Book Title: World of Philosophy
Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan
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tering into the topic with the blinders of Western notions of empowerment and feminism stuck in place, and thus not acknowledging the strata of complexity within the Indian experience. Because I will move into some statistics about women in India that will appear to devalue any positive impact the images of powerful goddesses may have, it is necessary to try to avoid the pitfalls of personal and cultural limitations. Kathleen M. Erndl cautions this by bringing in the work of Lidde and Joshi where they argue that, "the British championed the cause of women in order to 'maintain colonialism and to demonstrate national superiority. It is easy to look at other cultures and think one's own has better answers.
Before turning to some of the points in Amartya Sen's "consequential analysis of gender inequality" I will look to his opening essay in The Argumentative Indian. There he points to women's participation in the rich dialectics throughout India's history, beginning with the women who questioned the guru in the early Upanishads, to contemporary women who are deeply entrenched in politics with many national and regional parties headed by women. The Congress Party, which led the national movement for independence, had more women in powerful positions than the Russian and Chinese revolutionary movements combined. Or to quote Rita M. Gross, "it is worth noting that no American woman could possibly attain the political position of Indira Gandhi, no matter whose relative she might be."
In contradiction to India's plethora of powerful women Sen looks at six "faces" of gender inequality including: "survival inequality, natality inequality, unequal facilities, ownership inequality, unequal sharing of benefits and chores, and domestic violence and physical victimization." I am going to briefly look at a few of the issues on the list.
Survival inequality speaks to the international issue of higher mortality rates of women compared to men due to the poorer health care and nutrition available to women and girls. Overall India's female to male ratio is.93 compared to the sub-Saharan African standard of 1.02 (or Europe and North America which have roughly 1.05/1.06 females to 100 males)
Natatlity inequality is part of a rising trend in India, as well as other parts of the world, currently played out as "high-tech sexism" in other words, sex-specific abortions. Because birth registration is incomplete in India his data comes from girl to boy ratios in children under the age of six. Of course, these numbers may also be caused by unequal health and nutritional care as well. In 1991 the girl to boy ratio was 94.5 girls to 100 boys; in 2001 it was 93 to 100.(which far exceeds South Korean and Chinese ratios with girls at 88 and 86).
An interesting issue Sen raises is that the pan Indian data is very different across India. The North and West have much lower ratios (be
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