GENDER ROLES IN FAMILIES AND SOCIETY

March 3, 2022

While Indians accept women as political leaders, they mostly favour traditional gender roles in family life, says a report titled “How Indians view gender roles in families and society” and released by the Pew Research Center, a Washington DC-based non-profit.

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According to the report, while 55% of Indians believed that men and women make equally good political leaders, “nine-in-ten Indians agree with the notion that a wife must always obey her husband”.
Indian women were only slightly less likely than Indian men to agree with this sentiment (61% versus 67%).
Although most Indians expressed egalitarian views on gender roles, with 62% saying that both men and women should be responsible for child care, traditional norms still held sway, with 34% convinced that child care “should be handled primarily by women”.
Similarly, while a “slim majority (54%) says that both men and women” should be responsible for earning money, as many as 43% believed that earning an income is mainly the obligation of men.
Also, 80% of Indians agreed with the idea that when there are few jobs, men should have more rights to a job than women.
While Indians valued both sons and daughters, nearly 94% said it is very important for a family to have at least one son, with the corresponding figure for daughters being 90%.
About 64% of Indians also said that sons and daughters should have equal rights to inheritance from parents. But while four-in-10 adults said that sons should have the primary responsibility to care for ageing parents, only 2% said the same about daughters.