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5. Social and family engagements of women in Jain communities today. 51. Literacy and Gender Gap (in percentage)
Jain Christians Literacy 94.1
Buddhist 80.3
Sikh 72.7
Hindu Muslim India Average 69.4 65.
1 59.1 65
We thus find Jains emphasizing education most for both male as well as females. This emphasis on education comes from the Jain philosophy itself where omniscience (or perfect knowledge) is a pre-requisite even to achieve liberation besides practicing the right conduct.
On the average Jain women are better educated than men as the men generally join family business at an early age and their lax attitude towards education due to their assured employment in family business.
5.2 Economic activities. Outside work participation rates amongst Jain women is extremely low at just 7%. It is at 14% for Muslim women, 20% for Sikh women, and 27.5 % for Hindu women (as opposed to 52.4% for men) and higher for Christian, Buddhist and other (most likely certain categories of ST or SC) women. Some sociologists interpret this as a negative aspect of Jain women. However actual observations and interaction with the community will revel, that a sizable number of them are involved in own business (Jains being primarily a believer of self employment and trade) and their involvement in social and charitable works (since most of them come from economically well of family background and going out to work is frowned upon). Also because of the latest trends and the world entering into Information age, we will find Jain women adopting more and more knowledge based professions also working for others as well as in self employed format.
5.3 Family and social works Traditionally Jain and Sikh families are much smaller than Hindu or Muslim families. This is not surprising due to the trend in educated and prosperous communities' world over. We also observe far greater social engagements of Jain women in charitable, cultural and social transformation activities than other communities. This Trend can also be attributed to religion, knowledge and family background of Jains.
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