Indian Society

Context: From 1951, when the first woman joined the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), until 2020, women have made up only 13% of all IAS officers. Of 11,569 IAS officers who entered the civil services between 1951 and 2020, only 1,527 were women.

Reasons for low representation of women on higher posts

1. Fewer women take the IAS exam: Every year, hundreds of thousands write the civil services exam (CSE), the recruitment exam to get into the IAS, but only a few thousand make it. The vast majority of these are men. The share of women sitting for the CSE touched 30% of all applicants only once, in 2017, data between 2010 and 2018, released by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), show.

2. Gendered experience in IAS prep:  The experience within coaching institutes is also impacted by gender.  female students are quite apprehensive to seek support from faculty, nearly all of whom are young-to-middle-aged men. They feel awkward about contacting them informally, outside the classroom, often out of safety concerns, and sometimes out of the fear that they may be judged if they were to reach out to these male teachers on their own. "These mental barriers are absent for male aspirants.

3. A glass ceiling for women: Because of the power an IAS officer can wield, there is little scope for blatant sexism, but biases against women do not go away, from various officers. The rule restricting married women from being in the IAS was removed but the thinking remained that certain jobs (like the police service, for example) were not for women. Even within the IAS, it is implicitly assumed that certain postings are not for women, for example, Haryana got its first woman deputy commissioner only in 1991. As of January 03, 2022, only 14% (13) of the 92 secretaries to the Indian government were women. Across the 36 Indian states and union territories, there were only two women chief secretaries, as of December 3, 2021. India has never had a woman Cabinet secretary to date. And while the majority of women retire after completing their full tenures in the service, they are more likely than men to seek voluntary retirement from service, data compiled by TCPD show.

4. Women shoulder an unequal burden of the housework: A less noticed aspect is that of family expectations: Women, even IAS officers, are expected to balance their work with their roles as wives and mothers, and this double burden can harm their careers, various women officers pointed out. Among other things, this burden impels women to seek 'softer postings' that are likely to give them more free time rather than opt for more challenging roles. When a woman becomes an IAS officer her marriage market goes down, whereas that of a man goes up significantly. People don't want to have an IAS wife because of ego issues.

5. Larger gender gap in IAS applicants from SCs, OBCs, and interstate disparities: While fewer women appear for the CSE as compared to men across all categories, the gender gap between aspirants is wider for those from marginalised communities, as per data available in UPSC reports since 2007.

There is also interstate variation in the gender gap. Women made up 41% of IAS officers, selected between 1970 and 2020, who listed their domicile as Chandigarh, followed by 32% who listed it as Uttarakhand and 29% as Telangana, TCPD-IAS data show. On the other hand, only 3% of all IAS from Tripura have been women, followed by Odisha and Mizoram, at 5%. More women IAS officers as of December 2021 were serving in southern and (broadly) richer states of India, data from the National Informatics Centre show. Karnataka and Telangana are the only two state cadres where 30% of the officers were women. Against that, less than 15% of the cadre in Jammu & Kashmir, Sikkim, Bihar, Tripura and Jharkhand were women.

Context: During the recent visit of the Home Minister to Manipur as violence raged in the state, he met with the Meira Paibis as part of his meetings with various civil society groups.

About Meira Paibis

• They are known as women torch bearers because of the flaming torches that they hold aloft while marching in the streets, often at night.
• Also known as Imas or Mothers of Manipur, are Meitei women who come from all sections of society in the Imphal valley, are widely respected, and represent a powerful moral force.
• They are loosely organised, usually led by groups of senior women, but have no rigid hierarchy or structure, or any overt political leanings.
• They may become more visible during certain times, but their presence and importance in Manipuri civil society are permanent and palpable, and their role as society’s conscience keepers is widely acknowledged.

Social role of Meira Paibis

• Origin: It was formed in 1977. One of the largest grassroots movements in the world.
• Focus: Its initial focus of fighting alcoholism and drug abuse has now expanded to countering human rights violations and the development of society at large.
• Over the decades, they have led numerous social and political movements in the state, including some powerful protests against alleged atrocities by Indian security forces, leveraging their strong position in society in the interest of the causes they have espoused.

