tag:theconversation.com,2011:/institutions/institute-for-human-development-708/articlesInstitute for Human Development2014-04-02T15:13:47Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/235752014-04-02T15:13:47Z2014-04-02T15:13:47ZIndian women are more educated, but less employed<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45399/original/h2jm8gpv-1396437598.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The future for women could be brighter.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/agnihot/5408357948">agnihot</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Indian women are more educated than they have ever been. Yet, the latest figures show that fewer of them are working. </p>
<p>Some have attributed the decline to increased enrolment in education of younger population. Nearly half of India’s population is under the age of 25. But the decline in workforce participation figures is <a href="https://db.tt/GP6fTZSM">reported across all age cohorts</a> for women.</p>
<p>Others believe that the problem lies in the fact that the rate of employment growth has not been commensurate with the income growth for India. But that cannot be a cause because male workforce participation rates have not declined.</p>
<p>A third reason could be that perhaps males remain insulated from the job crises because they are still seen as the primary breadwinners by society. This might necessitate that whenever work is available, it is the men who opt for it, whereas women have the alternative option of choosing to get married and help at home.</p>
<p>But even that cannot explain the decline. Women’s workforce participation rates are similar among the currently married and widowed women. And their combined workforce participation rate is nearly double that of never married women. This reflects the necessity for earning and being independent among these women. In fact, to exercise this option for separation or divorce itself may be made possible by having the access to independent source of income or earning in many cases.</p>
<p>The real reason behind the decline is the drop in agricultural work. As agriculture’s <a href="http://www.ijert.org/view.php?id=1297&title=declining-share-of-agriculture-sector-in-gdp-a-serious-concern">share of India’s gross domestic product</a> (GDP) falls, this is not unexpected. The sector has always involved a majority of India’s workers, but it is now shedding large numbers of women and men across the country, affecting both primary and subsidiary workers. </p>
<p>Amid the declining women’s workforce participation during the last decade, there have been some interesting changes. Remarkable among these is the gains in regular employment both in <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/varshajoshi95/gender-mainstreaming-in-census-of-india-2011-new">rural and urban areas</a> and also in formal and informal salaried jobs. </p>
<p>The decline in women’s employment in agriculture is among the self-employed, largely as unpaid family workers. This is a category of work which is probably the least empowering for women, since the work they undertake remains within the folds of family and patriarchy. It is without independent wages or earnings and rarely does it provide direct access or ownership to economic resources. An analysis of the <a href="https://db.tt/GP6fTZSM">National Sample Survey’s data</a> between 2004 to 2012 reveals that over that time period when there has been an overall decline, male workers have increased but much more as subsidiary workers in agriculture.</p>
<p>The casual workers in agriculture have also declined largely for women, while male subsidiary workers have increased. This is a reflection of the changing nature of farming and labour use patterns. Workers are hired more on contractual and shorter term periods.</p>
<p>Whether those who are dropping out of agriculture are absorbed elsewhere or not is difficult to say. Especially for the women in rural India, who are illiterate or have low levels of education, there are <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-revolution-for-indias-urban-women-must-start-at-home-22427">few options for work</a>. Construction and low-end informal services such as domestic workers have generated some employment. But it is not clear whether the women working in these activities are the same persons who have lost employment in agriculture.</p>
<p>The interesting story of employment among the educated women is in regular work, where they have seen consistent growth. Out of the 148m women workers across India in 2004-05, 81% were with no or low education. Only 3% had undergraduate degree or more. This proportion has doubled by 2011-12 to 6%. The total number of women added in the workforce with higher education levels during this period is 3m. The proportionate increase of highly educated male workers during the same period is lower, albeit their absolute number (12m) is much greater.</p>
<p>Even during the 2004-2012 period when the overall workforce participation rates declined (largely due to shift away from agriculture), the numbers of additional regular workers increased by 18m, of which 3.7m were women. Most of these regular jobs is in the urban areas, nearly 12.8m, while rural areas recorded an additional 5.1m jobs. </p>
