Towards Equality- A Report, which Actually Set the Government and Voluntary Groups Thinking.

Conceding to the representations made by the international women’s movement, the United Nations declared 1975–1985 as the International Decade of the Woman and organised the World Conference on Women in Mexico (1975). The World Plan of Action formulated during the Conference stressed the need for research, documentation and analyses into processes in society that create structures of gender inequalities. In India, the National Committee on the Status of Women had been set up to examine the status of women in the country and to investigate into the extent to which the constitutional and legal provisions had impacted on women’s status including their employment and education.

The Committee was the first major attempt to review and evaluate data on various aspects of women’s status. It was also empowered to comment on the directions of change in women’s roles, rights and opportunities due to development.

The Committee came out with its findings in the form of a report, popularly known as the Towards Equality Report (1974), which became a major landmark for the women’s movement. The beginnings of the women’s movement in India, has often been traced back to this report. The report revealed the deplorable condition of women in the country evident from demographic data, an analysis of the socio-cultural conditions prevalent, the legal provisions and safeguards, economic role played by women in all sectors, women’s access to education, political participation, the policies and programmes for welfare and development, the impact of mass media, etc.

This Report, paved the way for serious thinking on the status of women in different social institutions in India, because it showed that women far behind men in enjoying the equal rights conferred on them by them by the constitution. This Report led to a debate in the parliament and showed the failure of the welfare approach, which treated women as recipients of benefits and not as equal partners in the development efforts.

The report also made several recommendations which included stressing the important role of the State and the community in the achievement of ‘gender equality’. It highlighted the need for a concerted effort to eradicate oppressive practices such as dowry, polygamy, bigamy, child marriage, ostentatious expenditure on weddings, and it emphasised the need for a campaign on legal awareness, the provisions of crèches, better working conditions for women including equal remuneration for equal work, the compulsory registration of marriages, law reform on aspects concerning divorce, maintenance, inheritance, adoption, guardianship maternity benefits, the universalisation of education, etc.

The new consciousness that emerged after the publication of Toward Equality has to the setting up of the Women's Welfare's and Development Bureau in 1976 under the Ministry of Social Welfare. Four Separate working groups on employment of Women, Adult Education Programmes for Women, Women in Agriculture and Rural Development were also up to work out strategies for action.