India stood at 140th rank out of 156 countries in The Global Gender Gap Report 2021. This is a fall of 28 places from its 112th rank in 2020, and a fall of 42 places from its 98th rank back in 2006. We are going in the reverse gear and fast!
However, today we are going to focus on one particular aspect that is a major contributor to this widening gender gap - India’s abysmally low female labour force participation rate.
While topics like unemployment (which is trending on twitter as I draft this) and lack of jobs are often discussed, there is very little acknowledgment of the missing women in workplaces. Most people will be surprised or even shocked to know that India’s female labour force participation has been dropping since the past 15 years and we are much below the levels we were at even in the 90s.
Take a look at graph below that compares this metric across some of our neighbors and a few benchmark countries. We started off being at the top amongst South Asia, but have slid below Pakistan and just above Afghanistan. If you compare to economies like China and US and the stark difference in levels, that gives you a clue about the scale of our problems. In 2019, only 20.19% of all working age women in India were in the labour force (meaning either employed or looking for employment) as compared to 30% in the 1990s.
We ( my co-author Pallavi Datta, and I ) worked on the below shared article as a part of an assignment during our GCPP at Takshashila. The assignment was a group task with contribution from a diverse team. Later on, Pallavi and I decided to take the collective work and shape it into a more streamlined piece, which I am sharing below. As women (and also the feminist-kind), both of us are passionate about this topic. We both acknowledge that this has inputs from all team members.
Here, we take a deep dive into the various socioeconomic aspects that affect and hinder women from joining, staying and progressing in the workforce. We attempt to suggest some solutions. It is a somewhat longish and academic piece. I can only request patience from the readers :)
A caveat before we begin. There is a viewpoint that many roles played by women fall under unpaid work or care work, which is not accounted as employment, leading to an undercounting of women’s participation in the economy. That is valid, and it only adds to the grim story that women are lifting the burden of unpaid work (at the cost of their own prospects). For the sake of below article, we are limiting ourselves to paid employment.
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Making it Work for Women:
A policy brief on improving female labour force participation in India
By: Pallavi Datta and Khyati P
If you were to close your eyes and imagine you’re back from the office, shoes off, backpack on the settee and you throw yourself into the couch, breathing a sigh of relief as someone walks in with a cup of tea to swallow down the bitterness of the day. Who is holding the cup out to you? Dollars to donuts, it’s a woman; if it’s not, you are doing something right. Hurray, you!
This two-person paper gave us, the authors, the liberty to hold real discussions (not just the lonely kind policy-people tend to have in their heads) about the epicenter of the problem we tackle - the under-representation of women in the Indian labour force, but the darn thing kept shifting. As we dug deeper and read more, we decided on a triangular approach, one that requires the State, the market and the society to each play a part in taming the beast.
But to solve the problem, we must confront its anatomy:
India’s women labour force participation was a dismal 20.79% in 2019 and has declined sharply in the past decade (World Bank). This is puzzling, because India has made significant improvement in gender parity in education and fertility rate, but that has not arrested the decline in it’s women labour force participation (Sharma). To put simply, Indian women are more educated and bearing fewer children, but are still withdrawing from the formal workforce.
One clue to this decline is that India’s overall labour force participation has also declined over the same period (ILO), which means fewer percentage of the working age population are working. But, a decline in the ratio of female to male labour force participation rate (ILO) suggests that women have lost many more jobs than men in the past decade.
The question then is, what is the experiential landscape for women? Why are women leaving or unable to join the labour force?
Below we outline some of the overarching reasons:
Socialisation: Suffering from ‘Truths’ Universally Acknowledged
‘Common sense’ factors in the form of socially accepted normative divisions of space and labour keep women from dreaming about careers or demanding one for themselves; they contend with degrees of exclusion according to their socio-economic backgrounds and family situations.
Exclusion à la the Care Economy
'Recognition: A Quantum Leap for Gender Equality', a report by the ILO, identifies unpaid care work as the most significant impediment in women's formal employment as it involves 21.7% of women between 18-54 years of age, against 1.7% of men (ILO 13). NITI Aayog reports that globally, women invest three times more time on unpaid care work than men. Not surprisingly, in India, women spend 9.8 times more time than men on unpaid work. This leaves minimum discretionary time at disposition for focusing on career.
The no-win situation
It is well-acknowledged that traditional gender norms in India put an unequal burden of caregiving on the female. Motherhood penalty (Das and Žumbytė 14) has an inverse impact on a woman’s employment and links back to almost non-existent formal childcare options.
India’s maternity policy, although well intended, places the entire burden of maternity leave (6 months) on the employer. This creates a bias against hiring women, especially for smaller employers, who argue that they cannot afford to give maternity benefits. In the end, women bear the cost, with lost employment opportunities.
