Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

ARTICLE: “Careers Give India’s Women New Independence,” by Somini Sengupta, New York Times, 23 November 2007, p. A1.

ARTICLE: “India’s Surging Economy Lifts Hopes and Ambitions: Socialism and Castes Begin to Give Way,” by Paul Beckett and Krishna Pokharel and Eric Bellman, Wall Street Journal, 28 November 2007, p. A1.

INDEX: “Global Gender Gap,” World Economic Forum, Time, 26 November 2007, p. 17.

The old route was birth home, maybe a brief stint on your own in college, and then to your hubby’s home, and that was life for Indian women.

But globalization changes all that. Now, the interregnum between birth home and eventual marriage home lengthens, and lengthens, and sometimes does not end.

None of this happens overnight. Women approach these changes and attendant opportunities with great restraint and care, by and large.

But then think about how their daughters will act, growing up in a world where this possibility is taken for granted.

We saw the same thing here in the States. Women got freedom in the 60s and 70s, but their daughters simply had freedom in the 80s and 90s, and that’s when the real change begins. Generational expectations are, in and of themselves, a huge agent of societal change.

So as incomes rise, caste distinctions fade and inconceivable ambitions emerge (“In my time, we’d never have considered doing that!” says the parent). In the past, kids followed parents into careers. Today, that breaks down, and parents want dramatically better career paths for their kids. The farmer wants a lawyer son, and so on. The beautician wants a doctor daughter, and so on.

That is real revolution.

Right now India ranks 114th out of 128 surveyed countries in terms of a gender gap (the U.S., by comparison, ranks 31, just ahead of Kazakhstan—so take that, Borat!; China is 73; tops is Sweden, ja!).

I expect India’s rank to start climbing ….