Why women need more and better jobs and why fundamental problems such as lack of security and mobility need to be addressed

Two years ago, when Rashmi R was selected by her college to work at a new electronics manufacturing company in Kolar, Karnataka, she became one of the first women in her family and neighbourhood to take up a job outside the home. The task of assembling high-end phones involved working eight-hour shifts that could stretch late into the night or start very early in the morning. But her parents were okay with it, says the 21-year-old, because the company taxi would pick her up and drop her home. “Six of us, friends from college, joined the company together,” says Rashmi, whose name has been changed at people’s request.

In Pimpri, near Pune, when Tata Motors When Tata Motors launched a pioneering all-female line at its Harrier and Safari SUV plant, prospective female employees—and their parents—were uncertain about how they would travel and where they would stay. Management realised that for their mission to be successful, an important element that had to fall into place was the assurance that the female employees would have safe travel and accommodation. Sitaram Kandi, Chief Human Resources Officer, Tata Motors, says, “Where they would stay became our biggest concern as we did not have any hostels. We selected hostels near the plant and each of them was visited by three different teams at different times of the day so that we could give confidence to the girls and their parents.” After a difficult initial phase, Tata Motors She managed to increase the proportion of women in the workplace from 4% to 12%.

“When you think about women’s employment, the three big infrastructure barriers end up being lack of safety, mobility and childcare,” says Pooja Goyal, founding executive director of the Udaiti Foundation, which focuses on women’s employment. economic empowerment“For women to be able to leave home to work, the benefit has to be significantly greater than for men, since they are the ones responsible for caring tasks.”

These concerns around the challenges that stand in the way of women wanting to go out and work were reflected in the Union Budget 2024, with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announcing: “We will facilitate greater participation of women in the workforce by establishing shelters for working women in collaboration with industry and establishing nurseries.” While details are awaited, the announcement and sentiment have been welcomed by all. But the problem of low Female participation in the workforce In India, the situation is complex, economists say, and will require a range of recipes.

Women at work
The female labour force participation rate (FLPR) has been declining in India for years: from 34% in 1999-2000, it fell to 27% in 2011-12, and declined to 26% in 2020. As noted in an ILO paper, “long-term trends suggest that female labour force participation rates in India have been disconcerting.” The rate has also been lower among urban women than among older women. rural womenThis has changed in recent years, with the Periodic Labour Force Survey showing the FLPR rising to 37% in 2022-23. Rural FLPR jumped nearly 17 percentage points from 2017-18 to 41% in 2022-23. The Economic Survey has interpreted this as “a growing contribution of women to rural output” which could be due to multiple factors, “including continued high growth in agricultural output” and “freeing up of women’s time due to substantial expansion of access to basic amenities such as piped drinking water.” However, according to economists, the full picture is less rosy. In a 2023 paper: Illusory or Real? Analyzing the recent rise in female labor force participation in India, Ashwini Deshpande, a professor of economics at Ashoka University, says the increase is driven by a jump in the share of rural women who are “self-employed” (which can include entrepreneurs and vegetable sellers), and that the availability of employment in rural areas has not increased. “Women and Work 2023,” a report by the Institute for What Works to Advance Gender Equality, similarly says that much of the recent rise in FLPR “has come through an increase in the self-employed category, rather than through an increase in the share of wage and salary workers.” That trend, she notes, “could be signaling stagnation in the quality of work and a lack of quality employment opportunities, especially for rural women.” All of this would underscore the need for policy intervention to improve FLPR through more and better jobs, especially formal jobs. Economist Mitali Nikore says one of the biggest barriers for women to enter and remain in the workforce is unpaid care work“According to our calculations, the total amount of unpaid work would amount to almost 15-17% of GDP.” Therefore, the government’s intention to create nurseries and finance childcare, he says, will be a radical change. “We have started well, now we will have to look at the implementation.”

While Deshpande’s research has shown that the main reason for the low unemployment rate is the lack of availability of jobs, particularly in rural India, she says the budget announcement on hostels and childcare for working women is commendable. “It can make a difference when these[lack of accommodation and childcare]are the reasons why women are unable to access jobs.” There is a lot of evidence that supportive infrastructure can improve labour market outcomes, says Sonakshi Chaudhry, public policy manager at The Quantum Hub and co-author of “Women and Work 2023”. “The mention in the budget is an open political acknowledgement that these are barriers.”

