Hey! Aryan absolutely the case but one must mention this Gov has taken major steps to block the pilferage of DBT, other Benefits & Rations. I will try and get Amit Shukla founder of easyGOV to join in and share the stats on the issues being addressed.
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September is turning out to be a monumental month!
Here’s why we need to rally for the tabling and passing of the Women’s Reservation Bill.
Some stats: Even though women account for almost 50% of India’s population, there are only 14% women at the parliamentary table.
Improved representation in the legislature can help advocate for and realise fundamental rights of women such as better healthcare services, gender-inclusive workspaces, and greater financial and bodily autonomy.
The information below is from the NETRI Foundation.
"Women are leading the way in India - from G20’s agenda for women-led development to ISRO’s scientists behind the successful moon landing. Women’s participation in society at leadership positions is valuable because they represent the interests and experiences of 700 million women – nearly 50% of India’s population.
But for women to effectively lead development, they need to be a part of decision making institutions and processes, including the parliament and the state legislative assemblies.
As opposed to women constituting 46% of the elected representatives at the panchayati level in 2022 [1], only 14% members of the parliament were women. Over 76 years of India’s independence, women’s representation has increased only by 9% in our Parliament and Legislative Assembly! Within this barely 1.5% women MPs belong to the SC & ST communities and only 0.7% MPs are Muslim women.
As a result of inadequate representation of women in decision-making positions at the parliamentary level, issues such as women’s safety, women’s health and women’s agency largely remain side-lined in important discussions at the policy making level. NETRI Foundation’s startling report [2] sheds light on 4 key parameters - health, livelihood, violence, and agency- which are matters of urgent importance in the women’s rights debate.
These issues do not get solved because nobody voices them in a gender-inclusive way in the parliament. These can only be addressed through higher representation of women in legislature and governments, argues NETRI in the report. Equal representation can help in ensuring that issues that concern women are not disregarded. For instance, a look at the data below shows the dismal state of women’s access to some fundamental rights.
- Health, especially menstrual and reproductive health,
- 3/5 women have trouble accessing healthcare
- Gender inclusive and sensitized workplaces,
- Only 5/100 women have received employable skill training
- There is no data that tracks implementation of PoSH across private, public and civil society and informal workplaces.
- Violence against women,
- 1/3 reported crimes against women are of domestic violence
- and financial and bodily agency
- 4/5 women do not have access to their own money.
To bring equal representation in action, join us in demanding that the Women’s Reservation Bill be tabled and discussed in the Special Session of the Parliament taking place between 18th and 22th September 2023.
We are reaching out to MPs, MLAs, activists, and opinion makers amongst some other important figures who can advocate for a concrete discussion of the Women’s Reservation Bill in the Special Session.
[1] Report on addressing the gender gap in adolescents’ political interest & engagement in India
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In my view, traditional/Cultural beliefs and practices override almost all other factors and are the primary contributor to low labour participation by women. Even personal security fears are a result of the same basic cause.
For example, we need to look at another statistic - The number of missing girls in India under six years of age, by my back-of-the-envelope calculation, is 6.5 million. How do so many girls go missing? How can murder, within the womb or later (mostly by neglect), be so widespread?
You can extend this to many other numbers if available. For example -
- Difference between the age of marriage between boys and girls.
- Number of weddings paid for by the girl’s family
- Representation of women in positions of political power (at all levels)
- Difference in nutrition indicators between young women and young men, which, BTW, is the biggest contributor to child stunting, which is an atrocious 40%, resulting in adults with stunted bodies and brains.
and surely many more.
In my opinion, the women’s reservation bill will be an important driver of change via empowerment. Another affirmative action that may help is mandatory reservations in jobs and boards- in both the private and public sectors.
Empowerment - social and economic must become the driver of all initiatives that aim to improve women’s participation in labour.
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Really solid points @gkinindia.
This is such a layered issue, that change needs to happen at a macro level - the reservation bill will be a game changer as policy will change/adapt.
“Mandatory reservations in jobs and boards- in both the private and public sectors.”
I find myself constantly having to defend this point as many believe that reservation breeds incompetence.
Even if some part of that is true, reservation is still very important today as we started late in the game and allowances need to be made to equal the playing field.
“Reservation breeds incompetence.”
