Sri Lankan women have a relatively better “status” than women in many other developing countries but have yet to achieve gender equality or empowerment in the context of all the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and some of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). According to the Human Development Report (UNDP 2002) Sri Lanka’s Gender Development Index (GDI) in 2000 was 0.737 as compared with the Human Development Index (HDI) of 0.741 but the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) was only 0.274.

A complex amalgam of factors has contributed to the present situation of women—a forward–looking social policy package of free education and health services and subsidized food introduced 6 decades ago, relatively slow economic growth, a substantial incidence of poverty, and unevenly developed infrastructure. Supervening these factors have been the contradictions between liberal traditional laws, and inequalities reflected in the current legal system and in traditional and contemporary patriarchal values. The armed conflict that engulfed the country during the last 2 decades and inappropriate macro economic policies have exacerbated constraints and resulted in deterioration in the quality of life of women.

The estimated population for 2001 is 18.7 million and the 2001 Census of Population Housing, which covered only limited areas in the Northern and Eastern provinces, had a count of 17.6 million. The sex ratio has changed in the 1990s in favor of women and was 97.9 in 2001.

Only 6 of the 18 districts covered by the Census had more men than women. The age compositions of the population too has changed over the years with the population under 18 years progressively declining to 32.9% and the age group over 60 years recording increases ranging from 6% to 13% in different districts. As a consequence of the rising educational levels of women and the increasing use of family planning methods, the annual growth rate of the population declined over 3 decades and was 1.1% since 1990. While the minimum age of marriage of women is 18 years, (except in the Muslim community) the de facto average age of marriage for women is 25 years.

Despite the experience of 7 decades of a democratic system of governance, universal franchise, equal participation of women in voting at elections, and elected women leaders in the highest seats of political power (President or Prime Minister), the percentage of women in Parliament and in local assemblies has been abysmally low. In the national legislation, there have never been more than 5% of women, and this low percentage even declined to around 4% at the last General Election in 2001. Cabinets have usually one woman Minister with a few other women Ministers in lesser positions. Representation in provincial and local assemblies has been unacceptably low. Provincial councils have around 2% women members and one Minister.

Municipal councils and pradeshiya (divisional) councils have around the same proportion of women. This deplorable situation has continued unchanged over the years despite increasing agitation by women’s organizations. Studies indicate that four major factors behind the low participation of women and the reluctance of women to enter politics—the gendered norm of male leadership; time constraints as women already combine employment, domestic tasks, and child care; lack of adequate financial resources; and the prevailing climate of political violence. Political parties have made little effort to groom women members for election to assemblies.

Trade union leadership is male dominated. Women in extra-legal political movements are more committed to active involvement to the extent even of sacrificing their lives as suicide bombers, but they too are far from the centers of power in their organizations.

Constant lobbying by women’s organizations and the demand for a 25–30% quota at elections to ensure adequate participation, based on the Indian model of one-third compulsory female representation in local assemblies (panchayats) had some response. On principle, policymakers agreed to a 25% quota of nominations for women. The Women’s Act that is being formulated provides for this quota.

Nevertheless political parties have yet to be activated to reach this target, and only future elections will indicate whether affirmative action will ensure adequate representation at least at local government (pradeshiya sabha) level. Sri Lanka’s low ranking on the GEM is largely due to the low representation of women in political institutions and decisionmaking positions in the public and private sectors.

Women have benefited from the absence of overt gender discrimination in health care, as a result of the provision of free health services. The priority given to maternal and child health services for over 6 decades and the organization since the 1970s of primary health care particularly through family health workers located in communities island-wide have also had a beneficial impact.

Consequently, health indicators have been high relative to Sri Lanka’s economic level as a low-income country. Mortality rates as reported outside conflict-affected areas is less than 6/1,000, infant mortality rate (IMR) is 17, child mortality rate (<5 years) is 19, and the maternal mortality rate (MMR) is 23 per 100,000. Further, female mortality rates and female infant mortality are lower than male rates. The Government envisages the decline of IMR to 15 and MMR to 19 by 2005 to move toward meeting the MDGs for 2015. Life expectancy is computed to be 73.0—70.7 years for men and 75.4 years for women.

