Tedx: Need for Men’s Rights

Men’s Rights a concept which sounds alien in this modern era. We hear so much about rights for various groups, that we have ended up trampling on the most basic fundamental rights for men. Still on the backdrop of patriarchy we keep giving them the short end of the stick and ask them to ‘man up’.

Recently in an address in Tedx, the discussion was on Need for Men’s Rights.

The speaker very articulately explains the distinction between economic power and decision making power. He explains this concept with the story of Shantanu. Certain parameters can be used as a barometer to measure the health and quality of living of men in the society.

• Life Expectancy
• Unnatural Deaths
• Suicides
• Homelessness
• Education

There is something very wrong with the society with majority of child labour being boys, victims of violent crimes being men and violent crimes committed by women on the rise. The discussion then went to if we are really living in a patriarchal society and the rape laws of India.

The presentation used at the address is given below:

Need for Mens Rights_TEDxJuhu

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India’s Gender Gap

I was recently going through an article in the newspaper which stated that the gender ratio in India worsens with age. The analysis and conclusion of the news report looks intriguing, but on a detailed reading it is found that the analysis conducted by the author of the article was rudimentary.

The article compared apples and oranges therefore giving incorrect conclusions. The premise was that the women in India are discriminated from an early age by way of sex determination methods and gross neglect. Let’s delve deeper into the analysis employed and conclusions derived by the author of the article –

1. The author took the data from 2011 census which provides Single Year wise gender data for the Indian Population.
2. Then the author added the difference of men and women for the age groups till 6 years and 15 years and stated that there has been a drop in the population. This drop in population is attributed to female feticide, gross neglect for the girl child and slow death. This implies that the girls die younger and which skews the gender ratio by the time they reach 15.
3. The thesis above is completely incorrect due to the below reasons –
   • You are comparing the population born in one year with the population born in another year and coming to a conclusion that a few have perished away. An example below will explain –

   Age	Population in 2010	Population in 2011
   1 Year	100	105
   2 Year	99	100

   The author has taken the first column and came to a conclusion that by the time the population of age 1 year becomes of 2 years of age, one person dies. This is incorrect as the first column provides the total number of persons who are of age 1 and aged 2 in year 2010. By the time the person of age 1 becomes of 2 years, the year will be 2011, therefore population data for 2011 needs to be compared. In 2011, the number of persons at age 2 years is 100, therefore no one has died till the time they reach 2 years of age. The author of the article has not done such an analysis.

   • The population of India is growing therefore more number of children are born every year, which is shown in the above table for example, in 2010 only 100 persons were born as opposed to 105 in 2011. Therefore comparing persons born in 2011 with persons born in 2010 is bound to give a negative result (ie. Signifying death). When the author of the news report compared the data in 2011 for population of age 1 year with population of age 2 years he is actually comparing population of two separate years.
4. The conclusion of the author is also incorrect which states that sex determination technique is skewing the gender ratio. In fact the gender ratio has increased over the past 3 decades as shown below[i], implying that sex determination is not as prevalent as suggested by the author of the article.
   

   Census Year	Sex Ratio (Females per 1000 males)
   1991	927
   2001	933
   2011	940

5. The conclusion that women of India are not cared for and die at an early age is also incorrect and not supported by data. Infact the data shows a picture contrary to this hypothesis due to:
   • Average Life Expectancy of women in India is higher at 65 as opposed to 62 for men. This implies that women live longer and healthier, hence have lower malnutrition[ii] contrary to what is suggested by the article.
   • WHO data shows that deaths due to diseases and injuries for men is 883.2 as compared to women as 788.7 (per 100,000). Hence, women have better access to healthcare as compared to their male counterparts[iii] again something completely contrary to what is stated in the article.The truth is infact the men are missing in India and their death rates increase once they are born. Over 20 Million men are missing from the working population of India based on the data tabulated for the past 15 years. The complete analysis can be found here. Further, the truth about India’s Gender ratio can be found here.

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[i] Statement 12, Census of India, 2011

[ii] WHO: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/indwm/ww2005/tab3a.htm

[iii] WHO: http://www.who.int/entity/gho/mortality_burden_disease/global_burden_disease_death_estimates_sex_2008.xls

Related articles

• Truth about India’s Gender Ratio (standupforacause.wordpress.com)

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Women’s Health and Safety in India

There is a lot of hue and cry on the health and safety of Women in the World and in India. Millions of dollars are spent annually on Women’s health issues leaving ‘Male Health’ and male specific issues at bay. The populace that should be worried about health and safety should be the men folk. The data suggests that the women in India are well cared for, have least crime rates against them, as compared to their male counterparts and as compared to other developed nations.

The life expectancy of females is more than the male counterparts. The major reason for this is that they are well cared for. Please understand, that it is very difficult for me to comprehend that how a successful society can be created and sustained for long durations of time if it treats it’s women folk poorly. Throughout history, women have been cared for, kept secured and in my understanding treated well (till date women are secured from dangerous jobs like mining etc…)