By Jigna Patel
India continues to maintain its position as the world’s fifth-largest economy. However, the number of women employed in its workforce is abysmally low. In the previous Union Budget 2022, the overall female workforce participation was estimated to be about 20%. This estimate is low considering that the employability rate for women improved to 52% in 2022, compared to 41% in 2021. Is it possible that a lack of gender balance as part of the business strategy is causing this? Or is an inherent bias towards hiring males keeping women‘s participation low?
The World Economic Forum, in its Global Gender Gap report, ranked India at 135 while placing it higher in educational attainment. Some experts suggest that this may point to a gap in favourable work environments for women. A business strategy that favours inclusivity can help drive gender equality. But more than that, providing a safe and supportive workplace designed for women that helps them shape their careers can significantly improve women’s participation in India’s workforce. Most organisations have put diversity and inclusion on their agenda. However, the momentum is slow. In some cases, the tokenism of a few encouraging speeches and lunches for women masquerades as efforts at inclusion and promoting gender equality. These efforts are pointless. There must be a shift in mindsets to achieve genuine inclusion.
In India, gender inequality is commonplace in organisations, societies and families. It exists in the form of lost opportunities, mansplaining, molestation, power games and misogynistic comments. Therefore, much work must be done on gender sensitisation, increasing awareness of biases, providing equal access to opportunities and educating the workforce on emotional and mental wellbeing and safety.
Organisations must understand that women employees face physical and psychological risks at the workplace. Physical hazards may include molestation while commuting to work or sexual harassment. But, apart from this, the lack of adequate infrastructure for women, like clean and accessible washrooms and access to feminine hygiene products at the workplace, also exposes them to physical risks. Psychological risks may range from verbal abuse by men to seemingly innocuous ‘mansplaining’ and stereotyping. Many women report structural exclusion from certain events that enable after-hours networking. Many functions, like sales and manufacturing, have fewer women employees due to inherent biases and working conditions. Being the only woman in the room or the only woman in the office makes them feel vulnerable and exposed.
Employment in India is structured not according to women’s biological and social needs. Agreed, some companies in the organised sectors provide maternity benefits and safety, security, and hygiene benefits. For example, some companies arrange all employees’ transportation to factories at remote locations. Others also provide creches and feeding rooms at the workplace, which provides peace of mind and psychological safety for women employees. However, the women employed in the unorganised sector are either unaware of or denied these provisions.
Recent research found that most Indian women don’t get the maternity benefits they are entitled to under the National Food Security Act 2013. The Act provides certain pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers with maternity benefit payments and allows them to receive certain free food benefits. According to the paper, pregnant and nursing women are acutely deprived of quality healthcare. Many of them receive some elementary services, such as tetanus injections and iron tablets at the local Anganwadi or health centre, but they get very little beyond these benefits. The paper says that minor ailments quickly become a significant burden in terms of pain, expenses, or both. At the time of delivery, women are often sent to private hospitals when there are complications.
Then there are cases where many women have to make do with the lack of adequate and safe toilet facilities by not drinking liquids before work. They do this to avoid or reduce the need to use the toilet during the working day. They risk dehydration, particularly in warm or humid weather. This is a severe health and wellbeing issue. A study by the International Labour Organization showed barely 21% of factories in India have designated toilets for men and women. Facilities for menstrual hygiene management are even lesser. The lack of proper sanitation and hygiene facilities hinders women from fully participating in the workforce. Menopause also has a significant impact on working women. The physical, psychological (memory fade), mental and emotional symptoms are evidence based and are being recognised globally. Many senior women have to leave posts or take career breaks to manage this period as there is a lack of understanding even amongst women of the impact.
Domestic responsibilities like childbearing, caring for the family and elderly care are borne mainly by women. The load is physically demanding and time-consuming. Many Indian women are under pressure or expected to take career breaks after marriage and moreso if they become mothers. Career breaks can leave women significantly behind in the working world, with dated skills, lack of experience and confidence; where’s next pay and position is related to the previous pay and (lack of) seniority. A career break can erode their net worth and self-worth in the eyes of future employers as well as, sadly, themselves.
As a modern and developing nation, Indian employers are duty-bound to provide safe and supportive workplaces for women. They must ensure equal access to sanitation, clean water, and hygiene. Providing adequate hygiene facilities in workplaces like offices, factories, and shops should be mandated. Such a workplace will boost diversity and promote gender equality. A workplace sensitive to the needs of women, investing in them and their conditions to develop them would increase women role models particularly those in senior leadership position. Having more women in boardrooms would bring new and more balanced ways of approaching business and people strategy, operations and problem solving. The answer, for example, to the security of women working late into evenings, is not to simply employ men in those roles, but to make provision for safe working. Organisations that employ and develop more women stand to benefit from the diverse perspectives and problem-solving capabilities that they bring to the workplace and to the prosperity of the organisation. Employers in considering these factors should seek to cast their recruitment nets further and wider to proactively encourage more women to develop and grow within their organisations.
The author is Chief Technical and Operations Officer, British Safety Council
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