Sanjeev Ahluwalia | Stand firm as illiberalism, gender bias rising globally

Russia gave women the power to vote in 1917. In the Soviet Union, women were equal partners in farms and industry. Today, Russia has come full circle in espousing “traditional” family values where the woman’s primary duty is to breed children and that of men is to die for the fatherland, possibly, because the Ukrainian war has taken a toll of human resources, as has emigration from Russia. Unsurprising then that President Valdimir Putin urged employees at a tank factory in the Urals in February this year to have two or more children per family to preserve the identity of Russia.

President Xi Jinping of China went even further in October last year. He directed that the party should actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and childbearing and guide young people's view on marriage, childbirth and family. Women’s development must align with “family harmony, social harmony, national development and national progress”. But nurturing children is expensive and time-consuming without family help, which is precluded in China, by the difficulties in migrating entire families. Also, there are more young men than women thanks to the female feticide common during the “one child per family norm” followed by China from 1980 till 2016. China’s population growth has peaked.

It is not just autocratic societies which are calling for women to temper their newfound sense of agency and revert to the traditional role of a “home maker”. The United States is a relatively open and liberal economy. A stagnating population is not an issue since immigration is a tradition, unlike in Rusia or China. But illiberalism is rampant versus women’s rights. In 2022 the US Supreme Court struck down the principle, established in 1973 by Roe v Wade, that unduly restrictive regulation of abortion was unconstitutional, robbing women of rights over their own body. Fourteen states now have a near total ban on abortion, eight others have no regulations while other states are somewhere in between. Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee in the presidential elections in November this year, has made the resurrection of Roe v Wade an election issue, reflective of dwindling women’s rights versus State power.

Fecund India legalised abortion in 1971 and liberalised access further in 2021. Nevertheless, while the legal right exists, social norms in traditional families often bind women not to abort unplanned pregnancies early, when it is safest. This is particularly true where medical care is spotty. Pharma has come to the rescue with abortion pills, making it easier for women to exercise this option. India remains surplus in human resources. It became the country with the world’s largest population this year. Population is projected to peak by 2050, or even earlier, as fertility rates are reducing with growth in income.

Enhancing individual, particularly women’s rights, versus constraining traditional norms requires their economic emancipation. The traditional power of family patriarchs or matriarchs is linked to the economic security which families and communities provide their members. Empowering women is a long play -- starting with education, talent development and the availability of enough good jobs and direct income support to dilute the economic stranglehold of families. Mere fiddling with legislated social norms for quick results is no substitute for basic reforms to address the economic issues which undergird social norms.

India, driven by the fear of an exploding population in the mid-1970s, had introduced forced sterilisations. This served only to embed deep suspicions of social pogroms amongst the people, contributed to the fall of the government in 1977 and the end of draconian sterilisations. Nevertheless, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR), a metric of live births per woman of childbearing ages, declined from a peak of 5.98 in 1964 above the global peak of 5.32, to equal the global level in 2011. By 2022 it was at 2.01, lower than the global average of 2.26 and marginally above the replacement rate of 2.0, at which population growth stabilises. The political lesson learnt was that economic development, income redistribution policies, the rolling out of targeted family care outreach and medical health infrastructure are superior policy instruments than coercive State action. to nudge the poor and in particular women, to plan their families.

Compare this with the long-term negative economic consequences of forced population reduction in China which are now playing out. Its TFR peaked at 7.51 in 1963, much above the global average of 5.32 but declined through the dislocations of the Mao era. By 1974 it was 4.26, equal to the world average. As China approached the one billion population mark, an incentives-based population control policy was introduced under Deng Xiaoping. By1980, it had been perverted to the draconian “one child per family” policy. Despite loose implementation, fertility dropped like a stone to 1.93, well below the replacement rate, by 1991. Thereafter it continued to drop to 1.18 in 2022, at par with developed economies, though China is yet to become one in terms of per capita GDP. Economic growth has slowed as exports peak. Reviving growth will depend on growing domestic markets so incentives and exhortations for families to have children are back within three decades.

Will this flip-flop strategy succeed? It is anyone’s guess whether well-educated Chinese, Russian and American women will dumb-down their expanded options and expectations. The unexpected State sponsored revivalism of traditional social roles for women, contrasts sharply with the more consistent, forward-looking strategy in lower middle-income India.

Our advantage is that the share of women in the formal workplace is just 29 per cent versus about 46 per cent in more developed economies. Labour supply is not our constraint. Under-utilised women power is a reserve waiting to be used. The real issue, as we become richer, learning from the US and China, will be whether liberalism in the workplace will also erode, at the altar of State power. One can only hope that Indian liberalism is genuinely founded on the sturdier, culture-specific, social norms of long standing, which would endure the strains imposed by development trade-offs between individual rights and State-led growth.