Major actions were undertaken by them

• Against AFSPA: The Meira Paibi women were the active support base of Irom Sharmila, the activist who remained on a hunger strike in the state from 2000 to 2016 to protest against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA).
• Over demands for ILP: In 2015, the state saw tensions over demands for the Inner Line Permit (ILP) system to be introduced there, requiring outsiders to obtain a permit to enter. Protesters contended that this was necessary in order to protect local interests, culture, and commercial opportunities available to them.

Manipur crisis: They have been reported to play a role in the current Manipur crisis as well. The armed forces recently apprehended 12 Kanglei Yawol Kanna Lup (KYKL) cadres with arms, ammunition, and war-like stores during an operation in Itham village in Imphal East, but were forced to release the men, reportedly after pressure from women activists who confronted the security personnel.

Context: The Supreme Court on Tuesday questioned whether a single, unmarried woman having a child through surrogacy is an “accepted norm” in Indian society or not.

The act defines surrogacy as a practice where a woman gives birth to a child for an intending couple with the intention to hand over the child after the birth to the intending couple.

Surrogacy can be classified into altruistic and commercial. 

• True to the meaning of the word, altruistic surrogacy entails no financial compensation for the surrogate. 
• In contrast, commercial surrogacy involves paying the surrogate for bearing the child, implying a profit, 
• while a third type i.e. compensated surrogacy simply involves covering the incurred expenses and loss of wages.

Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021

• It defines the surrogacy as we have discussed earlier.
• The Act prohibits commercial surrogacy, but allows altruistic surrogacy.
• It provides for Eligibility criteria for intending couples:
• Further, this act also specifies the eligibility criteria:
  • Surrogacy is permitted only for those intending married Indian couples who suffer from proven infertility.
  • An Indian woman who is a widow or divorcee between the age of 35 to 45 years and who intends to avail the surrogacy.
• Further it lays eligibility criteria  for the surrogate mother also which specifies that she must be close relative of the intending couple, she must be a surrogate only once in her lifetime; and the surrogate mother cannot provide her own gametes for surrogacy.

Concerns

• Exclusionary: The provisions deny this opportunity to LGBTQ+ persons, live-in couples, unmarried women and single parents.
• Altruistic surrogacy is paternalistic -  It expects a woman to go through the physical and emotional tolls of surrogacy free of cost and only out of ‘compassion’. Thus reinforcing age old patriarchal norm of no economic value to the women’s work.
• It doesn’t respect the bodily autonomy of women - By shifting from right based to need based approach it snatches away the right of a women to decide upon her reproductive choices. Further it is and violative of her fundamental rights under Articles 14 (right to equality) and 21 (right to life) of the Constitution.
• Impetus to Black marketing- Blanket ban on commercial surrogacy may lead to creation of unregulated, exploitative underground/black markets.
• Does not defines close relative - The act didn’t define ‘close relative’, which is a condition to be fulfilled by the surrogate mother. Thus scope for confusion and exploitation of loop holes is always there.
• Reproductive liberty to the couples - Several restriction in form of eligibility criteria etc restricts the surrogacy option to intending couple which is a denial of reproductive liberty to them.
• No power to make decision on abortion - Intending couple don’t have final say in the consent to abort a surrogate child, even if the child being born out of a surrogacy arrangement is at the risk of physical or mental abnormalities.
• Identity and emotional aspect - Several times couples do not want to reveal their plans of oping for surrogacy, now putting the condition of close relative to be a surrogate clearly ignores this aspect and restricts the choices. Further, familial bonds and interaction may involve high emotional complications between surrogate mother and intended parents.

Way ahead

It is essential that, in the process of addressing the exploitation of surrogate mothers, the act should be revised to establish a comprehensive and inclusive procedure. This revised procedure should aim to make surrogacy readily accessible to the deserving citizens of India.