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Social Stratification

Notes A major area of concern and focus in India is the remarkable degree of within regional commonalities
and across region contrasts in culture, gender bias, development and demography. Several
researchers have recognised a cultural divide between north and south Indian states. North Indian
kinship structure with exogamous marriage system favour strong patriarchal value and lower
female autonomy compared to south Indian kinship structure of endogenous marriage system
(Dyson and Moore, 1983; Karve, 1965; Sopher, 1980). Though, recent studies have found some
blurring of north-south disparity in gender discrimination. India’s sex ratio, defined here as the
number of women per 1000 men, has fallen steadily since the beginning of the 20th century. Date
1 asks the question that has mystified demographers for many a decade : why has the sex ratio
fallen by nearly 1% at each decennial enumeration ?
Though the sex ratios increased for the first time this century from 1991-2001, there is little reason
to be optimistic. At 933, the ratio is far behind the 972 of the 1901 census, and represents only a
marginal improvement from the 927 of 1991. Regional disparities further complicate any
demographic analysis: Northwestern India-including Punjab (874), Haryana (861), western Uttar
Pradesh, Rajasthan (922), and northern Madhya Pradesh-has the lowest sex ratios in the country
even though Punjab and Haryana are among the richest states in the country in terms of per
capital income. The highest rates, once again, are in the high literacy rates of the south, Kerela (the
only state with a positive sex ratio of 1058) and Tamil Nadu (986).
Low infant and adult sex ratios are widely seen to be indicators of the dismal situation of women
in the country. Mitra (1979) has likened the falling sex ratio to a measure of the oppression of
women. Empirical evidence has shown a high correlation between low sex ratios and high female
and maternal mortality rates (Coale 1991). Three popular explanations pervade academic literature-
cultural explanations, discrimination in nutrition amidst falling food availability and increasing
poverty, and differential access to health care amidst lowered health expenditure by the government.
Economic Contribution of Women

There is a tendency to assume that the status of women worsens as income level of the household
decreases. However, several problems exist with this assumption. Sex ratios, for example, indicate
a lower gender gap amongst schedule tribes and lower income classes as Sex ratios are found to
be more favourable to women when monthly household expenditure and thus income level-is at
its lowest. Explanations of this phenomena link higher sex ratios to the increased economic
productivity of women; arguing that since women must work in poor families to earn supplemental
incomes, they are considered economically productive and less “expendable”. This lowers biases
against them in terms of intra-household access to nutrition and resources.
Agnihotri (1998) support such a hypothesis in their findings that show that female labour
participation significantly reduced prevalent masculine biases. The authors also found that increased
labour force participation rate (hence LFPR) resulted in more widespread gains in North India-
where the initial sex ratios were lower-than South India, though positive gains were recorded in
both communities. The implication of such studies initially appears to suggest that interventions
that increase income-generating employment (i.e. not including domestic labour) and empowerment
of women are the most successful in actually changing systems of bias against women, and thus
will effect long-term changes.
Such a hypothesis, however, comes with its own reservations. Increasing the waged work of
women implies an addition to their already substantive domestic duties. The burden of working
hours in addition to domestic management could have direct effects on a woman’s health, her
efficiency, and her status within the family should her domestic duties be neglected. In addition,
such interventions continue in an established trend of devaluing women’s domestic work and
seeing it as inimical to their development, rather than trying to engage women’s domestic
productivity into their development process. It must be understood that simply increasing income

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