Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in India

Gender-based inequalities translate into greater value being placed on the health and survival of males than of females. In India, examples of health and population indicators that are driven by gender differences in the perceived worth of males and females include sex ratios at birth, infant and child mortality by sex, and low ages at marriage for women. Further, at the household level, disempowerment of women results in their lowered access to resources such as education, employment, and income, and limits their power over decisionmaking and freedom of movement. Men‘s power over women can be measured, on the one hand, by assessing the level of women‘s and men‘s agreement with norms that give men the right to exercise control over women and, on the other hand, by measuring the extent to which women are subject to spousal violence.