However, this decline in mortality rates has not seen, concomitantly, a significant decline in morbidity, with negative implications for the quality of life of women. Illnesses such as diarrhea, dysentery, malaria, and tuberculosis have persisted with sporadic epidemics and hypertension, diabetes, cancers endangering the health of women and men. HIV/AIDS has been added to sexually transmitted diseases, although its incidence is not yet high and the male-female ratio of victims has been 1.7:1. Sri Lanka’s suicide rates have declined but are still unacceptably high, and women as caregivers in the family have been adversely affected by increasing substance abuse.

The major reasons for the absence of a significant decline in morbidity are poor environmental conditions and deterioration in the quality of the free health services that are available to the majority of the population. Safe drinking water is available to 75.4% of the population and satisfactory sanitation to 72.6%, but only to 24.8% and 35.5%,respectively, of the estate population. Solid waste management is a critical issue in the urban sector.

Medical services are extensive. It has been estimated that only 7% of the population lack access to health care. For instance, antenatal care is available to 98.4% of the population including 94.3% in the estate sector. Trained personnel have assisted in childbirth in the case of 96.6% of mothers—99% in Colombo, 98.1% in other urban centers, 97.3% in the rural sector, and 84.7% in the estate sector. Postnatal care is being utilized by 83% of mothers. Around 99% of children have been immunized by the end of the third year. Complete immunization against tuberculosis is universal, diphtheria 88%, polio 88%, and measles 81%.

All general hospitals have antenatal and family planning clinics that offer health education and administer tetanus toxoid to pregnant women. Around 300 well-women clinics have been organized in State medical institutions that provide services such as screening for hypertension, diabetes, breast cancer, pap smears, etc.

Nevertheless, the quality of health services needs to be improved substantially, particularly in institutions in the periphery. Base and provincial hospitals and maternity homes outside major cities tend to be underequipped with human and material resources resulting in congestion in hospitals in urban centers. The percentage of public expenditure on health of gross domestic product (GDP) is only 1.7% and reduction of expenditure, escalation in costs of drugs and expansion of private health services under the structural adjustment programs have had adverse consequences for the health status of low-income families.

Half the outpatient care is now by the private sector but private hospitals and medical services of high quality are limited chiefly to the city of Colombo. National statistics conceal district-wise disparities and exclude conflict-affected areas.

Women in Sri Lanka have been engaged in economic activities over centuries of history. In recent decades, their contribution as factory workers, migrant domestic workers, and plantation workers has been the lifeline of the export-oriented economy. Nevertheless, their labor force participation rates have been underestimated in macro surveys and have been around half of male participation rates as a consequence of the relative invisibility of some of their economic activities in the informal sector. Female labor force participation rates have tended also to fluctuate unlike male participation rates, underscoring their greater vulnerability to policy shifts and adverse global economic trends.

Female labor force participation rates have, in fact, declined steadily since 1998, from 36.6% in 1999 to 32.5% in 2002 and their share of the “official” labor force has been reduced from 35.3% to 33.4%. This decline in economic activity rates has been in the rural sector, and while factors that contributed to this decline have not been identified clearly by researchers, there is little doubt that global economic recession and the consequent closure of rural garment factories have endangered women’s niche in manufacturing industry. The removal in 2005 of export quotas for garments under the Multi- Fibre Agreement is likely to exacerbate the employment problems of women unless alternative opportunities are provided through the implementation of pro-active strategies.

These adverse trends are also reflected in unemployment statistics. Unemployment rates that declined progressively since the mid-1990s to 6.8% male unemployment and 11.8% female unemployment in 1999, and 5.8% and 11.1%, respectively, in 2000, rose again to 7.3% and 14.8% in mid-2002. It is seen that women have been more adversely affected than men. Female unemployment rates have continued to be double those of men for 3 decades, irrespective of whether unemployment increased or declined. Age wise, there is a wide gender gap in unemployment rates in the 20–29 age group.