This is a real problem and is due to a structural issue. Affirmative action programs that have differing qualifying criteria breed incompetence. This does not apply to representation roles, or for access to special social justice or empowerment or social security schemes. But it clearly does, when applied to access to higher education in premier institutes and for skilled employment.
For the latter, uniform qualifying criteria must be defined. And then, so long as a qualifying candidate is available, the quota should be applied.
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Came across this interesting article: Rising salaries of husbands in India encourage women's employment, study finds | Mint
Was doing some reason around India’s manufacturing sector and found these,
- This research on data around women in manufacturing jobs is interesting,
Key takeaways
The share of female regular employment in organised manufacturing has largely remained unchanged at 19 percent in the last two decades
Seventy two percent of all women working in industries across India were employed in just four southern states – Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala
Women are also more likely to be working in a handful of industries, while male employment is more diversified
Additionally, there is a wide gender-wage gap. For every INR 100 a male industrial worker earned as wages in 2019-20, his female counterpart earned only INR 87.06
- The role of informal sector in manufacturing also was interesting to read in terms of pervasiveness. I was aware of the role of informal sector, but was not aware of exact numbers. Which makes it even more important that if the Govt wants to benefit women in manufacturing workforce theyll have to focus on informal sector as well.
Approximately 80% of the manufacturing labour force in India, is employed in the informal economy and hence plays a dominant role in the manufacturing ecosystem in India, on account of its sheer size. Even in terms of production, the informal manufacturing sector is estimated to contribute between 40 to 70% of the total manufacturing output.
Research published by Krea University shows that of the 105mn women in employment in India, 96mn are in the informal sector
And here is how they think we can help improve the current situation,
Expanding employment opportunities: More direct employment generation through increased public investment and provision of public services is highly recommended along with further reservation of women in these.
Improving the conditions of work in the informal economy: Recognition of all workers including those whose workplace is within the home, implementing minimum wages and reducing gender disparity in earnings through strengthened monitoring and regulation
Strengthening access to social protection, with focus on old age pensions and health, including occupational health concerns in all sectors, including those where women are concentrated and which may be relatively invisible; skill development to enable higher earnings
Enhancing investments in gender-sensitive infrastructure including ladies’ toilets, creche facilities, public transport.
Enabling and encouraging organising of informal women workers as a strategy for collective bargaining.
Some new research on the topic of female labour force participation.
A few highlights:
In addition to this unpaid economic work, Indian women are primarily responsible for domestic chores including cooking, gathering fuel, laundry, house maintenance, and caring for children and the elderly. The gender gap in time spent on these activities in India is one of the highest globally, with Indian women spending ten times as much time on these tasks as men. We argue that these are the ‘norms that matter,’ preventing women from pursuing paid work unless it is close to their homes.
Moreover, we found evidence of a positive intergenerational transmission of norms: women whose mothers or mothers-in-law had been in paid employment were more likely to be in the labour force after controlling for all standard factors.
We find that SHG membership is positively associated with labour force participation and employment of rural women. We also find evidence that SHG membership is associated with a shift towards self-employment and a crowding-out of casual work among the employed.
There is reason to believe that the decline in female labour force participation rate reflects demand-side issues related to structural shifts in the nature of employment. In other words, women’s willingness to work has not declined; instead, the demand for female labour has declined.
Interesting read on why higher female education hasn’t led to higher employment -
India’s women are staying in school longer — but not for their careers. Researchers say increasing education levels for women are largely driven by the marriage market, not by improved job prospects
Here’s an interesting book that takes a very unique view on the world of young women in India. The author is an economist, and the book provides a qualitative understanding of young women’s lives and their “labor”.
https://www.amazon.in/Desperately-Seeking-Shah-Rukh-Independence/dp/9356292140/
(just read this post!)
In one of the lectures of Prof TCA Anant, where he was talking about Female Labour Force Participation, he mentioned the role of women engaging in unpaid household work and care services for household. The rise in FLFPR after 2018 is explained by freeing up of women’s time in performing these services like cooking water or fetching water is also corroborated with data from PLFS and Time Use Survey, 2019 conducted by NSSO.
“The recent increase in female labour force participation is distress-driven and is nothing unusual compared to the previous periods when the participation rate of women rose. However, the recent increase is broad-based, with the proportion of self-employed women rising across all sectors, including agriculture, manufacturing and services.”
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