The income effect
The notion of prosperity signaled by rising household incomes or the peculiar phenomenon dubbed the “income effect” has led to women being withdrawn from the labour force. This is responsible for “9% of the total decline in female labour force participation rate between 2005 to 2010.” (Nikore)
Add to this the fact that women get paid 34% less compared to men for performing the same job with the same qualifications (Dutta 4). The wage difference is more for semi-skilled or unskilled workers and in private limited companies. Large pay gaps in terms of average daily wages exist in male and female wage rates of casual and regular workers in rural and urban areas. So, if you were cognizant of this fact, and had to choose one person from a regular heteronormative couple to go out and work, and the other to tend to the home and children, who are you more likely to choose? The man, or the woman?
The Safety-Mobility Continuum
It is our view that existing outside of the home requires a safety-mobility continuum for women. Being out of home requires the easy availability of aspects of both; including hygiene, access to transport and physical and sexual safety. The lack of these are evidenced below.
A report by the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) reports 3.59 lakh registered cases in 2017 wherein women faced sexual harassment. Safety issues at the workplace can drive career choices and work participation decisions for women. The safety issues are also linked with school dropout and absenteeism among adolescent girls which has a bearing on employability.
Cost of transport services for female employees to and from office, especially when working late, disincentivizes employers from hiring women. According to reports in ORF and Economic Times, women drop out of the workforce in urban/semi-urban areas, even from jobs they would typically do, due to either lack of toilets, lack of hygiene in toilets or lack of proper menstrual management facilities.
To solve for these, with the aim to effect greater labour force participation for women, we have come up with a three-pronged approach:
#1. Solutions rooted in State action, addressing safety-mobility continuum
Changing culture and teaching consent and accountability through mandating a progressive Sex-Ed curriculum can provide for better culture in workplaces as well as other public spaces. Sex-Ed in schools in India doesn’t go beyond how not to contract STIs. We need something beyond the birds and bees. A comprehensive curriculum (Harvard University) for sex-ed that stresses love, respect, intimacy (Vaidyanathan), consent at every stage, equality and preventing gender bias should be prepared and taught before children turn into young adults and join the labour force.
Financial literacy through a course packaged as an introduction to the basics of banking (Microsave Consulting and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation); the value proposition of various facilities on offer can help women realize self-employment or business opportunities; ideally this should be available to all sexes, though it may work out to relatively better financial inclusion, mobility, regular use and autonomy for women.
Improved representation at every level of administration can help bring to light and address gender-blind planning in governance and policy undertakings, and make women part of the decision making process. Such processes can be strengthened by safety-mobility audits at local governance level; similar work has been undertaken by the International Centre for Research on Women with measurable success. This can be padded with capacity-building courses for elected women to engender competence and confidence.
Mobility proper, or for the purpose of this brief, the ability to travel from one place to another to facilitate gainful economic activity looks markedly different for men and women. According to the Indian Development Review, the pattern of travel for women is more likely to consist of multiple, often shorter trips which may also address their role as caregivers (grocery shopping after work, dropping children off at school before work etc.). This means that a woman may turn down jobs because the commute may be too long, or deemed unsafe, or creating time poverty (where the trade-off is time given at home to family and filial duties), or a combination of these factors. To combat this, city planning authorities must include gender perspective by including women in planning and monitoring committees; this has been done successfully in Seoul and has resulted in the introduction of more public restrooms, better lighting and a bump in the number of changing tables in said restrooms, readjusted anchors in public transport etc. The changes are based on data on convenience gaps, deliberation and the inclusion of women in each successive step of the planning and implementation process. Further, mobility plans must include gender benchmarks as typically more women depend on public transport to get to their places of work than men (Shah et al. 20).
Our final recommendation concerns itself with the point of safety. The UN prescribes the Police to Population Ratio at 222 police personnel per one lakh citizens. The sanctioned police to population ratio in India is lower than this number and stands at 195.39 police personnel per one lakh citizens, whereas the actual police to population ratio is considerably lower, i.e. 155.78 (Bureau of Police Research and Development 64). The gap between ‘sanctioned’ and ‘actual’ also indicates obvious vacancies. We propose that these vacancies be filled and the police to population ratio be improved. Further, only 10.3% of the current actual strength consists of women personnel, this needs to be scaled up as well.
#2. Market-based solutions
Workplaces in India often have the chicken and the egg problem when it comes to the representation of women in the labour force. As many factory or manufacturing workplaces traditionally had very few women workers, the environment and facilities are ill-designed for women, which in turn discourages further participation by women. Therefore, there is a need to break this vicious cycle by incentivizing employers to hire more women. Short of complete systemic changes and tightening of compliance mechanisms (laws for provision of facilities and hygiene already exist), the following are some measures that may be taken to create gender-sensitive work environments and ways to boost employers’ interest in hiring women.
Special Economic Zones (SEZ) in many countries such as Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Philippines, etc. have proven to be successful models at fostering employment opportunities for women (World Bank and International Finance Corporation 10-21). In Bangladesh, these zones are regulated by BEPZA, a government body tasked with attracting foreign investments in these zones. Women constitute 72% of permanent workers in these Export Processing Zones (EPZ). Although Bangladesh’s regular labour laws do not apply in these zones, the working conditions and wages are generally considered better than outside. It is found that with minimal investment in menstruation and hygiene facilities, there is considerable reduction in absenteeism. All workers in the EPZ also have access to hospital and school facilities in the zone, although many of these services are understaffed and underserved.
