Trends in Female Employment at the Federal Government Level: A Critical Appraisal of 1983–1989

This paper focuses on two aspects. First, it looks at the trends in female employment at the federal level over a period of six years, from 1983 to 1989, based on data from the Federal Government’s Civil Servants Census Reports, using three years, 1983, 1986, 1989. The second aspect of the paper is to highlight the fact that not all the information that is collected is published gender-wise. This is very important from the point of view of working women as it can also have strong policy implications with regard to the advancement of women for which the Government has set up a separate ministry. The ignorance of the Ministry of Women’s Development about this aspect, that is, of available unpublished information, is surprising. The paper is structured as follows. After a brief discussion of data and methodology, the results are presented in Section 2. Section 3 discusses the data which are collected but not published at the disaggregate level which has adverse implications for women employees at the policy level. The conclusions and policy recommendations are presented in the final and fourth section of this paper. The data used in this paper are taken from the Government of Pakistan (1983, 1986, 1989). The statistics reported in these reports are classified by service groups into Secretariat, Attached Departments, Subordinate Offices, Other Offices, and in the Autonomous/Semi-Autonomous bodies by Basic Pay Scale (BPS) and gender. The Censuses show that for these years no female employee of the regular civil service is reported in BPS-22 for all the categories, and also none is reported in BPS 21 in 1989.

Rama V. Baru. Private Health Care in India: Social Characteristics and Trends. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1998. Hardback. Indian Rs 295.00. 184 pages.

The provision of health care has been recognised as a fundamental human right. Consequently, developed countries incur heavy expenditures in the provision of health care facilities to their citizens. For example, Canada’s public expenditure on health as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is 6.9 percent, Norway’s is 6.6 percent, the USA’s is 6.5 percent, and Japan’s is 5.6 percent. On the other end of the scale are the developing countries such as Niger, which spends 1.6 percent of its GDP on health, Mozambique 1 percent, Haiti 1.3 percent, and Senegal 1.2 percent. In South Asia, Pakistan spends 0.8 percent and India 0.7 percent of their GDP, respectively, on health provision

Trends in Female Employment at the Federal Government Level: A Critical Appraisal of 1983–1989

This paper focuses on two aspects. First, it looks at the trends in female employment at the federal level over a period of six years, from 1983 to 1989, based on data from the Federal Government’s Civil Servants Census Reports, using three years, 1983, 1986, 1989. The second aspect of the paper is to highlight the fact that not all the information that is collected is published gender-wise. This is very important from the point of view of working women as it can also have strong policy implications with regard to the advancement of women for which the Government has set up a separate ministry. The ignorance of the Ministry of Women’s Development about this aspect, that is, of available unpublished information, is surprising. The paper is structured as follows. After a brief discussion of data and methodology, the results are presented in Section 2. Section 3 discusses the data which are collected but not published at the disaggregate level which has adverse implications for women employees at the policy level. The conclusions and policy recommendations are presented in the final and fourth section of this paper. The data used in this paper are taken from the Government of Pakistan (1983, 1986, 1989). The statistics reported in these reports are classified by service groups into Secretariat, Attached Departments, Subordinate Offices, Other Offices, and in the Autonomous/Semi-Autonomous bodies by Basic Pay Scale (BPS) and gender. The Censuses show that for these years no female employee of the regular civil service is reported in BPS-22 for all the categories, and also none is reported in BPS 21 in 1989. Therefore, for this analysis, we group the female employees as between BPS 16–20 instead of BPS 16–22

Jan-Peter Hartung and Helmut Reifeld (eds). Islamic Education, Diversity and National Identity: Dini Madaris in India Post-9/11. New Delhi: Sage Publications. 2005. 331 pages. Indian Rs 380.00. Paperback.

This book deals with a current subject, particularly reflecting the fallout from the 9/11 events in the USA. For years dini madaris (religious schools) have contributed to Muslim educational development in India as well as across the border in Pakistan. As a consequence of 9/11, these religious schools have come under the spotlight with respect to their curriculum and whether they are turning out fanatics bent on destabilising the existing political and economic order, domestically as well as internationally. This has become all the more important because in the western world-view these religious schools encourage an extremely narrow frame of mind. Such schools, according to the western world-view, promote violence (i.e., terrorism), have hidden sources of funding, operate secretly, and impact significantly on the political front

Madhumita Puri and George Abraham (eds.). Handbook of Inclusive Education for Educators, Administrators, and Planners: Within Walls, Without Boundaries. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2004. 309 pages. Paperback. Indian Rs 450.00.

The book is a manual aimed at educators, administrators, and planners involved in dealing with disabled children. Although education is considered to be a basic human right, yet according to UNICEF some 113 million children have no access to education. For disabled children, “only 1 in every 50 children with disability has access to education” (p. 18). The manual has been organised in three parts. Part I is basically a bird’s eye view of Inclusive Education. The term is defined on page 25 of the book in the following words: “Inclusive education is concerned with removing all barriers to learning, and with the participation of all learners vulnerable to exclusion and marginalisation. It is a strategic approach designed to facilitate learning success for all children. It addresses the common goals of decreasing and overcoming all exclusion from the human right to education, at least at the elementary level, and enhancing access, participation, and learning success in quality basic education for all”.

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Sakuntala Narasimhan. Empowering Women: An Alternative Strategy from Rural India. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1999. Indian Rupees 195.00. (Paperback). 236pp.

The positive role of women in economic development cannot be understated; those that are educated and properly empowered can act as catalysts in the development process. This book is about how to empower women so that they can become independent and self-sustaining actors in development. The conventional wisdom is that womens’ empowerment depends on following a simple strategy—alleviate poverty by spending large amounts of money. Having followed this strategy in the past the author feels that it has been far from successful. Monetary inputs by itself is not a sufficient condition to assist women in improving their status. The author puts forward an alternate view that the reasons why women are disadvantaged in India, despite fifty years of development, is due to their ignorance, powerlessness and vulnerability. This is particularly so for those women who belong to the Scheduled Castes (Harijans) and Scheduled Tribes (Girijans or “mountain people”)

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Dynamics of Birth Spacing in Pakistan

In recent years the study of birth spacing has emerged as an area of demographic interest. This is because of its close linkage with the timing and tempo of fertility relative to other measures. At the same time, marital fertility in Pakistan and the duration of breastfeeding have shown a decline (Khan 1985). Thus, the study of birth spacing becomes an important area for examining changes in the components of fertility. The paper's major objectives are to study: (I) Changes in spacing between births if any. (2) Differentials in birth spacing by residence in major 'urban', 'other urban’ and 'rural' areas to see if there is a gradation in birth spacing by levels of urbanization. (3) And differentials in birth spacing by age at marriage, urbanization, education, work pattern and contraceptive use