Male unemployment rates by educational level have stabilized by 2000, but female unemployment rates continue to rise with increasing educational attainment. While around half the total unemployed are women (as compared with one third of the labor force), nearly 70% of the educated unemployed (with a complete secondary education or higher education) are currently women. A recent study of graduate employment among a cohort of university entrants found that university education had been an agent of upward occupational mobility for only a minority and for men rather than women.7 Clearly women have equal access to education but not to employment and are unable to translate their educational gains into economic rewards.

Employment status-wise, there has been a positive trend in the increase in the percentage of women in the female labor force in regular or casual employment from 51.7% in 1999 to 58.4% in 2002 and a decline in the percentage of women unpaid family workers from 30.3% to 23.0%. Casualization of labor has been a continuing response to macro economic reforms over 2 decades, and is likely to increase with deregulation of the labor market.

Structural changes in the economy have resulted in the decline of the percentage of women employed in the agriculture, fisheries, and forestry sectors from 48.6% of the female labor force in 1999 to 39.5% in 2002 (and men from 37.3% to 31.5%) and increase in the percentage of employed women in the manufacturing sector from 19.3% to 23.9% (and men from 10.8% to 12.9%) during this period.

A higher percentage of women workers continue to be in professional and clerical employment than men, but the “glass ceiling” still operates as 1.6% of the male labor force and only 0.6% of the female labor force were employed at senior administration or management level in 2002. A few women have been appointed to hitherto male areas such as vicechancellors of universities and five women hold positions as secretaries (administrative heads) of ministries as compared with the solitary woman Secretary in 1997.

Nevertheless, bias against appointment of women to high-level decision making positions persists, particularly in the private sector. A genderbased demarcation of the labor market persists at all levels. Women continue to be concentrated in teaching, nursing, midwifery, secretarial assistance, domestic service, assembly line industries, and agriculture and to be under-represented among technologists, engineers, surveyors, technicians, and skilled workers.

The rapid pace of globalization of finance, trade, production, and communication has had a pervasive impact on macro economic policies and life styles. More women are employed in expanding areas such as telecommunications and finance than before but major changes in the employment scenario have taken place cumulatively over the last 2 decades, and positive changes are juxtaposed with negative trends.

In the agriculture sector, low productivity and inadequate incomes have compelled women in small farm families to move from unpaid family labor to other occupations, particularly in the garment industry and in overseas domestic labor. Plantations are undergoing a process of privatization of management and sequentially, ownership. Concomitantly, casualization of labor and labor shortages are found on plantations. Young women and men in plantation labor families tend now to look for employment opportunities outside plantation enclaves, the women seeking chiefly domestic service in urban households or overseas as migrant labor.

In the industry sector, rural industries have yet to be revitalized, despite official rhetoric. Absence of off-form employment opportunities in rural communities is the major factor that propels rural women to work in garment factories or in domestic service overseas. Traditional women’s industries such as handloom weaving and the coir industry remain depressed, lacking the capacity and support to be successful in a competitive market.

The expansion of export-oriented industries, which account for around 80% of exports, has been dependent largely on the fortunes of the garment industry in which over 80% of employees are women. Three export processing zones, Katunayake and Biyagama near Colombo and Koggala in the South, an increasing number of industrial estates located in different parts of the country, and around 150 rural garment factories provide employment opportunities for young women between 18 and 30 years. The relocation of labor-intensive industries in low-income countries by transnational corporations, and reliance on the “comparative advantage” of low cost female labor have created employment opportunities as well as new forms of gender inequalities and hardships for women.

Women garment factory workers from families with irregular incomes have brought stability to families and have achieved a measure of empowerment through control of their independent cash incomes. But these women have been confined chiefly to semi-skilled assembly line production and have had few opportunities of upward occupational mobility over 2 decades despite the fact that the majority are secondary educated. Their working hours are long, and likely to be longer with recent revision of labor legislation to permit more overtime work. Wages are relatively low in the formal sector, and these women tend to be exposed to occupational health hazards. Job insecurity has increased in an adverse economic environment, and employers dispense with labor with impunity in a context in which trade union activity is restricted.

