What the PEW report tells us about gender attitudes in India.

Abstract

The PEW Research Center released a report on the Indian attitudes towards gender roles, at home and at society at large. The findings are based on a survey of around 30,000 people conducted in 2019-2020 or pre-COVID-19 period. [Read the report here: https://www.pewforum.org/2022/03/02/how-indians-view-gender-roles-in-families-and-society/] Nearly 8 in 10 Indians said that it is very important for women to have the same rights as men, and at the same time 80% of Indian agree with the statement that “when there are few jobs, men should have more rights to a job than women”. Similarly, 9 out of 10 Indians also completely or mostly agreed that “a wife must always obey her husband”. What is more interesting is that the difference of opinion of this statement between men and women was modest. In other words, Indian women and men share equally repressive gender views. These findings give a segue into the wide gender attitude problem in the country and we further elucidate on this.