With women being hit the hardest by the pandemic, panellists at the inaugural edition of The Indian Express Thinc Series on Gender discussed ways to get them back into the workforce and remove the gap year bias. The session was moderated by Aanchal Magazine, Special Correspondent, The Indian Express.
Keynote Speaker: Rajeev Chandrasekhar (Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and Electronics and Information Technology)
The two ways by which we can mainstream women in the workforce are digitisation and reskilling. The government is directing its skill programmes and the New Education Policy to ensure more and more women participate in hitherto untapped areas. We are offering skills to men and women equally and it is for them to use those skills to create opportunities for themselves either in employment or micro-entrepreneurship.
The Ministry of Skill Development has a digital platform called the DESH stack. A part of this will include the ability of micro-entrepreneurs to come online, work on these opportunities, skill themselves and seek out finances. So, it is an ecosystem of credit skills and opportunities that will be put together on a digital platform.
Today, in the skill ecosystem, we have over 4,500 courses and trades that are being taught. I have given my ministry a target of 10,000-15,000 (courses). As long as the ecosystem provides more and more innovative trades and skills of the future, we create visibility and aspirations around those skills, we create opportunities around them. It is for the young Indian to decide what he or she is excited by. Smartphones have prodded women in remote locations, particularly in the Northeast, to drive new food businesses while skilling has helped women break the male stronghold in traditional sectors like plumbing, where they are now becoming sales executives and product managers.
Women are benefitting from Jan Shikshan Sansthan (JSS). I visited many JSS centres during the pandemic. In Kerala and parts of the Northeast, I found that women had reinvented themselves. When the classroom programmes had shut because of COVID, they took to YouTube. Some of them took up new businesses around the neighbourhood. I was impressed by one of the women in Kerala, who said, ‘I had learnt to make two kinds of cakes at JSS before COVID struck. Now I know about 11 different types, having picked them up from YouTube and distance-learning tools…I make 40 cakes a day and sell them in my community.’ I asked another group of women near Kochi how they marketed their products. They were savvy and said they were using Instagram, Facebook and all of those digital tools that took primacy during Covid.
So I think the spirit of enterprise among women of India is equal to, if not more, than that of men.
Sona Mitra (Principal Economist, Iwwage): It’s encouraging that the Govt is looking at skilling women. It understands the need for diversifying occupational patterns of women and looking into aspirations outside their traditional roles and livelihoods.
On ‘invisible’ workers
Renana Jhabvala: There is an “invisibility” of women in official numbers and this results in poor governmental support. In Bihar, the National Service Scheme (NSS) data showed that only 11 per cent of women were in the labour force. But we found that every field had a woman worker. We followed the exact same questionnaire as the NSS and found 56 per cent of women worked as agricultural labour.
Women, who work on their family farms, are not counted as farmers. About 80 per cent of women are in agriculture in some way or the other. Of these 42 per cent are cultivators. Again, that is underestimated because many women, who work in their family farms, don’t get counted. Unfortunately, only 16 per cent of households have women who own land. Therefore, it is the men who are recognised as farmers, although they may have migrated to cities for work, entrusting their farms to women in the family. There is a feminisation of agriculture. But as women are not recognised as farmers, they don’t get finance, subsidised seeds and fertilisers or any extension services. I think this needs looking into and can change productivity.
On supporting micro-entrepreneurs
Renana Jhabvala: Women micro entrepreneurs need incentivisation. They are street vendors, weavers, food producers, teachers, essentially those engaged in non-agricultural trades. The annual turnover of more than 85 per cent of such businesses is less than Rs 5 lakh. Another interesting aspect is that where enterprises are women-owned, 77 per cent of employees are women. According to the NSS, 20 per cent of all micro enterprises are women-owned. The government must consider a safety net by way of cash transfers, look at practical ways of funding micro-entrepreneurship, encourage women-owned businesses because they naturally give opportunities to other women, extend digital and financial literacy and urge the private sector to include women enterprises in their supply chains.
Manish Sabharwal: We need to emphasise the importance of “financialising” in India. Our credit to GDP ratio of 50 per cent hurts everyone but it hurts women disproportionately. There must be a more democratic and even spread of existing fund allocations. The Central Government budget is Rs 39 lakh crore, 29 state governments have a budget of Rs 89 lakh crore, 2.5 lakh municipalities and panchayats have a budget of only Rs 3.7 lakh crore. The biggest thing we can do is decentralise money and power.
On providing jobs
Renana Jhabvala: We need to highlight unemployment among young women. In the last 30 years, higher education among girls has increased from 32 per cent to nearly 50 per cent while primary education is about 90 per cent. On the other hand, formal labour-force participation of women has really decreased. Many of these young girls do want jobs. According to the NSS data on Bihar, 55 per cent of educated girls — those who have completed secondary education and above — say that they are unemployed. This is a cohort that needs special attention. We need bridging courses to help them transition to need-based skills. Employers need to hire them. I think it also needs some motivation to families because they don’t send young girls for work or at least don’t send them far.
Manish Sabharwal: The work-from-home option is opening up more opportunities. However, the problem is not about job creation as it is about decent wages. This is ‘employed poverty.’ How do you fix that? By raising the productivity of our states, firms and individuals. Formalise, urbanise and industrialise human capital. There’s no shortcut to raising wages. How can we increase productivity? Land, labour and capital aren’t the problem. The fourth factor of production, which is entrepreneurship or innovation, is held back by regulatory cholesterol. And women’s labour force participation with decent pay is massively held back by regulatory cholesterol.
On cash transfers
Avani Kapur: I would advocate a universal rather than a targeted system of cash transfers. We celebrated ASHA and anganwadi workers as COVID warriors.They alone represent about four million people. Add to that the nurses and the numbers of women in pandemic care systems are staggering. An analysis by the Women Budget Group showed how even an additional two per cent of the GDP that was invested in the healthcare sector could generate 11 million additional jobs, many of which, nearly one-third at least, would go to women. Similarly, recognising a lot of women’s unpaid work would add to the GDP. I think cash transfers are great during a pandemic but I do worry about a scheme that will be launched and create a temporary fiscal space that does nothing for long-term rehabilitation.