Indian Philanthropy’s Next Stop Should Be An Equal World For Girls
Philanthropic funding in India has grown more than fourfold since 2010. But less than a percent goes towards gender equality.
Indians are becoming more charitable than ever. And yet programmes for adolescent girls continue to get only a paltry fraction of the philanthropic funding.
There’s a case to be made for more efficient diversion of these funds towards initiatives that benefit the nation’s most vulnerable if it is to achieve its sustainable development goals by the end of the new decade, according to Bain & Company, Dasra’s India Philanthropy Report 2020. “Philanthropy needs to focus on India’s most vulnerable but that is not the predominant trend so far.”
Philanthropic funding in India has grown more than fourfold since 2010. But these funds remain concentrated to a few sectors. Areas like gender equality — one of United Nations’ 17 sustainable development goals — end up getting less than 1 percent of the funds.
Gender equality is a metric on which India is falling behind and needs philanthropists’ focus.India Philanthropy Report 2020
Adolescent girls in India face an array of challenges. Besides being outnumbered by boys, they bear the brunt of India’s patriarchal social norms like child marriage, teenage pregnancy and little access to formal education.
The government has made large strides attempting to improve gender equality, a fundamental human right. But that has had limited success. Despite the efforts, India remains one of the worst countries in gender equality. The country, still grappling with a skewed preference for a male child, is ranked 112 on the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report.
The reason for lack of success for government initiatives towards girls, the report said, is because their schemes have been “piecemeal”. These schemes only focus on either health or education and not much towards their empowerment or easing transition from childhood to adulthood.
That’s where philanthropic capital can step in and fill a huge hole, according to Bain & Company, Dasra. “Transforming adolescent girls’ vulnerability into empowerment requires a holistic approach to their development — and significant funding,” the report said. “Every rupee invested in this demographic will have an exponential economic impact.”
The report said with the obvious need for capital in this area, philanthropic investments were likely to get high returns. “The opportunity is huge, given that philanthropic capital directed to secondary education has the potential to add approximately five times per rupee invested in additional GDP,” it said. “The impact would be significantly higher if we consider the ripple effect that comes from reducing child marriage and teenage pregnancies.”
The report advocates for an approach where multiple stakeholders collaborate, identify systemic inequalities impacting adolescent girls and then make a variety of interventions at multiple levels.
This also involves partnering the government to build a national-level platform for delivering positive outcomes. “Ongoing government support, coupled with private interventions, are showing early signs of improvement for adolescent girls’ development, further emphasising that philanthropic capital focused on adolescent girls can have a multiplier effect,” the report said.
Evidence highlights the need for philanthropy to focus more on vulnerability and accelerate India towards holistic development, the report said. “Without that catalytic support from philanthropy, India will struggle to meet its Sustainable Development Agenda 2030, which endeavours to ‘reach the furthest behind first’. No one should be left out of India’s development story over the next decade and beyond.”