For gender equality, the rich must pay taxes (International Women's Day 2020)

Excellent study material for all civil services aspirants - begin learning - Kar ke dikhayenge!

 For gender equality, the rich must pay taxes (International Women's Day 2020)

---

Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment

---

• March 9 movement in Mexico: The women in Mexico are ensuring that on March 9, there will be no women to be seen anywhere on streets, in offices, in schools or universities. It's a national strike against gender violence and a macho culture.
• Women's rights: So much is said about it, but women's rights are violated with impunity, worldwide. Intolerable levels of violence is the biggest problem. India's NFHS shows that every third woman has faced domestic violence.
• Wealth and income inequality: Men today own 50% more of the world's wealth that women do. Women get just 77% for same kind of work that men do. Gender wage gap is not closing fast enough.
• Gender inequality structure: At its heart lies the unequal distribution of domestic and care work. Since women take the greatest load of child care, elderly care and illness care, they do it in addition to daily domestic works. All this remains "invisible".
• Quantum of work: Each day, 12.5 billion hours are spent by women and girls from poor and marginalised groups caring for others. Annual monetary value is $12.8 trillion (3X the tech industry). ILO estimates that 60.6 crore women (41% of currently unemployed) are out of labour market due to family responsibilities.
• Climate change and virus attacks: When climate change makes water access worse, women will walk further each day to find it. The worst hit by COVID-19 are the women.
• Solutions: Domestic work and care work needs to be divided properly. So more public infrastructure is needed for nurseries, health centres, elderly homes, etc. Public infra for sanitation, drinking water also needs improvements. 
• Where is the funding: Tax systems need to be redesigned to avoid women from bearing the burden disproportionately. Fiscal resources must increase. 

1. MNCs and super rich need to pay their fair share of taxes
2. Developing nations lose upto $200 b each year due to MNCs' evading taxes
3. The ICRICT suggests that to achieve equality, a thorough reform of global taxation system is needed [ICRICT - The Independent Commission on International Corporate Tax Reform]. Without that, their concern for gender inequality is merely paying lip service.

• Summary : To eliminate gender inequality, vast fiscal resources are needed to build infrastructure to share domestic and care work, and for that, proper taxes need to be paid by the MNCs and super rich.

Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment

Join UPSC Self Prep course | Online Course (PT Gurukul)  | Covid Special Course | Join PT courses

* Content sourced from free internet sources (publications, PIB site, international sites, etc.). Take your own subscriptions. Copyrights acknowledged.