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Bridging Theory and Practice: Gender Equality and Gender Neutrality
Author(s): Dr. Nalini Gandhi KapoorAbstract
Gender equality and gender neutrality are frequently invoked together yet they focus on different questions: the first concerns how rights and resources are shared the second how far social categories should be tied to sex or gender at all. This paper begins with the idea that the people have now widely accepted the importance of gender equality and neutrality. The pressing difficulty lies instead in implementing agreed principle into the practice of institutions. India furnishes a telling example since a constitution emphatic in its guarantee of equality has coexisted for decades with social arrangements that fall well short of it. Distinguishing equality equity and neutrality the paper shows how stereotype creates inequality. In the Indian context the interlocking system of gender and caste convert difference into durable disadvantage. It then examines four settings in which reform is won or lost: education the economy law and political representation and everyday language. A recurring theme is that formal guarantees whether constitutional articles reforming statutes or gender-neutral usage achieve little until they are matched by equity and embedded in institutions through sustained gender sensitization. Neutrality the paper concludes is worth defending only if it treats everyone equally without creating a new social hierarchy and only when accompanied by the corrective work that an unequal history demands.