CONDITIONAL CASH TRANSFERS : Addressing gender discrimination by enhancing women’s worth

THE different perceptions of sex-selective abortion as gender discrimination have led to strategies for intervention, social change, and reform initiated by the state, by concerned civil society initiatives and the women’s movements in the regions where it prevails. The liability of bringing up a girl-child is associated with the burden of dowry at the time of marriage. This instrumental rationality of the valuation of women has been countered by feminists, predictably and understandably, to establish and emphasise women’s substantial non-waged labour; their centrality to social reproduction and their contribution to household work, marginalised tasks, agricultural and other work. The women’s movement’s demand for recognition and equal wages for such work done by women has had a significant impact in this area. Simultaneously, the struggle to provide women with better legal access to inheritance and property, to employment, and to political influence is also a strategy of empowerment (Sunder Rajan 2003).

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