Shillong, Sept. 30: Vice-President Mohammad Hamid Ansari, during his maiden visit to “matrilineal” Meghalaya today, said discrimination and deprivation as a consequence of gender inequality were disturbing trends in the country and women citizens need to empower themselves for better results.

Delivering the address at the 19th convocation of the North Eastern Hill University (Nehu), Ansari, who arived here yesterday, said, “It is the task of the state and the duty of society to ensure that the principle of equity is an essential concomitant of its pursuit of welfare for citizens without regard to religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. Much has been achieved, much remains to be done.”

He said while the principle of gender equality and of affirmative action to ensure it is writ large in the Constitution and has been reinforced by Supreme Court rulings, social reality was not in consonance with it.

“Gender works its debilitating impact over lifetimes and generations, and impedes a person’s access to human capital formation, full range of citizenship functions, economic opportunities, social emancipation and political participation.”

Highlighting the five dimensions of inequality and discrimination resulting from gender need, Ansari said these relate to demographics, nourishment and health, literacy, participation in economic activity and political representation.

On the level of female economic activity, Ansari said participation of women in professional and technical work was lower compared to men.

“The Five Year Strategic Plan of the Union ministry of women and child development for 2011-2016 notes that workforce participation rate of women in urban areas is a mere 14 per cent as compared to 54 per cent for men. Even in rural areas, it is 31 per cent for women whereas it is 55 per cent for men. Women’s share of organised sector and public sector is less than 20 per cent. They have an even lesser share of Union government employment which is less than 8 per cent,” he said.

“The picture of discrimination and deprivation is disturbingly stark. It took us over four decades after Independence to allow women citizens to pass on their nationality to their children without reference to their spouse and over five decades to receive explicit statutory protection from domestic violence,” the Vice-President said.

Highlighting the main initiatives taken for women’s empowerment, Ansari said the National Policy for Empowerment of Women, 2001, has three policy approaches — judicial/legal empowerment, economic empowerment and social empowerment. Another initiative, the National Mission for Empowerment of Women, 2010, will enable co-ordinated assessment of current government interventions and align future programmes so as to translate the recommendations of the National Policy into reality.

Ansari said women citizens empowering themselves and being encouraged to do so by enlightened segments of public opinion would produce better results.

The Vice-President said an important issue for policy and action was “asset ownership”. “Even as the country has witnessed good economic growth in the past decade, the benefits of such growth and macroeconomic initiatives to women are mediated through their position in homes and workplaces, and access to, and ownership of, productive assets.”

In development terms, Ansari said asset redistribution was perceived to be more effective than income redistribution in empowering and addressing gender differentials in property rights, division of labour, mobility, ability to resist violence, and access to healthcare, education, and transformative technologies.

Altogether 2,492 graduating students of Nehu received their degrees in person while 5,484 received them in absentia.

Among those present on the occasion were governor R.S. Mooshahary, who is also the chief rector of Nehu, chief minister Mukul Sangma, Nehu chancellor M.G.K. Menon, and vice-chancellor A.N. Rai.