Month: January 2020

Care work is highly gendered and a barrier to women’s participation in the paid economy. It’s time we changed that

Suvarna Santosh Ghate, a 38-year-old housewife who has never held a job, is learning to drive a two-wheeler at a skilling centre in Mumbai where I met her some months ago.

It’s an ambitious endeavour for someone whose day begins at 5 am with an unvarying routine of chopping-cooking-cleaning-washing. She cooks twice a day, because, well, her family can’t eat “stale” food. But between 2 and 4 in the afternoon, her “rest” time, she is able to slip away for driving lessons because “maybe someday I can get a job”.

All over the world, women bear a disproportionate burden of household chores. This “sexist economic system” has resulted in gross imbalances in paid work, finds an Oxfam report released this past week ahead of the World Economic Forum meeting at Davos.

The gender discrepancy is hardly news. The business of care work is the “main barrier to women’s participation in labour markets,” found a 2018 International Labour Organization (ILO) report. All over the world, 606 million women, compared to 41 million men, of working age said they were unavailable for paid employment because of unpaid care work.

Even among women, this work is unequally divided. Widowed women, finds the ILO, spend the most time (122 minutes a day), divorced women the least (87 minutes a day). But in every category, women spend far more time than men.

Economic status and educational attainment is not a buffer. In India, the decline in female labour force participation is highest among both illiterates and postgraduates. Workforce participation among women graduates fell by eight percentage points between 1993 and 2011, found a 2017 World Bank report.

The first bump comes with marriage, says Farzana Afridi, an associate professor with the Indian Statistical Institute. In 2011, half of all unmarried women aged 15-60 were in the labour force compared to just 20% for married women.

The second bump is motherhood. Having just one child affects women’s paid employment: In 2011, 23.6% of those with no kids were employed, just 16.1% for those with one child below six, finds a 2017 World Bank paper, The Motherhood Penalty.

For things to change, unpaid care work must be recognised as a common good by societies and governments. This does not mean that women get paid to cook and clean, but more the recognition that the work they do is valuable — if you were to put a figure to it, then $10 trillion of output every year, 13% of the global GDP, found a 2015 report by the McKinsey Global Institute.

The second is an effort to bridge the gap in care work. With girls’ rising aspiration and educational attainment, it cannot be business-as-usual. Boys have to be brought to understand that being fed and looked-after is not a lifetime entitlement, and they too must shoulder some of the burden.

A good place to start the gender revolution is in the kitchen. Get the boys in.

Namita Bhandare writes on gender

The views expressed are personal

Women have their own perspective based on their struggles to ascension. To exclude them from crucial meetings is to shut out the voices of nearly half of our population

Prime Minister Narendra Modi poses for a group photo with Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, Tata Group patriarch Ratan Tata, Business tycoon Anand Mahindra and others during an interaction with business stalwarts .(PTI)

They flank the prime minister, six on one side, five on the other, dressed in sombre suits to discuss serious matters. The photograph was taken on January 6 when the 11 — variously described as “telecom czar”, “richest Indian”, and even “patriarch” — met with Narendra Modi ahead of the budget.

No “czarinas”. No “matriarchs”. Just an all-boys-club meeting to weigh in on the economy, talk about the need to spur growth and create jobs.

You would imagine that some women might have been invited, particularly since the prime minister’s flagship mission, Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao, is to do with female empowerment. You would imagine that some women might have had a seat at that table. After all, it’s 2020 and women are flying fighter planes and working on missions to space. But in the photograph, even our first full-time woman finance minister is missing.

It’s not that we don’t have capable women in industry. I can think of Kiran Majumdar Shaw, Anu Agha, Suneeta Reddy and all those who sparkle in finance and banking from Zarin Daruwala to Kaku Nahate.

This is not just about a symbolic photo-op. Women see things differently, have their own perspective based on their struggles to ascension. To exclude them from crucial meetings is to shut out the voices of nearly half of our population.

Did, for instance, the men around that table, talk about India’s precipitous fall in female labour force participation? Did they seek answers as to why only 24% of working age women are in paid employment, according to the 2018 Economic Survey? Did they talk about work-life balance and the burden of unpaid care work that falls on women? Unless you have women around the table, you are not going to hear their stories. You are going to have men deciding what’s best for everyone, and that includes us.

In a recent Global Gender Gap report, which looks at 153 economies on four parameters — political empowerment, economic participation, health and education — we slipped four places from 108 to 112. When gender exclusion stems from the top, it sends a signal down the line that it’s okay to keep women out. Not one of the 23 speakers at a recent award ceremony by an agritech company was a woman — this in a country where, according to Oxfam, women undertake 80% of farm work but own only 13% of the land. There were no women speakers at an auto conclave in Gurgaon this past week. Ditto for an electronic imaging fair earlier this month in Mumbai, points out writer Kiran Manral who has been tracking “manels”.

In a world where girls have breached gender gaps in primary and secondary education, and are striving to be heard and seen, it is anachronistic to whitewash the presence of women around decision-making conference tables. In the run-up to the budget, the prime minister will be hearing from those who count. Hopefully, women will make that cut.

Namita Bhandare writes on gender

The views expressed are personal