The external or peripheral market has expanded with increasing subcontracting of laborintensive tasks to home-based workers who are mostly women. These women receive wages that are often below minimum wage levels and are unprotected by labor legislation. As relatively invisible workers in an informal labor market they are at the mercy of intermediary subcontractors who siphon off a major share of piece rate payments. At the same time women have been able to engage in economic activities in their homes without detriment to their childcare responsibilities.

In the services sector, retrenchment policies with compensation presented as a ‘golden handshake’ has threatened women’s stability in their traditional niche, the public service. Through the 1990s and early 2000 State employees in ministries and public corporations such as the Mahaweli Development Programme have been offered incentives to ‘retire’ prematurely with limited compensation. Public industrial establishments have been closed down or handed over to the private sector. Both large mills and small power loom centers have virtually disappeared.

A recent study of retrenched/retired workers found that there has been socioeconomic differentiation and gender differentiation in the impact of this policy. Retired workers with higher educational attainment and employment prospects have been successful in obtaining employment in the private sector and overseas or have used their resources to invest in business enterprises, some of them earning far more than they had earned in the public service. On the other hand, service workers and semiskilled workers in low income families have used their compensation to pay off debts or build houses, have failed to find employment and were in dire economic straits.

Women who had withdrawn from the labor force to provide better childcare find it difficult to return to employment. Women in many families have been ‘domesticated,’ suffering from lack of access to one’s own income and from a sense of isolation and frustration through inability to meet family needs (Jayaweera, Sanmugam, and Amarasuriya 2003). There have been no efforts made to retrain women in their economically productive years to access alternative employment opportunities.

The phenomenon of women migrating for employment as domestic workers in affluent countries began as a “trickle” in the late 1970s and escalated in the 1980s and 1990s. The percentage of women of all migrant workers has declined however in the late 1990s with State efforts to promote male migration. Women have migrated in recent years to work in garment factories in West Asia, Maldives, and Mauritius, and as unskilled labor in hospitals and as illegal workers in the Republic of Korea, but over 80% of women migrant workers continue to be domestic workers.

Destinations have increased from oil-rich West Asia and East and South East Asia to Cyprus and Western Europe. Working conditions vary from country to country. In Cyprus for instance, unlike in many migrant destinations, women domestic workers are protected by labor legislation (Wanasundera 2001). In Mauritius, Sri Lankan garment workers have had stable employment but several garment factories in West Asia and in the Maldives have been closed as profits fell with the economic recession in the United States, and Sri Lankan women have been stranded in these countries without economic resources (Dias and Wanasundera 2003). Whatever the situation, the vulnerability of these domestic workers and garment factory workers to economic exploitation is an underlying factor as in their own country.

After years of abandoning migrant domestic workers to the mercies of the market, reports of harassment, injustice, and sexual abuse in the workplace and malpractices in recruitment by recruiting agents in Sri Lanka led the State to intervene since the mid-1990s to provide some protection to workers.

Consequently several programs have been in place—compulsory registration, insurance, and training; subsidized credit facilities to assist departure, families left behind, and to embark on economic activities on return; welfare measures overseas through labor and welfare officers stationed in countries with large concentrations of women workers; programs to assist children of these workers with scholarships and educational materials; and safe houses in three destinations and a transit house for the sick near Colombo airport.

Women workers receive more protection and assistance now, though hardly commensurate with their remittances, which rank highest or second highest in contribution to the national revenue. Yet, unlicensed agents still recruit a minority. Cases of oppressive working conditions, nonpayment of wages, and physical and sexual abuse resulting sometimes in death are still reported. Both success stories and destitution as a consequence of wastage of their earnings by alcoholic or dissolute spouses are reported in` studies of returnees (Gamburd, 2002,
Jayaweera, Dias and Wanasundare, 2003). It is regrettable too that policy makers have concentrated almost exclusively on domestic workers and have tended to abandon garment workers to their fate in a context of economic turbulence across the globe.

However, the UN Convention on Migrant Workers and their Families, which Sri Lanka has ratified, came into force on 1st July 2003. There are limits to the outreach of national policies to assist migrant workers since the majority of workers are in countries such as West Asia in which they are excluded from the protection of labour laws. The most critical need in addressing the issue of migrant workers is the enforcement of bilateral agreements between receiving and sending countries and the ratification of relevant international conventions by all these countries. It appears that there will be a long road and many obstacles to reaching this goal unless there is international pressure on receiving countries.

