Women Need A Better Deal

Context: New research shows that India’s low and falling female labour participation rate is not just because they are spending more time on education or their families are better off.

Findings of the new research: By Prof Ashwini Deshpande and Jitendra Singh of Ashoka University.

• Not a supply-side constraint: 

• While it is believed that women participation is hindered by the supply side constraints – increased household income and social norms, women’s repeated entry exit in the market discards them.
• Women performed repeated entry-exit (atleast two times) between 2016-2019, indicating that women are neither shy nor pre-occupied elsewhere to drop out of the labour force for good.
• Social and cultural norms are structural in nature that are well ingrained in behaviour. They do not change rapidly and, thus, cannot be the factor influencing the frequent entry and exit of women.
• Problem is on the demand side: The change in the industry composition of total employment over the period does not explain the fall in employment of women because employment of women has fallen in all industry groups.
•  It is just the lack of availability of adequate, stable employment to women that are holding up their full participation in the economy.
• While the total employment has shrunk over the past few years, the available jobs go predominantly to men and not to women.
• Thus, this is a case of active discrimination - Women have a much lower labour force participation rate than men. Yet, they suffer a much higher unemployment rate, although they are no less educated than men.

Challenges due to repeated entry exit of women in the labour market

• Failed measurements: Conventional measures of the labour force participation rate underestimates the willingness of women to participate in the labour markets. 
• 45 % of women were part of the labour force in at least one of the 12 Waves under study. 
• But, because their engagement with the labour market is irregular or of short- term nature, they do not get included fully in the measurement of the labour force participation rate.
• Evidently, the labour force participation rate estimated using CPHS is of the order of 14.5 % for the period of the study.