<p>In other words 1.1m rural women and 2.6m urban women were added during this short period to the regular workforce. It is the highly educated women who are taking up salaried regular employment in public administration, education, health and social work, banks, financial services, insurance, information technology and so on. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/indias-urban-work-boom-is-leaving-women-behind-22668">real question</a> is whether there will be enough jobs in these sectors for women to be hired as more of them achieve higher levels of education.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/23575/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Preet Rustagi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Indian women are more educated than they have ever been. Yet, the latest figures show that fewer of them are working. Some have attributed the decline to increased enrolment in education of younger population…Preet Rustagi, Professor, Institute for Human DevelopmentLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/226682014-02-12T06:42:07Z2014-02-12T06:42:07ZIndia’s urban work boom is leaving women behind<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41179/original/d8bn4wd5-1392061382.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Typical day for women workers in Mumbai.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anthony Devlin/PA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nearly 400m people live in cities in India and during the next 40 years that number will <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/india-will-see-highest-urban-population-rise-in-next-40-years/article3286896.ece">more than double</a>. Not only is the proportion of India’s total female population that is economically active among the lowest in the world, but urban areas do even worse. </p>
<p>New analysis of data from the 2011 census shows <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/varshajoshi95/gender-mainstreaming-in-census-of-india-2011-new">only half</a> as many urban women work as their rural counterparts.</p>
<p>Few states – including Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia – <a href="http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS?order=wbapi_data_value_2012+wbapi_data_value+wbapi_data_value-last&sort=asc">do worse</a> than India when it comes to women’s participation in the workforce. Others such as Somalia, Bahrain and Malaysia do much better. Among the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) which are comparable emerging economies, India has the lowest female participation rate, with only 29% of women over the age of 15 working. As the chart below shows, even among the <a href="https://theconversation.com/mints-are-fresher-than-brics-but-dont-expect-massive-growth-22660">MINT countries</a> – Mexico, Nigeria, Indonesia and Turkey – only Turkey has the same participation rate as India.</p>
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<p>In mainly agricultural economies, urban women often find less work than rural ones. Half the working population in India is employed by the agricultural sector. But agriculture’s contribution to Indian economy has been steadily falling and is now less than half that of the services industry. This should have corresponded with rapid growth in numbers of working women in cities, but that hasn’t happened.</p>
<p>Economists have tried to understand this discrepancy. Some cite the problem to be India’s unemployment rate <a href="http://www.financialexpress.com/news/unemployment-in-india-13.3-pct-of-youth-jobless-says-labour-ministry/1201838">among the young</a>, who make more than half of the population. But such joblessness should affect both men and women, and it also doesn’t explain the long-term trend of low women’s workforce participation rates. Others believe that younger people in cities are staying in education for longer. While that certainly contributes to the overall picture, it cannot explain the large difference between urban and rural figures.</p>
<p>Some discrepancy may arise because many women are involved in home-based work and are part of the informal sector, where their contribution tends to be under-reported. “Better enumeration will help, but measurement is not the only reason participation rates are so low in India, especially in urban areas,” Sher Verick, a senior fellow at the International Labour Organisation, said.</p>
<h2>Patriarchy rules</h2>
<p>According to Verick, the two main factors keeping women at home are social customs and very low education levels.</p>
<p>Breaking such customs is hard. Preet Rustagi, joint director of Institute for Human Development in Delhi, said: “To a certain extent, men control women’s lives. And women have internalised this as the norm. In such situations, the little work they do is the result of compulsion, such as when the household income is not enough, rather than choice.”</p>
