Have women in Delhi, historically, preferred to stay away from work?

New Delhi: It may be 22 years since India’s liberalisation. But, while the economy took off reaching a 9% growth at its peak, the equal opportunity dream still remains elusive.

According to a National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) survey, confirmed by the data released by the Census department as reported by the Times of India, fewer females participated in the country’s workforce in 2010 against 2005. The NSSO showed the fall in female labour force participation- which is measured by looking at how a person spent most of the preceding year - was sharp.

According to the report, Delhi showed the lowest female workforce participation at just 10.6% as against a male participation rate of 53.1%. Ahmedabad follows with a low female workforce participation of 11.7%. While Kolkata and Mumbai showed female workforce participation rates of around 18%, Chennai and Thiruvananthapuram showed rates of around 20% and Bengaluru and Coimbatore topped with nearly 25% female workforce participation.

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While Delhi has recently given women many reasons to feel threatened about travel, it is also one of the most rapidly growing job markets. But there might be more sociological and historical reasons for Delhi’s low female participation in the workforce.

Delhi, said Dr Alakh N Sharma, Professor and Director, Institute of Human Development, has traditionally been a city of more wealth, less female workforce participation and a services-oriented work city.

“Since there has been more wealth in Delhi, most women of the household have not had the need to work. It has also been a taboo for women in Delhi to work. It’s natural that in a more prosperous place women choose not to have to work,” Sharma told_Firstpost_.

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“The kind of employment too, in Delhi, has mostly been services driven. With the timings and nature of work, many women do not choose to participate in it,” Sharma said.

However, Indrani Mazumdar,Senior fellow and Professor, Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS) said that while Delhi and other Southern states may be different culturally, culture is only an excuse used by many.

“Culture is only one part and it should not be over played. The fact is employment opportunities have reduced for women – especially for married women. In many of the new sectors like retail, BPOs and IT services, the nature of the work is such that women have to work late into the night. These conditions of work make it difficult to bring married women into the workforce,” Mazumdar said.

Safety issues and access to work are also two important aspects that affects whether a woman will go to work or not.

[caption id=“attachment_780345” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Experts cite fewer jobs for women and the decline of the agricultural economy as a reason for this drop,and also blame cultural reasons and other sector jobs in the capital for the decline in women participating in the workforce.[/caption]

“Conditions of life for the vast majority of working poor are pathetic. Women just don’t have the enabling facilities to come out and work – daycare facilities, easy and convenient water availability, nature of civic amenities and amenities for school going children and transportation – are all huge issues. When their mobility is restricted, they will naturally not be able to assimilate themselves into the workforce. All of these factors affect the radius of their employment, in turn affecting their participation in the workforce,” Mazumdar told_Firstpost_.

“As far as women’s work participation in India is concerned the problem is that there is major employment crisis for women. Agriculture employment has taken a major beating and there has been no expansion in other sector of employments. In fact, in all segments there has been a fall in employment for women except in construction,” said Indrani Mazumdar, Senior fellow and Professor, Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS).

She said while the services sector makes up for 56-57% of the GDP, there are no jobs that suit women.

“In fact, agriculture has been reduced to 14% yet it supports the female workforce,” Mazumdar said.

Repeated surveys of occupational structure of female work participation in India show a larger share of women workers are still engaged in primary sector in India - which is agriculture, where Mazumdar said 69% of the agrarian workforce are women.

“Mechanisation adds to declining no of workdays available for the women who work on the fields,” she said.

But there could also be a case of under-reporting feels Dr. Alakh N. Sharma, Professor and director, Institute of Human Development

Stating that the overall drop in female workforce participation from 29% in 2005 to 23% in 2010 - a 6% decline - is alarming “but it doesn’t seem to be logical”, he said there is more to it than meets the eye and it’s not simply a case of no employment for women.

“It is a myth that there’s no employment for women. The male labour force participation rate has not declined, so how can we cant say this?” he asked.

The reasons for this could be better education, more poor moving on to being middle class and underreporting of work by women, he added.

“Increasingly more girls are going to colleges and schools and so those females who used to go to the fields to work are instead going to get a better education, resulting in a labour force participation decline,” Sharma said.

“Women’s workforce participation rate is also no not captured accurately. I believe there has been a statistical underreporting of women’s work as many of them may work in the fields but may not think of it as work. Also the poor becoming middle class also affects the participation rates because as families grow wealthier, when women are not bound to work, they opt out and would rather concentrate on family and other events in life,” Sharma said.