Over the years, the central and state governments have tried various policies to ease these barriers with mixed results, such as the Maternity Benefits (Amendment) Act of 2017, which increased maternity leave to 26 weeks and made it mandatory to have childcare facilities within a certain distance from workplaces with more than 50 employees. As the onus and cost fell on employers, this is seen as making smaller businesses more reluctant to hire women. Deshpande says that while this was a positive policy, it was only applied to a small fraction of establishments; 90% of the workforce in India works in informal enterprises that do not have such benefits.

Some changes
Chaudhry says there is now a lot of progress in setting up hostels and daycare centres for women workers in states like Tamil Nadu. The state has a considerable lead when it comes to women employment in manufacturing. According to the Annual Industries Survey 2021-22, over 40% of women in factories across India are employed in Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu Industries Minister TRB Rajaa attributes this to the state’s “Dravidian ideology”, and policies and initiatives. “However, the significant momentum we see today can be attributed to the last three years, when we intensified our focus on skill development and implemented industry-specific incentives that prioritise women employment,” he told ET. This includes a special scheme to train women and a payroll subsidy of 10% of women’s salary announced in this year’s state budget.

While the textile and garment sectors have traditionally employed women in the state, shoe manufacturing, automobile companies and electronics manufacturers are emerging as major employers. With Taiwanese iPhone maker Foxconn setting up large employee dormitories, the state has introduced a model whereby the State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu (SIPCOT) will be responsible for providing and maintaining infrastructure such as roads and power supply, while Foxconn will look after day-to-day running. Last Saturday, Chief Minister MK Stalin inaugurated a residential facility that can house over 18,000 female Foxconn employees, in the presence of Chairman Young Liu.

Last year, the neighbouring state of Karnataka introduced a rural daycare programme called Koosina Mane for children of NREGS rural employment programme workers aged between six months and three years. “While we are trying to increase female participation in the workforce under the NREGS programme, we must recognise that childcare is an enabler for women’s participation,” says Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta, additional chief secretary of Karnataka’s panchayat raj and skill development. “In rural areas, alternative childcare will be available, such as for family members, but that is not always the case.”

The crèches, numbering 4,000, each with the capacity to cater to 20-25 children, are in all district panchayats. Since 10 local women take turns running each crèche, this also translates into jobs for 40,000 women. While it is too early to collect quantitative data on the impact, Dasgupta says that within a few months of launching the scheme, it was clear that it was a need that was felt but never articulated. “Communities are now looking for one in their village.”

Finding a balance
While details of the plans announced in the budget are awaited, analysts say it is important to implement them after close consultation with the industry. One option, says Udaiti’s Goyal, is for state governments to include provisions for crèches and hostels at the master plan stage itself when launching industrial parks and corridors. “If they are unable to build, they can take steps to unblock existing infrastructure and incentivise businesses.”

Setting up hostels will help because women workers are not usually from the cities where the plants are and where they stay is often the biggest concern, says Tata Motors’ Kandi. It will also help companies that would otherwise have to ensure that every girl is dropped off at her doorstep. Rashmi, an employee in the electronics industry, also believes that hostels for women workers would help ensure their safety.

But when looking at the broader goal of increasing women’s participation in technical and manufacturing jobs, there is also a need to address the problem at its source, which is the industrial training institutes (ITIs), says Kandi. “Many of these ITIs have not upgraded their technology. Secondly, some ITIs train women in jobs like sewing, so you can’t say that women can do all jobs.” Another study by the Udaiti Foundation and staffing firm Quess Corp, which analysed data on 1.6 million employees over four years, found that women who received benefits like provident funds and performance incentives were more likely to stay in their jobs.

While creating infrastructure such as childcare to support mothers and enable them to remain in or return to the workforce will be critical, economists also point out that turning things around requires addressing the core problem, which is the burden of care that falls on women. “They say it takes a village to raise a child, but both parents have to be part of that village, because it’s a lot of work,” Nikore says.