that we need to improve gender attitudes. Let’s call upon all our skills of persuasion to this task.
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