Though SEZs are not a panacea to everything, it is easier to anchor gender specific reforms such as provision of hygiene related infrastructure, transport and community creches etc. in these zones, as they are managed by a unified operational entity. SEZs for women can also give incentives for women entrepreneurs and women’s collectives; it is generally noticed that women entrepreneurs are more likely to give women more jobs, creating what the report calls “cascading socio-economic benefits for women in the workforce. (World Bank and International Finance Corporation 8)”
SEZs are often criticized for the fear of eventual ‘defeminisation’ of labour as increased mechanization may lead to the exit of labour intensive job roles inhabited by women, and their replacement by men with technical training. As a fix for the same, the Govt. can mandate or incentivize up-skilling as well as training programmes for employees already on the job or before entering the job. A networked partnership between industry and the skill training sector can accomplish this.
Microfinance for women often leads to cascading benefits, creating a social network or community of women, with the beneficiary being more likely to hire other women. It supports small home businesses that also circumvent the safety issue and give women at home greater economic and decision-making powers. A model example already exists in the form of the SEWA Bank in Gujarat which provides door-step banking to women. A study conducted by Harvard and Duke Universities, in partnership with the Centre for Microfinance at IFMR-LEAD, reveals that if you build it, they will come. The study focused on the SEWA Bank in Gujarat between 1999-2015, noting that SEWA began it’s expansion programme in 1999 and Sewa Saathis (representatives of the bank functioning as customer relationship managers of sorts) began offering door-step banking and were incentivized to add to the Bank’s clients.
The study mapped variables such as those who were given a loan, participation in the labour force, participation in home business vis-a-vis low, moderate and high access to SEWA loans across two anchoring years (2009 and 2015), and saw that with the exception of labour force participation that fell across the board in 2015, those with higher access to SEWA were more likely to get loans, be a part of a home business and the labour force. (Field et al.)
Subsidies and Tax incentives - The government should also consider incentives like tax benefits or preferential business to those employers having women employees above a certain threshold. On the personal tax front, reduction in tax contribution on the second earner, taxing both spouses as one unit may provide incentive to a household to be more supportive of women’s careers.
#3. Community based solutions
Engagement in child care is one of the main reasons why even educated women in India drop out from the labour force. So, having affordable and quality community childcare options can prove critical in supporting women’s employment.
While GoI has made rules in the Maternity Benefit Act making it compulsory for companies with more than 50 employees to have a creche facility, there is very little compliance (Raman). Many employers also circumvent the rules by keeping women employees off the books to avoid paying for a creche (Timsit). The government also runs Anganwadi and National Creche Scheme under Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), but there are many limitations to it. The current focus of the scheme is to solve paediatric malnutrition for children aged 0-6 years. It is not specifically focused on supporting working women, although these goals are closely aligned. Though it has widespread coverage, service delivery is not consistent in quality and quantity across the country. A good chunk of working mothers who are daily wage workers prefer to take their children to their worksites which are often far away from the Anganwadi center (Timsit).
Community-led daycare: The poor infrastructure and lack of effectiveness of the current anganwadi system stems from a lack of resources and dependence on the central and state government for funding. Instead, we propose a community-led daycare center that is run by a group of women coming together from the same community. This community can be based in a public housing society, or a village/block level or can be a workers association. The rationale behind this solution is that the people within the community will have a better understanding of the needs of the community and will also have more accountability towards the community, thereby making such an effort more effective.
Government can facilitate easy long term loans for setting up such day care centers and finance a part of the running cost, which will also encourage entrepreneurship among the women.
For regular employees, a part of the daycare fees can come from a “daycare allowance” from the employer, on which the employer can claim tax rebates. This will provide some financial support to the scheme, while removing the burden of managing a daycare from employers. We propose that to make this a level playing field, this “daycare allowance” be provided both to male and female employees with children. For workplaces where a larger proportion of workers are in daily wage work, the government can encourage more community led daycares at the worksite that are partly funded by the government and partly by the employer.
Why should India invest in gender inclusive economic growth?
According to the IMF (International Monetary Fund), equal participation of women in the labour force would lead to a 27% increase in India’s GDP. If a woman within a certain economic bracket gets a job, the care economy is monetized as more jobs are created at her home. Daughters of working mothers are more likely to seek careers, earn higher incomes, and spend less time on housework. (Jain)
Empowering women in the economy and closing gender gaps in the world of work are key to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals on gender equality and productive employment and decent work for all.
To summarize, we cannot move towards our goal of becoming a developed nation by leaving out 50% of our human resource, and under-utilizing the labour and intellect at hand. Therefore, improving women’s labour force participation should be an important socio-economic goal for India.
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Thank you for reading. Please leave your thoughts and comments for us.
The Rabbit Hole
If you would like to explore the topic further, sharing below this very thought-provoking series on the topic of gender in labour force by economist Jayati Ghosh:
Feminist Economics - #1 It’s Not Just Biology
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