Women’s participation in the labour force in India remains a concern, as does their low numbers in the boardroom. This is a challenge not only for gender justice, but also for India’s economic ambitions. Sarthak Ray looks at the problem of women being under-represented in India’s workforce
Women in the labour force
Female labour force participation rate (FLPR), as per the recently released Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) for July 2021 to June 2022, continues to be low though it has marginally improved from the pre-pandemic level. FLPR denotes the women in the overall working-age population who are either employed or seeking employment. Based on the current week status — where activity status is determined over the reference period of seven days preceding the date of survey — FLPR fell marginally to 27.2% in PLFS 2021-2022 from 27.5% in 2020-21. However, it was higher than 2019-20’s (the pre-pandemic year) 26.3.
Worryingly, though it has fallen for rural women from the PLFS 2020-21 levels, it continues to be a little higher than the pre-pandemic levels.
Women in boardrooms
The showing in terms of women decision-makers in corporate India is also disappointing. The seventh edition of Deloitte’s Global Women in the Boardroom Report shows that India is still behind the global average — the latter figure itself is not too impressive. The percentage of women in board positions in India stands at 17.1%, while globally this is 19.7%. Women board chairs account for just 3.6% of the pool.
While we have made significant progress from the scenario just under a decade ago, when the Companies Act made it mandatory for listed companies to have at least one woman board member, it is hard to say with certainty that some part of this hasn’t been tokenism. Women board members continue to have shorter tenures than their male counterparts, despite the average age of women members being lower than the men.
Behind the gap
Some experts argue that for decades now, little has been done to create conditions for gender balance to thrive at the work place. There seems to be an inherent tendency to hire men, backed by assumptions of greater commitment and capacity for labour, etc. The roles women play in their prime —care-giving, reproduction — in the absence of any parity in distribution of such labour, keeps women out of the labour force. Other experts argue that FLPR data suffers from many infirmities.
In the case of women in the boardroom, even now, many firms would rather pay a fine than put a woman on the board. Little has been done to groom women for such roles. A report by the IBM Institute of Business Value, in collaboration with a women-leaders’ group, shows the pipeline for mid- and senior level positions in the tech industry is drying up. Globally, 45% of business leaders say propelling women to top positions is a priority, but only 39% in India believe so.
What needs to be done to change the current scenario
There is an undeniable benefit from having more women participate in income-generating activities. Improving the FLPR and including more women in decision-making, however, would require changing attitudes about the workplace and gender roles fundamentally, experts argue. To start with, in the formal sector, the workplace must make adjustments for sharing or care-giving roles substantively. With the care-giving responsibilities, especially for children, dumped entirely on women, career advancement comes under risk. Policy, experts say, enables entrenchment of such social expectations. For instance, India’s maternity leave, though accorded with the best of intent, divests men of any parental responsibility for neo-nates. On the other hand, certain European nations offer parental leaves, allowing the father and the mother to decide on how they want to distribute the care-work. The leave, though, can’t be availed of by just one parent. In any case, only 1% of working women, as per one estimate, are able to avail of the current parental leave policy. Fixing the pay gap, institutionalising care-giving support, whether at the enterprise-level or through a common facility, grooming women for leadership roles, making the work-place safer for women, are also essential.