Women’s woes on the labour front
THE perennial mystery of the abysmally low number of women in India’s labour force seems to have been solved to some extent. The reason for this has been partially attributed in the past to a heavier domestic burden, but now there is more certainty on the issue. The International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) latest global study on the impact of care responsibilities on women’s labour participation shows that gender roles are completely skewed in favour of men. It finds that 53 per cent of the women in this country remain outside the labour force for this reason. The solution to the problem, it rightly suggests, is more investment in the care economy.
India is in the same boat as countries like Iran, Egypt, Jordan and Mali, which also have over 50 per cent of the women outside the labour force for the same reasons.
This is not to say that there are no care facilities for children here, at least as far as the youngest age group is concerned. The anganwadi scheme is probably the world’s largest network of centres to provide nutritional and medical support for children up to the age of six years. The programme was expanded a few years ago to convert it into an anganwadi-cum-crèche scheme. But there seems to be a lack of urgency about ensuring that the plan to make crèches widely available for working women becomes a reality in urban and rural areas. The Niti Aayog has reportedly highlighted flaws in this scheme, which seems to be progressing slowly. The fact is that programmes involving infrastructure and industrial development are carried out with much greater zeal by government agencies rather than schemes to promote women and child development. The issue of child care and crèches is evidently not considered critical enough to be given high priority. And the attitude has remained the same during the rule of successive governments, be it the UPA or the NDA.
Such apathy is only to be expected in a country where a patriarchal culture pervades all segments of society, cutting across castes and religions. The issue of toilets is a similar one, with those involved in policymaking apparently impervious to the discomfort faced by women in areas where public toilets are not readily available. The Swachh Bharat campaign, with defined targets for making towns and cities open defecation-free (ODF), has made a significant difference, but there is still vast room for improvement. For instance, poor quality toilets remain the bane of railway travel for women and are a direct consequence of the lack of priority for this critical sanitation matter. Recently, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari highlighted the ramshackle condition of toilets at highway fuel stations.
The ILO report flags the gender imbalance in India; it notes that compared to 53 per cent of the women involved in unpaid caregiving, only 1.1 per cent of the men stay outside the labour force due to such responsibilities. India is in the same boat as countries like Iran, Egypt, Jordan and Mali, which also have over 50 per cent of the women outside the labour force for the same reasons. In sharp contrast, countries like Belarus, Bulgaria, Latvia and Sweden have only 10 per cent of the women away from regular employment due to this factor.
A parallel report released recently relating to schoolgoing children shows that the trend of women being saddled with heavy domestic work begins at a young age and ends up affecting their education. This UNICEF study shows that young girls are spending far greater time on unpaid domestic activities than boys of the same age. As compared to 32.9 per cent of the girls, only 9.1 per cent of the boys are engaged in such work. The study, based on the 2019 Time Use Survey of the Programme Implementation Ministry, says this is impacting the learning process for girls and preventing them from doing homework or taking part in sports.
Another disturbing finding is that at least 20 per cent of the children in the age group of 6-17 years are engaged in unpaid domestic work. It must be recognised that some domestic work is done by all children as they learn to do chores to prepare them for adult life. But this should not be such that it affects their educational process in any way. The study also finds that the impact is confined largely to girls. It seems to presage the ILO report with regard to women being kept out of the workforce due to caregiving activities.
The solution, according to the UNICEF study, is to raise investment in services that reduce domestic household work burdens, such as easier access to water and power, especially in rural areas. Affordable child care services, social protection programmes and schemes to promote gender equality are among the other recommendations. These are positive ideas to set right the glaring gender imbalance impacting girls who are not able to focus sufficiently on their education. But these are also issues that should have been recognised long ago by political leaders and bureaucrats alike while formulating policies to bring more women into the workforce. In this context, it must be noted that female labour force participation is reported to have risen from 23 to 37 per cent from 2017-18 to 2022-23, with the rise largely due to an increase in agriculture-related activities in rural areas.
There can be no comfort in the fact that the ILO data shows that northern Africa and Arab nations have an even higher percentage of women outside the workforce due to caregiving responsibilities. Significantly, eastern Europe has the lowest rate (11 per cent), which can be directly attributed to the substantial state support given for child care services.
Both these reports need to be studied with care so that remedial measures can be taken as soon as possible. The first step must be to strengthen and expand the existing anganwadi-cum-crèche scheme. Secondly, urban areas should have specialised child care facilities, which need not be subsidised entirely. While the pattern of European child care cannot be replicated here, the best practices can certainly be adapted to the Indian context. The outcome of such widespread child care schemes will be to unleash the potential of women at the workplace and this, in turn, can help India reach the goal of becoming a developed economy sooner rather than later.
