By Our Staff Reporter
GUWAHATI, FEB 29. Women in Assam can expect to live only 5.2 years less than their counterparts in the rest of the country. This has been disclosed in the Assam Human Development Report (HDR), 2003, brought out by the State Government.
The report, first of its kind in the northeast, reveals that women in Assam are disadvantaged in some respects compared to women in other regions of the country.
``Gender inequity is most visible in the health sphere and is reflected in adverse sex ratios, higher mortality rate and higher incidence of morbidity,'' the report states. The report has been prepared with the support of the United Nations Development Programme and the Planning Commission.
The 193-page report reveals that the infant mortality rate in the 0 to 4 age group is higher among girls than boys. But from the age of 5, the trend is reversed.
This is true till the age of 50 or so, when the trend again reverses with the death rate among men becoming higher.
Although female life expectancy at birth has improved significantly in Assam in recent decades, it continues to be below the national average.
The situation is equally bleak in the case of literacy. Although the literacy rates among men and women in Assam have shown a rising trend in the last three decades, there continues to be a gap.
Rural literacy rates are 25 per cent lower than the urban rates and in the case of women, the urban-rural divide is as high as 30 per cent. Besides, there are continuing and wide differences between districts with respect to female literacy.
Likewise, the enrolment rate among girls drops to a little over 35 per cent at the higher secondary stage, from 48 per cent at the primary level. In the overall higher education segment, the enrolment rate among girls is less than 33 per cent, while the dropout rate in higher education is more than 70 per cent.
The HDR has also brought to light the hard fact that despite women performing almost all household work and a considerable portion of the socially productive labour, women's labour contribution has not been recognised. Neither is it being given due remuneration. Women's wages tend to be lower than the wages for the corresponding work done by men.
It also stated that the high female work participation rate (FWPR) in the tea industry in the State has not empowered women.
The report attributes the gender inequity in different spheres to that fact that for long, policy interventions were designed to be gender neutral and development programmes did not have a gender dimension.
The HDR called for articulating a sensitive, forward-looking and dynamic gender.
The report stressed that the policy must outline a set of pro-active interventions and create the environment and receptivity required for it to be successful.
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