<p>The power of social norms may be partially explained based on data from the city of Leicester in the UK, where one in four city-dwellers is of Indian background. According to a <a href="http://www.shu.ac.uk/_assets/pdf/women-in-the-labour-market.pdf">2010 report</a> by Sheffield Hallam University: “Economic activity rates among Indian women in Leicester are nine percentage points lower than for Indian women nationally.” In a large enough group of Indians, those social norms are more strongly held than when Indians are widely dispersed in the rest of the UK.</p>
<p>Although education levels have improved in recent decades, not as many educated women have found work. </p>
<p>“In India, there is a U-shaped relationship between education and participation of women in the workforce,” Verick said. “Illiterates participate more out of necessity. Women with a middle-level education (below graduate) have different aspirations and can afford to remain out of the workforce. Only better educated women have been ‘pulled’ into the labour force in response to better paid opportunities.”</p>
<p>Rustagi said a skills shortage among women is also to blame. “There is a large divide between what they can do and what jobs are on offer.” For instance, the lowest worker sex ratio is seen in construction, manufacturing and the retail trade, which are booming in cities.</p>
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<p>The safety of women is also a concern in Indian cities, as was highlighted after the 2012 Delhi gang rape case. Better governance and improved policing ought to help, but urban India’s gender imbalance is a deeper cause for worry. The national average is 940 females per 1,000 males, but that drops to 912 for cities with a population larger than 1m. The imbalance is greater still in India’s biggest cities, with Delhi at 867 females per 1,000 males and Mumbai at 861.</p>
<p>The discrepancy in these figures may be partly explained by the mass migration of workers, mainly men, from rural to urban areas, according to Varsha Joshi, director of India’s census operations. But the drop is large enough that further investigation is needed to spot other reasons.</p>
<h2>Empty promises</h2>
<p>There are <a href="http://theconversation.com/the-revolution-that-will-most-help-urban-Indias-women-must-start-at-home-22427">some positive signs</a>. According to India’s National Sample Survey, the proportion of working women in urban areas has increased from 11.9% in 2001 to 15.4% in 2011. Rustagi said: “One of the fastest-growing sectors for urban working women has been domestic work. About 1.5m urban women were added to that sector in the last decade, which is more than one in ten jobs created for women in that time.”</p>
<p>But the areas that have shown the most significant growth, such as domestic work, tend to fall into the category of “informal” work – and under India’s labour laws, these workers have <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-has-too-many-labour-regulations-rajan/article4512411.ece">few workplace rights</a>. This makes it harder for women to have sustainable jobs, let alone a career.</p>
<p>Indians go to the polls in April and, partly as a result of the focus of women’s issues, most parties have adopted promises about women’s empowerment as part of their campaigns, but none have spelt these promises out in any detail.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Related: <a href="http://theconversation.com/the-revolution-for-Indias-urban-women-must-start-at-home-22427">The revolution for India’s urban women must start at home</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22668/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Nearly 400m people live in cities in India and during the next 40 years that number will more than double. Not only is the proportion of India’s total female population that is economically active among…Akshat Rathi, Former Science and Data Editor, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/224272014-02-12T06:42:05Z2014-02-12T06:42:05ZThe revolution for India’s urban women must start at home<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41161/original/kfkh4gp8-1392034873.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">She can change the country.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">incandopolis</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since the Delhi gang rapes in 2012, the plight of women in urban India has found global attention. Much has been said about rights and safety in cities, but none of that will make a sustainable impact, unless women are also welcomed and encouraged to be a significant part of the paid workforce. </p>
<p>In urban India, only about <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/varshajoshi95/gender-mainstreaming-in-census-of-india-2011-new">15% women of working age</a> are part of the workforce. Even if we take into account women working in rural India – whose participation rate is about double that of women in cities – the average is still among the <a href="http://theconversation.com/indias-urban-work-boom-is-leaving-women-behind-22668">lowest in the world</a>. </p>
<p>While women in India are increasingly becoming more visible, whether it is in public transport, media and entertainment, it isn’t just because of policies aimed to help, but often despite them. </p>
