Piecing together the Jigsaw: Indian women in the urban wage labour force

Labour force participation in India responds to economic, social, cultural and demographic mechanisms. Employment, unemployment, and unpaid labour were all measured in the 1999/2000 Indian National Sample Survey. Men's official labourforce participation stood at 85% and women's at 35%. The overall rate of labour force participation among women had fallen since 1989. Furthermore, measurement issues create doubt about the real rates of change of women's self-employment. Women's domestic and farming work can sometimes arguably be classified as self-employment. However many women instead report themselves as housewives. The statistics reveal a U curve of female employment by education levels. A detailed measurement of both domestic work and other unpaid work is provided. Women in the Muslim cultural group do more extra-domestic work (and are more likely to be 'inactive') than women in other cultural groups. Economic poverty causes employment to be more likely. We provide a number of reasons which help explain both the work patterns and the housewifisation pattern. These include both subjective factors as well as economic and demographic factors. Note: all tables and graphs referred in this article can be found in the appendix 1.

The low rate of women’s labour force participation (LFPR) in India is not something new, but the decline of this LFPR is a cause for concern, unless it marks a shift away from labour participation due to the pursuit of education by the women concerned or even due to household income effects. If it is an outcome of the lack of adequate employment avenues that discourages women from seeking employment, then why is it not reflected in the male labour force participation rates as well? Amidst the declining LFPRs of women, which have been observed for all age cohorts, two of the observed trends relate to the shift away from agriculture and into non-agriculture, and a more educated workforce. While undertaking a disaggregated analysis by examining the magnitudes of change apart from the proportions and shares, this paper highlights the losses and gains in women’s employment across sectors. The gradual increase in the number of regular workers as the proportions of women engaged in self-employment and casual work decline is one clearly positive change observed more markedly in the urban areas. What consequences do these changing patterns have on the nature of work that women undertake and are these patterns reflections of a gradual but definite transformation with the potential for dynamic changes? This paper also seeks to address these questions.

Bookchapter, 2023

Gender roles are predefined, accepted and silently followed for quite some time in the history of every society. In Asia, the women's liberation movement started in the late 1960s and continued through the 1970s which brought women into the workforce. Women are not considered the main part of the workforce in India though they are working outside of the home (in agricultural lands, household dairies, and small-scale industries) for a few decades. Indian females must do domestic duties whereas it's an option for males. Women though working outside have to slip into a housewife role after getting home. It has been observed that women's employability increased but not women's employment for a decade. This paper explores the historical trends in terms of women's employment and empowerment from the 1970s to the date in India. It also explores how are the gender differences in the Indian demographic labour force. And it discusses the reasons for the trends presented.

Labour force participation in India responds to economic, social, cultural and demographic mechanisms. Employment, unemployment, and unpaid labour were all measured in the 1999/2000 Indian National Sample Survey. Men’s official labour-force participation stood at 85% and women’s at 35%. The overall rate of labour force participation among women had fallen since 1989. Furthermore, measurement issues create doubt about the real rates of change of women’s self-employment. Women’s domestic and farming work can sometimes arguably be classified as self-employment. However many women instead report themselves as housewives. The statistics reveal a U curve of female employment by education levels. A detailed measurement of both domestic work and other unpaid work is provided. Women in the Muslim cultural group do more extra-domestic work (and are more likely to be ‘inactive’) than women in other cultural groups. Economic poverty causes employment to be more likely. We provide a number of reasons which help explain both the work patterns and the housewifisation pattern. These include both subjective factors as well as economic and demographic factors.

