Women. This one word describes an entire gender and unites women from all over the world under one banner. But while women are indeed united by gender, their life experiences vary from individual to individual, community to community, and country to country. Even with these differences, there are many injustices that women face every day, from birth to death and during every phase of life in between. This is the reason why gender justice is considered to be a basic right for all women. If you are a woman, here’s what you should know about gender justice.
Aren’t Gender Justice & Women Empowerment The Same?
The term gender justice, according to the United Nations, entails “ending the inequalities between women and men that are produced and reproduced in the family, the community, the market and the state. It also requires that mainstream institutions—from justice to economic policymaking—are accountable for tackling the injustice and discrimination that keep too many women poor and excluded.” And that definition right there explains how gender justice differs from women empowerment.
While the concept of women empowerment is all about equipping women to overcome obstacles, gender justice is about holding the systems that create, uphold or perpetrate such obstacles accountable. This means holding judicial and legal systems, political or governmental systems, educational systems, employment systems, and even entire social systems accountable for any and all injustices against women. This accountability includes recognising the injustice, understanding how and why it came about, then introducing a policy to remedy the injustice. Because it is based on this process, gender justice is more holistic and capable of making a more equitable world, if and when achieved.
Why Gender Justice Is Not A Monolith
As mentioned before, womanhood might be thought of as a universal experience that unites a category of the population, but it is in no way a monolithic concept. Every woman’s experiences differ, which means the injustices she may face can differ hugely. Therefore, gender justice is not a monolithic concept either. Gender justice must be tailored according to the needs of women in need, and should not be seen as a one-size-fits-all concept. Here are a few larger issues that increase the injustice women face.
Poverty: Fewer sources of stable income, or employment in the unorganised sector, or absolutely no opportunity of earning a living—all of these keep women behind. These limit their access to everything that can provide them with justice.
Illiteracy: Without any access to literacy and education—including especially digital literacy in this day and age—women cannot access any sources of employment, financial stability, legal recourse for wrongs, or good quality of life.
Unequal pay: Oxfam reveals that on average, women are paid 24 per cent less than men for comparable work. This exacerbates the gap between men and women all over the world, but especially in regions of the world where women still have a lower status than men.
Legal disparity: Oxfam also reveals that even now, 153 countries across the world have laws that discriminate against women. In fact, in 18 of these countries, husbands can legally prevent wives from working, which makes them completely dependent on male members of the family for their survival. There are many other laws, pertaining to violence, assault, fraud, inheritance, etc which can also put women at a huge systemic disadvantage.
Violence: Women experience tremendous amounts of violence or abuse during their lifetime. Both the UN and Oxfam concur that globally, one in every three women has experienced violence—usually at the hands of an intimate partner, a relative, someone they know, or an absolute stranger. With the digital revolution, this threat of violence against women and girls has moved online. Globally, this is increasing exponentially and makes women a vulnerable category of society.
Lack of representation: Can women get any justice as long as very few among them are part of the systems held accountable for gender justice? Absolutely not. However, Oxfam shows that women make up less than 24 per cent of the world’s parliamentarians, and less than five per cent of its mayors. Women need to be in more leadership positions to be able to address the injustices they face.
Race: Believe it or not, the lack of privilege and systemic oppression faced by many races across the globe have an immense impact on the injustices women have been facing generation after generation. This not only goes for those who were subjected to slavery in the USA or other parts of the world, but also those who have been colonised. This puts the African-Americans, Native Americans, Inuits, and other indigenous colonised peoples at the same disadvantage as people of erstwhile colonised nations like India, Pakistan, Myanmar, etc.
Orthodoxy: While legal and other systemic issues do disadvantage women to a large degree, in traditional and patriarchal societies, orthodoxy can also lead to huge injustices. This orthodoxy can be based on community norms that relegate women to roles behind closed doors, or religious ones that limit them to roles deemed “appropriate” or “safe”. Some orthodox systems also focus on the boy child over the girl child, disadvantaging the latter even more. Most orthodox systems also subvert legal and political systems, which is why it’s important to identify them and hold them accountable for gender injustice.
Caste: Peculiar to only India, the caste system has generationally held back a huge number of people, including women. Protected under the Scheduled Castes in the Indian Constitution, people belonging to these castes still face huge obstacles when looking for jobs, accessing legal recourse or even in getting an education they deserve. Dalit women, in particular, are doubly disadvantaged because they belong to oppressed castes and fall under the globally disadvantaged class of women.
Climate Change: Because of their other disadvantages, women have very little say in the ever-evolving and increasing problem that is climate change. The UN says that since the majority of the world’s poor are women, and because they are disadvantaged in decision-making roles and labour markets, women are disproportionately impacted by climate change.
Why You Deserve Gender Justice Right Now?
As explained before, every woman faces different kinds of injustices throughout her lifetime. These injustices are exacerbated by a number of factors, each of them unique to the background, location and situation of the woman. Often, these injustices increase due to the lack of awareness about them, which is why the concept of gender justice must be understood by all. This is also because every woman deserves gender justice, no matter what the root cause of her injustices is. Here’s why you, as a woman, deserve gender justice right now:
• Gender justice can help you understand your privileges and disadvantages at the same time. This in turn can help you grow.
• Gender justice can remove unnecessary obstacles from your life, especially when it comes to pay gap, caste or race barriers, or even legal disparities.
• Gender justice, especially if it focuses on reducing violence, can help you feel more safe and secure. This in turn can increase your productivity levels.
• Gender justice can help you feel more heard, especially if there are more women in leadership roles.
• Gender justice can create a more equitable society, where the next generation has more opportunities of living freely and pursuing all paths towards a better future.
Gender justice isn’t about addressing one type of injustice, but all. This is why there should be a concerted effort to address all injustices at once. What’s more, every individual must play their part in helping movements for gender justice. What method do you believe is the most effective in getting all women the gender justice they deserve? Let us know in the comments below.