Another area in which policy support has been weak or nonexistent is the informal sector and the micro enterprises or self-employment in which a substantial proportion of women are engaged. Policymakers have been articulate in extolling the benefits of self-employment, virtually as a panacea for unemployment. But little concrete action has been taken to offer incentives or support services to facilitate remunerative self-employment, as compared with the range of incentives offered to large investors and private entrepreneurs. Although most low-income women cannot benefit from programs such as the Small and Medium Enterprises project and its credit lines, which have been in operation for a number of years, other credit schemes are available at the micro level. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to facilitating access to inputs such as skills and management training, technology and market information that are necessary for optimal utilization of credit.

Women with family resources have emerged as successful entrepreneurs in the liberalized economy. A minority of women without resources but with initiative is engaged in micro enterprises. Studies however, indicate that micro credit cum self- employment programs have perpetuated poverty among the majority of low-income women who desperately need to increase their incomes but who have been limited to producing for the “poverty market” of lowincome consumers and to earning minimal incomes. All studies pertaining to the urban and rural informal sector document the unstable low-skill, low-income, multiple economic activities in which women in low-income families are engaged for family survival and maintenance.

It is seen, therefore, that opportunities for women with high level and technology related skills have expanded with globalization while the quality of employment available to the majority of women workers has deteriorated. Even women with a secondary education face unemployment or horizontal mobility rather than upward vertical mobility in a gender-segmented and restricted labor market and an economy characterized by low transfer of technology and low productivity.

One of the MDGs pertains to the increase of women in wage employment. Currently less than half the female labor force is engaged in wage employment in the formal sector although piecerate work in subcontracted industries also is a form of disguised wage employment. The realization of this goal depends on the implementation of macro economic policies that will promote growth and expand employment opportunities, thereby increasing the absorptive capacity of the labor market.

The universal issue of gender-based violence remained a largely private issue that affected the prestige of families until the 1990s. The UN Human Rights Conference in Vienna in 1993, its Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and the subsequent appointment of a UN Rapporteur on the issue have underscored a rights based approach to the phenomenon of gender-based violence. In Sri Lanka, the Women’s Charter of 1993, modeled on CEDAW, has also a specific component on the protection of women and girls against violence. The National Committee on Women established the Gender Complaints Unit in 2000 as required under the Charter. The Human Rights Commission is also a focal point for action against genderbased violence. Currently the Gender Equity Committee of the Regaining Sri Lanka program has identified gender discriminatory laws and the Law Commission has been responsive.

The general perception is that there has been no decrease in such violence even after the amendment of the Penal Code in 1995 and 1998 to increase penalties for rape and to bring within its ambit other forms of violence such as incest, grave sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and trafficking of women. The perceived increase could be due also to the higher visibility of these issues as compared with the tendency earlier to conceal them under the cloak of family honor and privacy.

Cases of rape and child abuse are reported in the press in numbers that reflect a high incidence. Sexual harassment is still apt to be trivialized by men, and incest, which is largely committed by male family members, tends to be accepted passively. Domestic violence legislation is as yet in the preparatory process and abusive spousal relations and battering are accepted with resignation in lieu of adequate avenues of redress.

Sexual violence has increased in situations of armed conflict. A regressive trend is political violence that erodes women’s rights and dignity. Prostitution or commercial sex work is a traditional occupation but trafficking is less prevalent, although it could be disguised as employment in urban areas or overseas employment or tourism.

Gender-disaggregated comprehensive data are not available to assess the incidence of violence. Ad hoc media monitoring by NGOs has revealed the magnitude of the task. A recent study (Wijayatileke 2002) found that hospitals, police stations, and courts do not record gender- disaggregated data, and that incidents of violence are often subsumed in records of accidents as the victims are averse to reporting in public institutions and officials are insensitive to the issue of domestic violence.

