No rise in working women despite high literacy levels: ICRIER study

No rise in working women despite high literacy levels: ICRIER study

News:

Study conducted by Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) shows, rise in literacy levels among women has failed to translate into an increase in the number of working women

Important Facts:

• There has been an increasing clamor over the fall in the female labour force participation rates in India over the past few years.
• As per the study, it is due to a combination of socio-economic factors such as the importance of education for improving marital prospects as well as higher prestige attached to households which keep women out of labour force.
• Labour Bureau’s employment figures to show that there is a rise in the percentage of women out of labour force between 2011-2012 and 2015-2016 across all levels of education and age-cohorts.
• India has grown at an unparalleled rate in the past two decades with growth rate surpassing 9 percent per annum between 2004-05 and 2007-08 and averaging about 7 percent per annum between the time periods 2012-13 and 2016-17.

International Comparatives

• The proportion of India’s total female population that is economically active is among the lowest in the world. While the female labour force participation rates vary considerably across developing countries, few countries in the world perform worse than India.
• In the South Asian region, only Pakistan has a lower female labour force participation rate than India

Explaining Falling Female Labour Force Participation Rates (FLPR) in India

• Broadly, the declining FLPR rates in India reflect both demand and supply side factors.
• Factors can be quantified such as increasing enrolment of women in higher education, income effects of households, lack of job opportunities deemed suitable by women, crowding out effect due to higher educational outcomes, discriminatory wages and labour laws (protective legislation).
• Additionally, there is also the problem arising from the mismeasurement of women’s work.

Demand Side Factors

• On the demand side, constraints to FLPR in India are economic and legal.
• On the economic front –
  • Sustained growth over the last few years has not necessarily translated into more jobs. This jobless growth has been more prominent in sectors that employ women or are female friendly.
  • The largest proportion of female workers were distributed in agriculture (63 percent), followed by manufacturing (13 percent) both of which sectors that witnessed either decline or slow growth in female employment
• On the legal fron
  • Prohibiting women workers from working at night has resulted in a decrease in the hiring of women by employers
  • There is a blanket ban on women working underground. These legal prohibitions along with the mechanization of mines over time have resulted in low female
  • employment in the mining sector.
• The crowding out effect also plays an important role in declining participation rates of women.
  • With increase in educational qualifications, there has been a cumulative explosion of potential high skilled female workers. However, the increase in white-collar jobs which are the only jobs likely to pull in highly qualified women in the labour market have not been able to keep in pace with the increased supply of these women

Supply Side Factors:

• Cultural norms and stigmas attached to women working outside and participating in economic activities are still rampant.
• Lack of an enabling environment that allows women to balance out domestic duties and work, such as the provision of crèches and flexi hours further fails to retain women in the workforce
• The existence of the income effect such that the rising income of a household serves to drastically lower the female labour force participation rate, is also a dominant supply side factor influencing the participation rate of women
• Concerns over safety and improper provisioning of working women’s hostels when migrating to a major city for a job undermine the willingness of women to migrate for work as readily as men.

Measurement Errors

• The Second National Commission on Labour (2002) noted that the data on work participation of women remains questionable. “The problems arising from inadequate definitions and inaccuracies and biases in enumeration
• The Indian System of National Accounts (SNA) lumps women performing certain non-marketed economic activities as out of the labour force which includes women who attend to domestic duties and at the same time were engaged in free collection of goods such as vegetables, roots, firewood, cattle, cow dung and sewing, tailoring, weaving etc., have been categorized as non-workers.

Education and Female Labour Force Participation Rates

• At very low levels of education, women are forced by necessity to work if household income is low, thereby, raising their economic participation.
• A woman with medium or intermediate educational qualification is less likely to work than a woman with advance or low levels of educational qualifications.
• It has been argued that in recent years more working age women in the age cohort 15-24 years are opting out of the labour force to continue their education. Thus, higher female enrolment in secondary education has led to a fall in the FLPR over the years

In the study, four points of consideration have been identified such as the link between education and marriage markets, education and social norms, the poor demand conditions for educated women and quality of education.

• Marriage markets and Education:
  • Expansion of education in India has been to improve the marriage prospects of women, rather than their employment prospects
  • Thus, if the primary motivation for educating women in India is to enhance their marriage prospects, then labour market policies targeting improved employment opportunities for women might not be very beneficial.
  • For instance, in 2011-2012, 60.3% of the divorced/ separated women constituting 0.4 % of the total population were working. But, only 32.5% of currently married women, at 50.5% of the total population, were in the workforce.
• Education and social norms:
  • Social norms also ensure that higher prestige or social status is associated with families which keep their women out of the workforce.
  • The gendered division of labour and social norms is so deeply entrenched in our society that education fails to improve women’s situation in any meaningful way
• The poor demand conditions for educated women:
  • Oversupply of educated women relative to growth in jobs that are considered appropriate by them (formal sector jobs), might have led to crowding out of females from the labour force. The reservation wages of educated women remain high, since they are usually married to educated men and thus, have access to financial resources
• Quality of education:
  • Education in most developing countries seeks to ‘domesticate’ rather than ‘empower’ women.
  • The educational practices unconsciously perpetuate gender stereotypes through gender segregation in classroom and gender insensitive curriculum.
  • For instance, In NCERT men are shown to be participating in outdoor activities while women are confined indoors shown to be adept only at domestic chores.

Way Forward:

• Along with focus on female education, the government schemes must also target the cultural and social forces that shape patriarchy and thus, facilitate behavioral changes that are conducive to the acceptability of female employment.
• Studies suggest communication programmes on gender equality in secondary education can help in internalization of more equitable gender norms at early ages
• At the level of the government (both national and local) public educational programmes that focus on issues surrounding the value of the girl child and gendered roles can be launched. For instance, campaigns that press upon the need for parents to not impose gendered roles and encourage equal distribution of care responsibilities between sons and daughters
• At the community level, a low cost peer educator programme can be piloted where women can be trained and paid to deliver messages through street plays and door to door campaigns.
• Government policies favorable towards reducing the time burden of women on domestic duties and care responsibilities must be implemented. This is because these are often a barrier for women in realizing their workforce participation aspirations.