Underrated Indian mothers

If the very premise on which a report is based is incorrect, it can lead to vastly inaccurate conclusions

By NOEL G DESOUZA

News items derived from the latest Save The Children report speak for themselves: “More women respected in Pakistan than India”. 81% of women in Pakistan purportedly feel better treated than women in India (79%) whilst for Bangladesh it is 86%. Those studies are based on what a limited number of women surveyed felt about themselves. They are not comparative studies with any other country, but the information is twisted to say that Indian women comparatively are a dissatisfied lot.

A Press Trust of India banner, based on that report, reads: “For Mothers India Not A Happy Place”. I have yet to see a single critical Indian commentary refuting the illogical conclusions which have been drawn.

This report follows the trend of other United Nations bodies’ reports which rank India low with regard to the condition of women, that is, 75th amongst 79 so-called “less developed” countries. Fiji, Saudi Arabia, the Syrian Arab Republic, Occupied Palestinian Territory, Ghana, Guatemala, Oman, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Morocco, Cameroon and Congo rank immediately above India. This is blatant nonsense. Amongst these, Syria, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Congo continue to violently subjugate human rights. How happy can mothers be in such a situation?

The top 10 countries are Norway, Australia and Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, New Zealand, Finland, Belgium, Netherlands and France. As with other similar UN bodies’ reports, the small Scandinavian countries rank highest. Those well-ranked countries give good social security benefits to their citizens. Consequently, many women choose not to be mothers, thus enabling them to continue in employment.

The report justifies Norway’s number one rating because it has “the highest ratio of female-to-male earned income, the highest contraceptive prevalence rate, one of the lowest under-5 mortality rates and one of the most generous maternity leave policies in the developed world.”

By idealizing the conditions of the Scandinavian countries, other nations with different societal systems and conditions are made to look as if they are living in undesirable conditions. India has had women in high political office, leading jobs in universities and a large numbers of female doctors long before any of the top ten rated nations in the report.

The USA, ranked thirty-first, does not fare well in the report. The report notes that “a woman in the US is more than 7 times as likely as a woman in Italy or Ireland, to die from pregnancy-related causes and her risk of maternal death is 15-fold than that of a woman in Greece.” Amongst other reasons given are that “the under-5 mortality rate is 8 per 1,000 births … (which is) … twice as likely as a child in Finland, Greece, Iceland, Japan, Luxembourg, Norway, Slovenia, Singapore or Sweden ….”

The lack of natural population growth induced Australia to offer a baby bonus which has led to a spike in population growth. In contrast, China has laws which limit population growth whilst India has been trying to do so by persuasion. These three countries have different population structures and different needs. One cannot be the model for the others.

Australia’s second place in the Save The Children ratings should be read in conjunction with the Australian Bureau of Statistics publication Families in Australia 2011, which reveals demographic trends with regard to family life in Australia. Marriage rates continue to fall and the median marriage age has risen to 29.6 for men and 27.7 for women. One in three marriages ends in divorce with over half of such divorces involving children under the age of 18. An increasing number of couples have both partners working. Women are increasingly participating in the workforce.

Despite Australia’s apparent prosperity, homelessness is on the rise. Indeed, the Salvation Army and Anglicare, the welfare wing of the Anglican Church, have expressed alarm about the growing number of homeless women, many of whom have children.

The Save The Children organization campaigns to improve living conditions for children and mothers in several parts of the world. It has some very dedicated individuals who have given up top corporate positions to work in the non-profit sector. This includes Anne M. Mulcahy who left as the CEO of Xerox because she believed that “only public/private partnerships can pull off a turnaround plan at the scale needed to tackle global poverty.”

Another example is Retired Army Col. John Agoglia who served as the Director of the Counterinsurgency Training Centre (Afghanistan) in Kabul from 2008-2010. Pointing out that the USA spent about $667 billion on defense last year, but just $17 billion on humanitarian assistance, he notes: “How much more could we have accomplished if we had invested a lot more – and much earlier – in things like hospitals and schools and midwives and medicine for the women and children of Afghanistan and other developing countries?”

Save The Children should concentrate on its valuable practical work and not become another self-appointed ratings agency.