Efforts are being made to train health personnel and law enforcement officials to recognize and record incidents. Unless however reporting forms are developed and integrated in administrative procedures little change can be expected in the situation. Services to assist victims of violence against women are still ad hoc, limited and need to be strengthened. The Special Women’s Bureau and Women and Children’s Desks located in some police stations need strong official support, and capacity building in material and human resources.

Hot lines to these centers are a crying need. Crisis centers are limited to provision with minimal facilities by four women’s organizations/nongovernment organizations (NGOs). It is not surprising, therefore, that women victims, especially of domestic violence, are reluctant to seek advice as they are compelled to return to the perpetrators in the absence of alternative accommodation. Legal aid is again limited to the State Legal Aid Commission, the counseling centers and a new intervention, Diri Piyasa of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in some districts, and a few NGOs and lawyers, all offering free services. Trauma counseling for victims is even more limited in outreach.

Donor agencies have supported such efforts in recent years but the overall impact is minimal relative to needs. Underutilized health and community facilities could be used if an adequate number of relevant personnel could be trained.

Underpinning the development trends that have been reviewed, including policy orientation and indicators of progress, are the sociocultural norms and concomitant practices, and in particular, the social construction of gender that tend to shape the experiences of women.

Agents of socialization such as the family, society at large, education, and the media transfer gender role assumptions and normative, asymmetrical gender relations through generations. However, gender roles and relations are not static, the pace of economic and social development is uneven, and women are not a homogenous group. Hence, the sociocultural constraints that impinge on the lives of women and men in Sri Lanka present a shifting scenario of positive and negative influences.

Gender role stereotypes imbedded in the perceptions of policymakers, administrators and employers, and internalized by women and men are reflected in social and economic policies and programs and political participation. Women have been disadvantaged by perceptions of men as breadwinners, producers and community leaders and the normative relegation of women to their reproductive role and to dependency and subordination.

Patriarchal values are pervasive but less oppressive than those in classic patriarchal relations as a consequence of some egalitarian features in traditional society. Nevertheless, gender relations in the family, the workplace, and society are often unequal in the binary power structure of dominance and subordination. Development tends to mirror both change and continuity in gender roles and relations. Gender role stereotypes influence the aspirations of women in relation to vocational education programs at secondary and tertiary levels and even behavioral outcomes of education. Occupational health receives low priority relative to programs that support the reproductive role of women.

Micro level studies of the impact of macro economic changes on gender roles and relations (Jayaweera and Sanmugam 2001b) have pointed to this juxtaposition of change and resistance. Women’s economic roles have extended as a consequence of their rising educational attainments, the demands of the labor market, and escalating costs of living but have not changed the inequitable gender division of household labor significantly although there is evidence of sharing in some dual earner families.

However, women who work outside the home or earn independent cash incomes have achieved a measure of economic empowerment, irrespective of their location in the hierarchy of occupations as professionals, factory workers, or overseas domestic labor. More men still have control of traditional assets such as land and housing, but these working women were seen to control their income and the assets they create such as independent bank accounts.

Physical mobility has increased as seen in the decision of women to migrate overseas for employment. A pattern of joint decision making appears to prevail in many families irrespective of whether women are employed or confined to domesticity. Economic empowerment has contributed to more equitable gender relations in the family and in society. Families appear to have less control over the selection of spouses by daughters. Dowries have been overshadowed by income from employment. Sri Lanka is virtually free of extreme forms of gender discrimination within families such as dowry deaths, foeticide, infanticide, and neglect of the girl child. Where son preference exists, it is largely associated with concern for the perpetuation of the family name or direct line of descendants.

Concepts of “purity” and concomitant double standards have survived in the incidence of the iniquitous and unscientific “virginity test” that has acceptance among a substantial number of educated women and men. Male dominance, control of female sexuality, and perceptions of women as men’s property are reflected in the incidence of domestic violence and other forms of gender-based violence such as rape, incest, and sexual harassment.

Overall, the subservience of the majority of women has declined with education and employment but gendered norms still affect women negatively and even many educated employed women with resources do not challenge oppressive social practices that negate their personhood and individual worth. More gender-sensitive development policies in all sectors are clearly required to accelerate the process of social change toward the realization of human rights and dignity and gender equality.