Women in the post-pandemic workplace

News: Indian economy is sustained after the shocks of demonetization, GST, and now covid. These economic disruptions have a lot of impact on women’s employment status in the workplace.

What do the stats say about women participation in the workforce?

By 2019, India’s Female Labour Participation Rate (FLPR) had dropped to 20.3%, from the already low 26% in 2005. There is an argument that FLPR dropped owing to women entering higher education. But there is a need to look at whether women entered higher education because they wanted better jobs or because they could not get good jobs.

Where does the problem lie?

Attitude: Work from home was expected to reduce gender bias and incorporate gender equality, and did not impact the productivity of women. But when men working from home didn’t see it fit to help women, it is unlikely that employers attitudes would see any change.

Less management attention on gender inclusion: The gender dimension has suffered most in the post-pandemic revival. A recent example of the CEO of better.com firing the entire diversity, equity and inclusion recruitment team is one such example.

Source: This post is based on the article “Women in the post-pandemic workplace” published in Business Standard on 9th December 2021.