The United Kingdom and India: A Study of Gender and Economic/Regional Cleavages :: India England Government Politics Essays

The joined Kingdom and India A Study of gender and Economic/Regional CleavagesIntroduction The United Kingdom, a former populace power and colonizing empire, and India, the second most populous country in the terra firma and former colony of the United Kingdom, share a bond of democracy. The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy with a Parliament consisting of the abide of parking area and the House of Lords. Similarly, India is a federal state also with a parliamentary form of government. Despite these similar governmental systems, studies of the individual histories, economies, and political cultures of for each one country reveal cleavages within each society affecting aspects of the governments such as institutions, voting behavior, and policy making. This paper will address twain major cleavages within the United Kingdom and India, gender inequality and sparing/regional divisions, and will analyze the effects each cleavage has upon political systems of each coun try. Gender Cleavages Although the United Kingdom and India include legal equality, or suffrage, for men and women, both countries experience a persistent gender spreading including discrimination against women. The United Kingdom distinguishes itself from India in that gender issues affect the state primarily in government and in the agitate realm, while Indias cleavages act upon the government, labor, and social realms. With the efforts of National Union of Womens Suffrage Societies, formed in 1897, and the Womens sociable and Political Union of 1903 (Bartley 8), women gained partial suffrage as those over cardinal were allowed to vote in 1918, and in 1928, those twenty-one and older were included (Shively 111-112). enactment was not passed until 1970, with the Equal Pay Act establishing that women should receive equal make for the same work as men, and the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 assay to curb unfair practices preventing womens equal access to jobs (Makepeace 1 ). Despite these governmental attempts to near(a) the gender gap, women share further twenty-eight percent of total labor income (although this has increased from seventeen percent in 1965), and, while women continue to perish more time than men doing unpaid domestic work, women receive only sixty-four percent of mens average hourly pay in the labor market (Horrell 12-13). Further, women are underrepresented in government--they compromise less than twenty percent of the House of Commons (Taylor 1), sixteen percent of the House of Lords, and only 25 percent of local councilors (Follett 3). According to Parliament member, Barbara Follett, these few women in the House of Commons must conform to a male culture that is competitive, confrontational, conservative, conformist, and ceremonial.