Elections 2022: Is Reserving Jobs For Women Enough?

India has one of the lowest labour force participation rates in the world. It also has the lowest women's participation in the workforce. And while the Covid-19 pandemic hit the Indian job market hard, women were one of the worst affected. With the number of women voters increasing and outnumbering men in states like Uttar Pradesh and Manipur, political parties are banking on the woman's vote and wooing them with the promise of 33 per cent reservation in jobs and other freebies. 

In Uttar Pradesh, one of the five poll states this year, political parties have offered jobs to men but not much has been promised for women in terms of jobs. While Congress and SP have promised 33 per cent reservations in government jobs, BJP has promised to double the number of women's vacancies. In Uttar Pradesh, the unemployment rate of women was 9.4 per cent even before the pandemic and has fallen further since.  Similar promises have been made in states with higher women's employment. In Manipur, for instance, where women form a big part of the workforce, Congress has repeated its 33 per cent quota promise. But does a blanket 33 per cent reservation for women in government jobs help solve the job crisis of women? And can one formula work for all? 

Falling Participation of Women in Workforce

In 2020, after the Covid-induced lockdown, women's participation in the labour force dropped to an all-time low of 15.5 per cent in April-June. The numbers improved slightly in the next quarter with WFP resting at 16.1 per cent in July-September. But it is drastically lower than what it was in 2005 (26 per cent) and considerably lower than that of neighbouring countries like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, both of which have over 30 per cent women in the workforce. 

Apart from the fact that Covid-19 induced job loss, 2020 also saw a fall in the number of women looking for jobs. According to CMIE data, the number of women looking for jobs dropped by 33.7 per cent from 2019 to 2021. 

According to a survey conducted by the non-profit NGO ActionAid Association in the months of May-June 2020, 79 per cent women across 20 states lost their jobs as compared to 25 per cent of men due to the lockdown. The results were based on accounts of over 11,000 families from across India. 

The report, published in Times Of India, also highlighted that women working in the informal sector were the worst hit. These include domestic workers and agricultural workers, both rural and urban, as well as others like women involved in beedi making. Among the 400 plus domestic workers who were surveyed by ActionAid, 85 p[er cent reported job loss. As per the data by the Periodic Labour Force Survey of 2017-18 by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, female employment rates were lowest in states like Bihar, UP and Assam. 

Losing jobs to men?

Much has been said about the low participation of women in the workforce in India including social pressures and gender roles. Data collected by Ashoka University researchers Jitendra Singh and Ashwani Deshpande found that contrary to the belief that women find it harder to keep their jobs due to personal reasons, it was actually the lack of enough jobs to accommodate both men and women. The economists studied over 3.5 lakh women to observe their employment patterns from 2016-19 and found their employment to be volatile and fluctuating. However, the reason for job loss was seldom childbirth or marriage but because they were replaced by male employees.

The pandemic has also affected the number of women getting jobs under MNREGA. With men returning to villages amid mass labour migration due to lockdown, many of the MNREGA jobs that women were previously getting are now going to men.

Promises to create more employment for women in police forces look good on the manifesto but women in armed forces report multiple problems from lack of safety, unequal pay to being passed up for promotions despite equal or more diligent work than male counterparts as reasons for quitting. 

Unpaid Care Work

While women's participation in the workforce was dipping from 2005 onward, the pandemic brought out the sharper disparities. One of the reasons, especially in India, was the loss of jobs in sectors that were dominated by a female labour force. Primary schools, creches and day-care centres in cities, for instance, employ large numbers of women. With the pandemic shutting down these enterprises, many women were left without options. 

An analysis of World Bank Data from 2017 showed how a fall in women's participation in the workforce (in the 15-24 age group) may be due to the fact that more women were gaining higher education. It also hinted that women, especially rural women working in informal sectors, tend to quit their jobs when their husbands were better paid. This, however, is no more true today with Covid-19 leaving the informal sector crippled and unemployment among both men and women is at a calamitous high. 

An interesting aspect of the pre-pandemic analysis, published by BBC, showed that underpaid or low-quality work compelled many women to quit the informal sector and instead get self-employed or simply stay at home. However, in rural India, an unemployed wife of a farmer is as much a farmer whose work often goes unnoticed and unpaid. While parties have tried to use the issue of unpaid women's labour to their benefit by offering freebies and cash benefits to housewives, women remain the bigger contributors of unpaid care work across the world. On average, a man spends 97 minutes a day doing unpaid domestic work as compared to 299 minutes on unpaid care work done by women. Such disparities dictated by gender roles affect women's labour force participation and promising 33 per cent reservation for jobs may not solve this problem.