<p>There has been hope that, with globalisation and better communication via TV, computers and mobile phones, the ideal of gender equality would take root in India or at least, with more women taking up paid employment and more organisations working towards enhancing awareness of workers’ rights, there would be significant advances. But the first steps of getting women into paid work that can be accounted for and measured appear unclear.</p>
<p>Even though India lacks in this respect by global standards, it is worth noting that the situation for its women is better than ever before. There are many women in powerful positions: <a href="http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-02-07/news/47126562_1_pepsico-ceo-indra-nooyi-fortune-list-petrobras-ceo-maria">Chanda Kochhar</a> is the chief executive of ICICI, India’s largest private bank; Sonia Gandhi is the leader of the Indian National Congress party, the political party leading the current coalition government; Vasundhara Raje and Mamata Banerjee are chief ministers of state for Rajasthan and West Bengal, respectively. Many women have received national awards in diverse spheres such as academia, finance, sports and arts. </p>
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<span class="caption">We build cities.</span>
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<p>Yet the average educated woman worker in India is a clerk in a bank or government office, a teacher, a call centre worker, or a receptionist. Many more illiterate or lesser-educated women are employed as domestic helpers, cooks, nannies, and as workers in construction, manufacturing and transport-related activities. Except for the few educated professionals, the vast bulk of these are informal workers without social protection of any kind.</p>
<p>Of the 150m women who are recorded as workers by the Census of India 2011, a large proportion is in rural areas, with only 28m in urban locations. With 182m women of working age in urban India, the work participation rates of women in urban areas is very low. There have been some positive changes, for instance in the period between 2001 and 2011 urban workforce participation rate for women <a href="https://db.tt/GP6fTZSM">increased</a> from 11.9% in 2001 to 15.4% in 2011. Even this apparently small shift is equivalent to 12m additional women workers (equal to the total population of many countries in the world, such as Cuba, Greece or Portugal).</p>
<p>The entire South Asian region has been marked for its exceptionally low women’s work participation rates for many decades now. The gender comparisons highlight the persistence of patriarchal structures and the notion that men are the family breadwinner, which leads to much higher male workforce participation rates of 54% (compared with 26% for females). </p>
<p>Women who do find employment often <a href="https://db.tt/GP6fTZSM">work as domestic helps</a>. And, despite a corresponding rise in NGOs to protect them, these workers (or servants as most are still called) have no basic workplace rights.</p>
<p>The case of Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade, who was recently arrested in the US for visa fraud after bringing in an underpaid domestic worker, was treated in the media as a “diplomatic row” rather than a case of mistreatment. The problem is that Khobragade’s behaviour is common in urban India. </p>
<p>Domestic workers are locked into what their employers see as a feudal relationship. Employers enjoy the feel-good factor of providing much-needed work to the destitute and desperate. So what if the income they offer is below the minimum wage? The comparison is between no employment and some employment under whatever terms and conditions they decide upon. </p>
<p>The unorganised nature of such employment further discourages domestic workers from demanding their rights – even if they are aware that they have them. The irony is that, until recently, domestic workers were accepting of the feudal relationship. But this is fast changing. </p>
<p>Although there are many domestic workers who have been able to educate their daughters to help them aspire to a better future, just as most of them contribute significantly to their household incomes, the recognition of their contribution at home and the benefit of being treated with dignity by their employers and society at large is missing.</p>
<p>It seems, then, that the revolution that will help urban Indian women the most must start at home – by encouraging them to work and recognising them as workers, thereby providing them with decent working conditions and workplace rights.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Related: <a href="http://theconversation.com/indias-urban-work-boom-is-leaving-women-behind-22668">India’s urban work boom is leaving women behind</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22427/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Preet Rustagi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Since the Delhi gang rapes in 2012, the plight of women in urban India has found global attention. Much has been said about rights and safety in cities, but none of that will make a sustainable impact…Preet Rustagi, Professor and Joint Director, Institute for Human DevelopmentLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.