Global Labour Journal, 2023

Labouring Women: Issues and Challenges in Contemporary India. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan. ISBN 9789390122073. 344 pp. US$35.87, ₹950 (paperback). Reviewed by Madhuri Kamtam, University of East Anglia, United Kingdom The issue of women's employment and participation in the labour force is widely debated for a multitude of reasons. Neglecting women's unpaid labour and care work, the gender wage gap, undermining and under-reporting women's paid work in statistics are a few of the significant ones in the body of scholarship. The book Labouring Women: Issues and Challenges in Contemporary India, edited by Praveen Jha, Avinash Kumar and Yamini Mishra, makes a significant contribution to the domain of research on women's employment and labour force participation. For academic scholars in sociology, development studies, gender and economics, as well as decision-makers, this book is noteworthy. The book has an introduction by the editors and twelve chapters written by seventeen different authors. The entire collection is well-written, interesting and covers a variety of labourrelated issues. By concentrating on conceptual and methodological issues of women's labour, it seeks to address some of the key issues surrounding women's work. The contrasts between paid and unpaid labour, as well as between economic and non-economic activities in the labour market, are also highlighted and discussed. As has already been said, it is crucial to take the differences into account because a significant portion of women's unpaid labour is disregarded and invisible in statistics reports. Each chapter in the book offers a comprehensive examination of a particular case study using both pertinent theory and a quantitative approach. The volume's introduction makes the case that the various elements of the intersection between the labour question and the women's question are of primary interest. All the chapters have a focus on comprehending the interconnection between paid and unpaid work, present alternative theories, and draw attention to methodological concerns related to women's labour market participation. From Jayati Ghosh's term "time poverty", which refers to women having little time for themselves, through discussions of care work, underpaid work, women domestic workers, land rights, common property resources and the role of public investment in boosting women's livelihoods, a wide variety of viewpoints are well combined in the book. Feminist scholarship, history, politics and sociology are all included since the economics discipline's interest in women and labour also makes these fields relevant. This comprehensive book offers some remarkable insights. For instance, the World Economic Forum's (WEF) 2017 Global Gender Gap Report reveals that India has under-performed in areas like economic engagement, educational achievement and health status. The study's findings also indicate that women's participation rates in the labour force have decreased nationwide during the past forty years, which raises methodological issues with the data collected. In contrast to this

IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 2012

In most of the countries, including India status of women is inferior to men. Women's opportunities are said to be restricted by ideas among employers that only certain low level limited jobs can be performed by women. Women are thus said to be crowded into certain segments of the employment markets where wages and conditions are lower than their male counterparts. This situation aggravated due to the pressure of globalization. This phenomenon can be called marginalization of female labour". Although rapid economic development has expanded women's job opportunities, most women are concentrated in lower-status jobs and the informal sector. Indian women, in spite of enjoying better status and position compared to other developing countries, have low levels of participation in economic activity. In such setting, this study aims to take a fresh look at the current situation of gender equality in the labour market in India and examine the trend of women's employment status using both macro and micro level data and finally evaluates the effects of employment on economic independence relative to men. In the micro-level analysis the study examines the factors that led to the marginalization of women's labor force. The results suggest that women's work patterns in terms of formal vs. informal employment are determined by the family organization rather than by labor market .

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2011

Working Papers, 2011

Even with declining gender ratio, the female population in urban India is very high in absolute numbers. One of the major components of the renaissance in the colonial period was the exposure of the women to modern education and consequently opening scopes of employment in the tertiary sector. And we saw teachers in various levels, doctors, scientists, even engineers and pilots from the fair sex coming out in the first part of the twentieth century. The entertainment sector also attracted educated women. Other than that, women were engaged heavily in manufacturing, mining and plantation sectors and of course, they were uneducated, unskilled and mostly used as manual labour. At the lower rung, there was scope for domestic work at the personalised and institutional level. After more than six decades after Independence, the picture is not at all bright. The work participation rate among the urban women is abysmally low at the national level, though there are regional variations. The literacy rate among women has increased significantly, there are ample evidences that more and more women are entering the portals of higher learning and often we hear success stories of individuals. But, given the national average, they are exceptions. The increase in work participation rate is exceptionally slow in recent decades and there is notable shrinkage in female workers in some sectors like mining and manufacturing. The only noticeable increase is in the tertiary sectors, unfortunately proportionately more in the lowest rung. In some pockets of the country, the household industries show tendency of rising employment. And there is also significant difference in proportion and nature of participation across the size class of urban areas. Since opening up of the economy in the early nineties, the scope of women employment has increased and there is significant mobility of educated women in search of jobs. But that is again not a universal phenomenon. There is hardly any feminisation of workforce which was hypothesized by the proponents of globalisation. Global evidences show that increased earning capabilities are positively correlated with empowerment of women both in domestic and outside domestic world. The reservation of seats in local government institutions (both urban and rural) has brought a sizeable number of women coming out in the public sphere. However, there is hardly any reflection of this liberation in the workforce participation rate. In this context, the paper will explore causes behind the low work participation rate of women in urban India. Apart from data sources like NSSO and Census, it will also take into account results from primary researches. The proposition that educated women are going for higher education and hence entering the workforce much latter has to be seen in the context of age-specific work participation rate. Also the differences across the city sizes have to be explored in terms of availability of opportunities in terms of both education and employment. The role of societal norms across religious and ethnic division will also be explored.