ANALYSIS OF GENDER INEQUALITY IN INDIAN SOCIETY WITH REFERENCE TO PUNE CITY

Traditional patriarchal norms have relegated women to secondary status within the household and workplace. Gender inequality means treating men and women differently on the basis of sex. Traditionally women are considered to be weak. Therefore, she has been considered to be subordinate to men. Gender discrimination is a very serious problem in Indian society. Generation after generation we are practicing patriarchal norms in the household and even at the workplace. This gender discrimination adversely affects the health of the women, her financial status, and education and even in the political involvement. The gender discrimination is blatantly seen in various forms e.g. sexual harassment, working women are getting unequal pay for the same job, pregnancy discrimination and male get more promotional opportunities as compared to men. Even in the matter of making career even the educated woman takes a back seat and sacrifices her potential for her better half. Even in educated families too, while investing on child's education, boy gets preference. The Indian Constitution apart from providing equality to women it also authorizes the State to initiate positive steps to neutralize the cumulative socio economic, education and political adversities faced by them. What is needed is to change the mindset of the society which is a time consuming process. Mere by enacting legislations this cannot be achieved. In order to bring about positive change about the gender discrimination there is need to have greater participation of the women in the parliament and also in the political positions as well as executive authority. Indian women have made gradual progress in recent years—but gender discrimination is still rife. There are no quick fixes. When we go to the root cause of the gender discrimination we observe that Indian society is dominated by men. It is because of the patriarchal system that we follow in India. Methods: It is student population-based study covering 200 students from of both college and school going boys and girls of Pune city selected through a systematic random sampling strategy. Interviews were conducted using separate pre-piloted structured questionnaires for girls and boys. Girls were asked how women in their family were treated and the status of women in the society. Boys were asked whether their female family members had been the victim of violence and how boys were treated at home compared to their sisters. The young girls were asked how they were discriminated in the family with their male siblings. The variables like family education, marriage, gender and economic status were the response to a set of questions for each variable. In addition, data on socioeconomic characteristics were also collected. Descriptive statistics analyses were done.