Talking Shop: Pushed into a corner

“The perfect woman you

see is a working woman;

not an idler... Not a fine

lady, but one who uses her

hands and head and heart

for the good of others.”

—Thomas Hardy

Even Thomas Hardy would be intrigued with the transmogrification of India’s women workforce. I am talking about all of India, not just IT companies, call centres, HR postings and accounts executives. Mind you, I am taking nothing away from these accomplished ladies, but India’s true femme fatales live in villages and smaller townships. I am referring to the contribution of India’s women to the workforce over decades, and the figures are astounding. In just the last decade, the presence of Indian women in the labour force, and therefore in their homes and communities, has gone down from 33 per cent to 20 per cent.

In a country of 140 crore, where 50 per cent (more or less) are women, there has been an estimated downward spiral of over 6 crore women exiting the workforce, from 34 crore women to 28 crore since 2013. They have simply stopped working, and let’s not even enter the personal, social and societal impact of this highly diminished number. All told, it may already be perhaps too late to correct, but remedial action can still salvage the situation.

A research report released in late 2022 found that a considerable segment of qualified women were unwilling to join the labour market due to “family responsibilities” and the intrinsic need to conform to social norms. It concluded that this happened, though there was a decline in discrimination within the labour market in India over a decadal time-frame. The low participation of women in India’s labour force is largely due to gender discrimination in terms of wages and opportunities, as also societal and familial pressures.

Where are they now?

Well, mostly at home. It is paradoxical that this is happening at a time when our economy is amongst the fastest-growing in the world, especially in a depressed and degenerating world. If we go by figures released by the International Monetary Fund, India will grow at 6.8 per cent this year, compared to a forecast of just 1.6 per cent for the United States. By 2030, India is set to be the third-largest economy in the world, behind only the US and China. Millions of Indians are emerging from poverty each year. As the country gets richer, Indian women get healthier and more educated, but still, an increasing number are unemployed, their choice or otherwise.

Data from the World Bank is even more telling. It says while the Indian economy has grown more than 10 times since 1990, its female workforce participation has fallen from 30 per cent in 1990 to 19 per cent as of 2021. The fall has been particularly steep in the past 15 years, when female labour participation plunged from 32 per cent in 2005 to 19 per cent in 2021. During these 15 years, the Indian economy quadrupled. The differentiation between the patriarchal Indian society and its ambitious individual woman is also utterly austere, with the parts looking better than the whole. India ranks a lowly 135th out of 146 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index for 2022, the sole saving grace being that the country climbed up five spots, as against 2021. What’s needed now is the creation of jobs and expansion of the economy, on all scales of society and factorials.

Some considerations

Worldwide, including in India, the role of the COVID-19 pandemic in this messianic front can’t be ignored. The world is just coming out of the pandemic and professionals are returning to offices, but the last three years have left many feeling exhausted and burnt out. For many, a return to the office, even on a temporary basis, means revisiting family responsibilities. For women, this has been particularly telling. As men return to work, someone has to stay at home to take care of the family. Even for business leaders, this poses a redoubtable choice, where they have to lead a team where team members are not always present in the workplace.

There are other considerations. For instance, the head of Human Resources at a leading firm (a female professional) bluntly admitted that when it comes to beginners and for jobs with a few years’ experience, they prefer to hire men over women. “Younger women, once they settle professionally, get married and take on family responsibilities. Then come children and instances of long leave(s) to take care of the newborn. Women, once their homes are stable, are more likely to get equal consideration.”

I can personally identify with this, for my sister-in-law, one of the best graphic designers in town, took a sabbatical of nearly 20 years once her children were born. Now nearing retirement age and with the children well settled, she has returned to her official responsibilities. What was a gain for the family was quite a staggering loss for the graphic designer community and her own career prospects.

And let’s not forget demonetization and the implementation of the much-debated GST regime, which hammered MSMEs and smaller businesses and led to the loss of lakhs of jobs, many of them women. Yes, that didn’t help either, and they never got their jobs back.

Across the world

A recent Forbes report also underlined the problem, quoting a survey conducted by Deloitte, involving 5,000 women across 10 countries. A third of the women interviewed admitted that they are burnt out and done with, rating their mental health as ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’. More than half rated their mental health as a top concern, while around half said their stress levels are higher than they were a year ago. These findings underscore the support that women now need at the workplace, even though only a few said they actually get such support.

The moral of the story is simple, that if even women in non-patriarchal societies are feeling the pinch of being at work, lady professionals in India indeed have their task cut out. This is particularly true of rural India, where there still exist archaic practices of menstruating women not being allowed to even live in their own homes on those ‘special days’, forced to take shelter under trees for four-five days till they are ‘normal’ again. How can one expect them to work and be healthy contributors to their fields, construction sites and businesses?

Clearly, serious thought and meaningful debates need to happen on the subject if we want the stronger gender to stop dropping out of the labour force. The average farm-owner, construction site manager and the corporate executive need to put their heads together to get our ladies back on the job. As former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once said: “Plan your work for today and everyday; and then work your plan.” We need to begin with the planning. If we manage to do that, the execution will naturally follow. Hopefully.

The writer is a veteran journalist and communications specialist. He can be reached on narayanrajeev2006@gmail.com. Views expressed are personal