Different terms such as women's 'status', women's 'autonomy', women's 'empowerment', 'bargaining power' and 'agency' are often used to indicate the position of women in society. Most often, these terms refer to women's position in relation to men and to some aspect of gender inequality. They are based on the idea that there is gender inequality in the society, thereby resulting in an overall lower status or position of women.
Considering the literacy level among Indian states, a wide range of variations have been observed. There has been a significant increase in the literacy rate in all states between 2001 and 2011, bringing down the gap between the states. However, a large gap still remains with the female literacy rate based on 2011 census. The State with the highest gender gap in literacy rates is Madhya Pradesh (20.5% points) and the State with the lowest gender gap is Kerala (4% points). In terms of the overall literacy rate in the state, Madhya Pradesh is better than five other states (Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh), indicating that female literacy has been particularly ignored in Madhya Pradesh. Incidentally, Madhya Pradesh is also the worst performing state interms of some indicators of health outcomes such as child mortality rate, IMR and child malnutrition. Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Punjab and Kerala are among the top performing states interms of most health outcome indicators.
It is further noticed that there is a clear relation between female literacy, IMR and U5MR. States with high female literacy are more likely to have lower IMR. Moreover, the correlation between female literacy and lower IMR is higher than what was seen in the case of the relation between IMR and indicators of economic well-being such as per capita income or poverty ratios.
Source: Sinha, Dipa (2016), Women, Health and Public services in India, Routledge India.
In which of the following context the word women's 'agency' is used?
