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India to press for resource sharing to help women

NEW DELHI: India said on Wednesday it would press Western nations at next week's U.N. Conference on Women to share more resources and technology with developing countries, giving all the world's women a better chance to progress.

"We must ensure the developing world gets a larger share of the economic cake, for the world cannot progress by neglecting developing countries," India's Human Resource Development Minister Madhavrao Scindia told a news conference.

"The developed world tends to be a little niggardly as far as access to information and technology is concerned," Scindia said. "This is another need which must be addressed."

Scindia, a man, will lead India's 42-member delegation to the meeting in Beijing which begins on Monday.

India's junior Human Resource Development Minister Basava Rajeshwari is scheduled to present a paper on women, on behalf of seven South Asian nations, officials said.

India also plans to use the Beijing meeting as a platform to seek renewal of pledges made by other countries at earlier summits, they said.

"Beijing will show what our achievements have been compared internationally, and what shortfalls exist," Scindia said.

The minister said access to education and affordable health care, prevention and elimination of violence against women, and women's participation in macro policy-making would figure prominently on India's agenda for the meeting.

"We will be keeping a close vigil on the gender equation as economic restructuring takes place -- it is an area of prime concern," Scindia said.

Female life expectancy in India has nearly doubled since 1945, and exceeded male life expectancy in 1986-90, while female and male rates of infanticide were equal at 79 deaths per 1,000, he said.

He said nearly 60 percent of Indian women were illiterate and 60 million women had joined the workforce over the past decade compared with 74 million men.

"We have come a long way, but I am still not satisfied. We still have a lot of work to do on gender inequity," he said. "We will then come back and review our policies in this light."-Reuter